Stella and Daniel celebrate Purim
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A critical and dense element has been discovered and this was sent to me by a long time dear friend and fellow memo reader who also happens to be a world renowned patent attorney.
Subject: Fwd: New element discovered at Cern Hadron Collider....PelosiumMost dense matter know to man!
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My friend and sometime fellow memo reader, Star Parker, speaks to a university professor's class. (See 1 below.)
Star is an outspoken black conservative women who writes:"My life of crime, drugs and promiscuity
led me into the abortion clinics again and again...Finally, I heard a sermon about personal responsibility...I call this the day, I quit the safety system for good. I call this the day I left 'Uncle Sam's Plantation."...Instead of government dependence, I lead an organization spreading a conservative message of faith, family and freedom..."
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Market ranting, (See 2 below.)
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Sen. Graham returns from Israel and says Iran must be stopped. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Congress is a creaky, sinking ship because everyone leaks.
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I believe I understand Trump's policies and what motivates him. He is driven by what he perceives is logical and is not a strict ideologue. He has little regard for big government and its bureaucratic structure because, as a builder/developer, he had to deal with it all the time and the consequences always resulted in increased costs and delays which meant lower returns on investment.
Second, as a pragmatist, who is turned off by Congress' failure to solve problems, he has little regard for labels and thus he is not a Republican in the dictionary sense of the word. However, being a pragmatist he does many things that identify with conservatism and common sense. D.C is a city/swamp in which common sense loses many battles. Power and votes dictate results.
Third, Trump is his own man, quirky, not dumb even though, in a political setting, he does harm himself and his efforts by virtue of his actions and behaviour.
The problem with his detractors and haters is they are not willing to get past his quirky, even bizarre and self-destructive, behaviour because what really motivates their feelings is the belief he is an aberration that defies everything they philosophically believe, let alone the fact that he licked their anointed.
Fourth, the mass media serve to remind the anti-Trump crowd, on a daily basis, why they hate him.
They simply cannot see him in a non-emotional way They cannot be objective about Trump.
I despised Obama but I was always cautious to keep my distaste for him from clouding my judgment.
It might be my legal training.
It is no secret, I thought Trump was corrupt, disingenuous and a liar but I always based these negative feelings and judgements on being able to articulate why and connect my views to his bad policies if not illegal actions
I knew to expect the opposite of what Obama said because it was only a matter of time before my deepest suspicions occured and proved me correct,
I know Obama lovers naturally take issue with these self-pronouncements but I am comfortable as more and more revelations surface proving my concerns to be justified. Obamacare, Irangate, I have a pen and a cell phone, the IRS, Syrian red lines in the sand, etc.
What could ultimately prove to be Trump's Achilles Heel is his apparent insecurity which manifests itself in his hiring of many family members to serve in his administration. Their past business engagements could make them vulnerable to Mueller's quest to hunt beyond his initial territorial agenda/mandate.(See 4, 4a, 4b and 4c below.)
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A Very dear friend and fellow memo reader's comment on my previous memo where I wrote about "My Conservatism vs Liberalism."
"Dick,
This is one of your best summaries if not the best.
You hit many nails on the head!!!
J--"
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According to Stratfor, America is already in the next war - a technological war with China. (See abbreviated summation in 5 below.)
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According to Stratfor, America is already in the next war - a technological war with China. (See abbreviated summation in 5 below.)
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1)
Conservative activist Star Parker speaks about urban poverty in campus class
Star Parker, a conservative activist and founder of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, or CURE, visited a campus political science class Wednesday to address issues of urban poverty
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In her speech, Parker expressed concern for the social and economic challenges communities across the country are facing, which she said she believes result from the country’s “collapse of ethics and collapse of marriage.” Parker offered five policy proposals, including ending abortion subsidies, welfare entitlement reform and corporate tax relief.
“I thought the event was fabulous. People were attentive,” Parker said. “The students were genuine, thoughtful, had their own their opinions and allowed me to share mine.”
Campus lecturer Alan Ross, who teaches Political Science 179: Colloquium in Political Science, invites guest speakers to the class every week to discuss a variety of topics. Parker was this week’s guest. Ross emphasized that students should be able to hear from different perspectives to have a “real exchange of ideas.”
Campus sophomore Emily Timm-Wilson said she has taken the class twice now and that it’s one of her favorite classes. She said the topics and speakers are different each week, which keeps her interested in the curriculum.
During the class, Parker said she is part of a new federal task force to help the presidential administration fix urban poverty. She also cited her history of having been welfare-dependent as practical experience in poverty. Her organization, CURE, is focused on addressing “issues of culture, race and poverty from a Judeo-Christian conservative perspective,” according to its website.
After her speech, Parker fielded questions from students on topics ranging from abortion rights to government dependency. Some students in the class used this as an opportunity to express their disagreement with Parker’s views.
“I personally disagree with 99 percent of what she had said to say. She brings a very myopic view,” said campus junior Jonah Berger-Cahn. “(But) I recognize the importance of someone like her coming to our class because she represents the ideology of people in our (federal) administration.”
According to Ross, Parker had requested anonymity prior to the event because she was concerned for her safety after the Milo Yiannopoulos protest that took place on campus Feb. 1. Parker, who brought private security staff to the event, said she hoped that a campus that has historically defended free speech would allow her to speak. After the event, Parker said she “loved” the professor’s concept and would pass it on to her colleagues.
“It’s a disservice for the few, left wing, closed-minded (people) to stop the majority from hearing ideas that might provoke their thought,” Parker said. “Whether they agree or not, it’s much more fulfilling to explore.”
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2)Warren Buffet said last week that bonds have real risk and equities is where to invest. Jamie Dimon said similar comments as did others. Despite the current volatility, stocks are the place to invest. The silly over reaction of investors to Powell’s comments is just one more example of children who are traders not having the experience to be investors. Powell said exactly what everyone expected him to say. The economy is strong and will remain so for awhile, inflation is not yet at their target, they will raise 3 times and see what happens, and wages will start to rise this year. Nothing new. All good for stocks. Three quarter point increases just means the economy is doing very well and corporate profits will be rising nicely and wages will be growing which means increased consumer spend. Ignore the volatility and invest. Buy on the dips.
2)Warren Buffet said last week that bonds have real risk and equities is where to invest. Jamie Dimon said similar comments as did others. Despite the current volatility, stocks are the place to invest. The silly over reaction of investors to Powell’s comments is just one more example of children who are traders not having the experience to be investors. Powell said exactly what everyone expected him to say. The economy is strong and will remain so for awhile, inflation is not yet at their target, they will raise 3 times and see what happens, and wages will start to rise this year. Nothing new. All good for stocks. Three quarter point increases just means the economy is doing very well and corporate profits will be rising nicely and wages will be growing which means increased consumer spend. Ignore the volatility and invest. Buy on the dips.
Numerous pundits harp on the belief the recovery is getting too long and is due for a setback and recession. I think they do not understand what has been going on. The Obama years was not a recovery period. We only entered real recovery since the election, deregulation and tax reform. During Obama we had intense over regulation, Obama and Holder sucked over $215 billion out of the major banks as “fines” which they then used to send money to their favorite friends for unproductive use, there was the make believe “stimulus of $800 billion of shovel ready projects” which went to the teachers unions and other pet groups, Dodd Frank stopped the banks from helping grow the economy, and a generally anti-business attitude. Bank America alone paid $76 billion in “fines”. JP Morgan paid $44 billion because Jamie Dimon challenged Obama. There was no incentive for corporations to spend on capital projects. There was no consumer enthusiasm. While employment grew, that was just the normal stabilization that always occurs after a severe downturn. It was not a recovery in the sense we normally define it. So if you accept my theory that we had eight years of anti-business, socialistic over regulation, and punishing banks, then the start of the recovery was the election, and really it was this January when the tax reform took effect. That is the real turning point. Deregulation is now having real impact and the banks are again allowed to make loans and make profits. In my view we are just beginning of the upward trend which will continue at least for two years and possibly longer. Now capital expenditure is rising materially, consumer confidence is near record high, unemployment is headed toward a record low later this year, and GDP will grow more than most forecast.
The political risks in Europe are increasing. Merkel is now greatly weaker. Italy is about to have an election where the right wing parties will gain enough seats to block whatever they do not like. Fascism is on the rise again due to the immigration issues. The eastern nations are pursuing policies of the right and very different than Merkel and Macron. Macron is now becoming the most powerful voice in the EU. He is in favor of a much stronger centralized control, whole the eastern nations want far less control. Brexit is coming to a head in the next couple of months and there is no way to know where that all goes given that May is very weak now in the UK. Given all of this, the EU will not do as well economically as the US and Asia.
If the Republicans are smart???? and they follow Trump’s lead, and pass good gun regulations, then that issue is taken away from the Dems in November. It will be hard for the Dems to vote against an infrastructure program, but they will try. Trump will then be able to blame them in November if nothing gets passed. The Dems now have no platform other than they resist Trump. That is getting old and ineffective as the economy ramps up. Bashing the tax reform is a loser as paychecks and wages rise and unemployment declines to almost nil. Trump has the upper hand in the immigration debate as his plan was far more generous to Dreamers. It is unclear what the Dems run on.
Just to keep the facts straight, the Australian gun buyback program did not work. It was in 1997. Homicides by automatic weapons had been already falling for 6 years, so claiming the buyback meant less such murders is a false claim. Gun ownership overall rose and now exceeds before the buyback by a factor of 3x. Armed robberies soared after the buyback. They used pistols. Belgium, France and Netherlands have the strictest gun controls of anyone, but they have had more mass shootings than the US by 27%. A Univ of Chicago study for 1977-1999 shows that the most effective way to stop shootings is when someone has a legal concealed carry weapon. It was shown in the study to be the only effective way to stop these shootings. Gun free zones are stupid. Who is there at the door to enforce it-nobody. Stopping the nut cases from having a gun is what needs to be done. Making sure cops can take action to get a person examined by mental health professionals and training those people to spot danger, is what is needed.
I am at a loss to understand sanctuary cities and states. I think the mayor of Oakland should be prosecuted for obstruction and interfering with law enforcement. ICE is arresting criminals. If CA would cooperate and let ICE pick up criminals at jails, then there are only criminals getting arrested and not the current situation where ICE finds others in homes or businesses and has to also arrest them because they are illegal. Sanctuary is letting criminals stay on the street to do more crime, and it is exposing innocent illegals to more chance of arrest as collateral damage. We can’t have mayors and governors choosing what laws they abide by. What if some southern cracker mayor decides to not enforce civil rights laws under the same theory as the mayor of Oakland. The rule of law needs to be followed or we are then just a nation of anarchy. We have a system called democracy. The mayor of Oakland and the state CA are acting in a way that is very dangerous to our way of governing. Maybe that is why CA is now considered the least livable state with 27% of all the homeless in the country, and serious health issues on the streets of San Francisco, San Diego and other places, the highest taxes, highest cost housing because it is too hard to build, and most regulation.
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3)
Graham returns from Israel: We must “stop the Iran-Assad machine”
By Joe Gould
WASHINGTON — War between Israel and Iranian proxy forces is imminent, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators warned Tuesday after a trip to the Middle East last week.
“Any time you leave a meeting where the request is ammunition, ammunition, ammunition, that’s probably not good,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said of a meeting with Israeli officials. Graham is the Senate’s lead appropriator for the U.S. State Department and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Hezbollah — the powerful pro-Iranian Lebanese party — has built a plant in Lebanon to convert rockets into precision-guided munitions, and it has integrated its fighters into civilian infrastructure like apartments, schools and hospitals, Graham asserted.
“When they tell you we want help to deal with the blowback that might come from attacks on civilian targets where Hezbollah has integrated military capability, that was pretty striking,” Graham said of talks with Israeli officials.
Fresh from leading a bipartisan congressional delegation last week to Israel, Jordan, Greece and the U.K., Graham told reporters: “This was the most unnerving trip I’ve had in a while.”
The conflict is escalating, said Sen. Chris Coons, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and a senior appropriator. Coons, D-Del., pointed to the Iranian drone shot down in Israel and the Israeli fighter downed by Syrian air defenses during a retaliatory offensive in Syria.
“The tempo in terms of potential for conflict in Syria has gone up; the technologies Iran is projecting into Syria and southern Lebanon has gone up; Iran’s willingness to be provocative, to push the edges of the envelope, to challenge Israel, has gone up,” said Coons, D-Del.. Graham and Coons saw a link between increased pressure on Israel and the lack of a strategy to push back against Russia and Iran from the Trump administration and America’s European allies.
“We have done a pretty good job of dealing with ISIL,” said Graham, using an acronym for the Islamic State group. “But I don’t see a coherent plan.”
Graham described an array of threats on Israeli’s border with Syria. Near the Golan Heights, there are Syrian villages controlled, respectively, by rebel forces, ISIS fighters and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad who are integrated with Hezbollah.
“Israel’s worst nightmare is to have Assad forces with Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard elements on their border,” Graham said. “It’s in our interest to stop the Iran-Assad machine.”
Coons and Graham called on the administration to present Congress with a plan to counter Iran and Russia. Graham called on the international community, to “step up its game.”
The warning comes days after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was worried about the possibility of a direct confrontation between Israel and various militia groups in Syria approaching its borders.
The United Nations, which operates an 11,000-member peacekeeping force in Lebanon, has maintained forces there since Israel occupied southern Lebanon in 1982. The Jewish state withdrew in 2000.
Israeli officials hailed U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the U.S. embassy there, but they and other allies showed concern over America’s unclear direction in the region.
“The lack of a clear next step or path forward — in Syria with regards to Iran, in Syria with regards to the Turks and the Kurds, in Israel with regard to Israel and Palestinians — was a theme in all our meetings,” Coons said. “It wasn’t uniformly positive or negative. It was: ‘We want to know where you’re going.’ ”
Without a resolution, Iran, through its proxy, Hezbollah, may “entice” Israel into a war in Lebanon, Graham said. The real question is: What’s Trump’s next move?
“What I want to tell the president is the Iranians are testing him,” Graham said. “This would not be happening if there was a coherent policy [toward] Russia and Iran in Syria.”
3a)
It has been seven years since the start of the Syrian war — the harshest conflict in the war-ravaged Middle East. Ceasefires have repeatedly been agreed to — and then promptly ignored.
3a)
Will We Ever Learn the Lessons of the Horrors in Syria?
By Sarah N. Stern
On Monday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the Ghouta region of Syria as “hell on earth.”
Approximately 400,000 people are trapped inside this embattled city — located outside of the Syrian capital of Damascus — that has been pulverized by the Iranian and Russian backed forces of Bashar al-Assad.
In the last week alone, as many as 800 people in Ghouta have been massacred by the Syrian-Russian-Iranian axis.
The faces of the children inside this besieged enclave tell a harrowing story — their eyes gaunt from fear, and their bodies terribly thin from malnourishment. Most of the people are hiding in basements, or the remains of half-shelled-out buildings. Humanitarian organizations have had a difficult time delivering food and medicine there, because their convoys are prevented from coming through.
The violence all started innocently enough — when a young man, buoyed by hopes of the “Arab Spring” in 2010, scribbled a message on a school wall against Syrian dictator Assad. From there, the rapid descent into hell began, which spread throughout Syria — with a current estimate of 500,000 Syrians dead and millions displaced, also representing the biggest refugee crisis since World War II.
But Ghouta, the heart of the anti-Assad rebellion, has been hit the hardest. It was the site of the infamous chemical attack that killed more than 1,000 civilians in August 2013. That attack left many more with horrific injuries, including the loss of limbs.
It was in this city where the resolve of former President Barack Obama and the United States was tested — because Assad used those chemical weapons approximately one year and one day after Obama had said that if he saw chemical weapons being moved around or used, he would have to draw a “red line.”
But when the time came, America failed its test miserably.
When America does not display strength, evil men and nations come crawling out of the woodwork — like the Iranian mullahs, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
After consistent years of brutal fighting, the war in Syria is not over, although the civil war might be extinguishing itself, with Assad left in power thanks to the help of Russia. However, this is not a beginning of the end. But it might be the end of the beginning
We might well be on the precipice of another, greater war — where superpowers are involved with competing interests that might intersect. Turkey, which would like to believe it is a superpower, has unleashed a particular round of fury against the Kurdish enclave in northwestern city of Afrin, Syria.
Muslim Brotherhood supporter Erdogan, who despises the Kurds, has used the chaos in Syria as an excuse to pummel this isolated region. The Kurdish enclave valiantly fought for its independent survival for at least a month, but these Kurds were badly pounded, and had been isolated and cut off from any aid from the United States. In desperation, they sought the help of Damascus in order to survive.
This is Syria today. It is one mass killing field atop of another, and the air space over the country is being used by superpowers and those that aspire to be superpowers to play out their hegemonic dreams (or in Putin’s case, to flex its muscles).
At the same time, Lebanon has become overrun with Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and is now a huge base for the manufacturing of missiles.
On February 10, the Iranian-Syrian-Russian axis sent a drone missile into Israeli airspace in order to test Israel’s resolve. And, thank God, Israel — with its strong military — passed the test masterfully. The response was immediate. It was direct. And it was harsh.
That is the only way to survive in the Middle East.
And that is why it is so important that Israel always maintain its strategic depth and control of the high ground on the Golan Heights.
In 1994, during the heady days of the Oslo Accords, when everyone had stars in their eyes about making peace with terrorists, dictators and despots, I was part of a small band of people who worked very hard to inform the US Congress of a plan on the table to place American troops on the Golan Heights. This was conceived as a way to sweeten the bitter pill for American Jewry and the Israeli public for a withdrawal from the Golan Heights. This withdrawal was to be in exchange for a “peace treaty” signed with then-Syrian President Hafez al-Assad.
My friends and I opposed this plan, and were subject to some stinging criticisms. We knew that Assad was not to be trusted, but we were dubbed “enemies of peace.”
Most of those who condemned us 24 years ago would not want to remember the position they took then.
So the next time that Israel is coaxed to simply trade “land for peace” with current or potential terrorists, despots and dictators, I ask you to please remember the horrors of Ghouta and Afrin.
Sarah N. Stern is founder and president of EMET, an unabashedly pro-Israel and pro-American think tank and policy shop in Washington, DC.
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4)That Trump CPAC Speech
A cynical explanation of this conservative self-baptism would be that he hears the hooves of Robert Mueller’s posse and will need friends to fight the impeachment lynch mob if Lady of the Left Nancy Pelosi is House speaker. That explanation for Mr. Trump’s turn toward conservatism is plausible but not sufficient.
As the basis for his claim, Mr. Trump listed his appointment of conservative judges, his deregulatory initiatives and the tax cut. Nearly all of his Republican primary opponents would have done these things, too. It’s not obvious, though, that the others would have gone so deep. The Trump policies, especially his deregulation, aren’t merely conservative. They are radically conservative.
4)That Trump CPAC Speech
This is conservatism that is radical, private sector and obsessed with creating work.
By Daniel Henninger
Watching President Trump’s speech to the American Conservative Union’s CPAC conference, an MSNBC analyst said it called to mind five things: Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Vladimir Putin and the president of Turkey. A Vox headline about the speech said, “He riles up crowds, but nothing he says actually matters or reflects administration policy.”
I watched the same speech and saw something else—and it mattered, whether one is a Trump supporter or opponent. That Trump speech was an important stop on the admittedly long road to understanding this presidency.
Because CPAC is the annual meeting of conservatism’s hardest core, it would not have been a surprise if Mr. Trump merely delivered 70 minutes of bleeding red meat. But the speech was more than red meat.
Within one minute, Mr. Trump said: “Do you remember I started running and people said: Are you sure he’s a conservative? I think now we’ve proved that I’m a conservative.”
He’s right. There was little reason to believe Donald Trump was a conservative when he belly-slammed into the GOP primary pool. He was an ideology-free zone. What, many wondered, would he turn out to be as president?
At CPAC he made clear he has concluded that his political interests and legacy—and perhaps even his survival—are best served inside the structure of the conservative tent.
As the basis for his claim, Mr. Trump listed his appointment of conservative judges, his deregulatory initiatives and the tax cut. Nearly all of his Republican primary opponents would have done these things, too. It’s not obvious, though, that the others would have gone so deep. The Trump policies, especially his deregulation, aren’t merely conservative. They are radically conservative.
Who among Mr. Trump’s GOP opponents would have canceled and denounced the Paris Climate Agreement or tried to open virtually the entire U.S. coastline to oil and gas drilling? The regulatory rollback, abetted by the Republicans’ use of the Congressional Review Act, was vast and sudden—covering energy, finance, labor law, the environment and education.
In the speech, Mr. Trump said he thought the deregulation had “as big an impact” as the tax cuts. It was in fact the booster rocket beneath the—again radical—40% cut in the corporate tax rate.
At the time, his critics, such as Mrs. Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, said Donald Trump was doing all this to benefit his wealthy corporate friends. It’s now evident how off the mark that is.
Departing from the CPAC text, Mr. Trump said that before he became president, “I was a private-sector guy.” It is important to understand what he means by the “private-sector guy.” It’s not his golfing pals.
Every Republican president from Ronald Reagan onward, and all GOP candidates, has used “the government” as an ideological foil. This president rarely mentions “the government” or the public sector.
For Donald Trump, the federal government seems to exist as a kind of distant abstraction—with the military occupying a separate space of heroes and service.
CPAC-style conservatives actively dislike the administrative state. But what’s driving Washington nuts is that Donald Trump doesn’t seem to care much about them or what they do (and that may include an obliviousness to levels of public spending). His disdain in large part explains the Beltway-wide effort to shut down this presidency by any means possible, including the quixotic 25th Amendment.
So what matters in the private world of Donald Trump? The answer was in the CPAC speech. The “private-sector guy” is about one thing: jobs. Also known as employment and work.
Every president claims to be a jobs president, but after a year it is becoming clear that this may be the only thing Donald Trump thinks about. He may even impose tariffs soon on imported steel, seeing only the protected jobs in front of him and missing the larger loss of jobs in steel-using industries.
Is his elevation of the private sector working? The Federal Reserve’s latest Monetary Policy Report said Friday “the labor market in early 2018 appears to be near or a little beyond full employment.”
Donald Trump’s critics say this isn’t enough, that it doesn’t justify the corrosion of public discourse. It’s a legitimate point. A CPAC audience shouted at pro-immigration remarks by a Cato Institute speaker with an incivility normally seen among the campus left.
Politics will always be the art of the possible, but no one promised it would also be artistic. And perhaps compulsive inartfulness will be Donald Trump’s undoing.
For now, we are discovering what a presidency of radical, private-sector, jobs-obsessed conservatism looks like. For those who want something other than that, the presidential primaries await their alternatives.
4a)Trump vs. Jeff Sessions
If he really wants FBI answers, why not declassify everything?
By The Editorial Board
That’s the pickle Jeff Sessions finds himself in. On Wednesday morning President Trump used Twitter to call his Attorney General “DISGRACEFUL!” for asking the Justice Department’s inspector general to look into possible eavesdropping abuse by the FBI. Mr. Trump went on a similar tear in July, when he accused Mr. Sessions of being “VERY weak” in handling the Hillary Clinton investigations.
Mr. Trump prides himself on his business acumen, but we don’t know a CEO who thinks the way to get the best out of subordinates is to humiliate them in public. Mr. Sessions is Attorney General because Mr. Trump chose him. If Mr. Trump’s purpose is to goad Mr. Sessions into resigning, he ought to know that he’s unlikely to get a replacement through the Senate. That means the department would be run by someone Mr. Trump might like even less, e.g., Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein.
In his tweet the President also derided Inspector General Michael Horowitz as “an Obama guy.” It’s true his appointment dates to 2012, but the IG was also appointed to the federal sentencing commission by George W. Bush. In 2012 Mr. Horowitz released a scathing report on the Obama Justice Department’s handling of “Fast and Furious,” a botched operation that put weapons in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Mr. Trump might also recall that when the FBI said it couldn’t find 50,000 texts between FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, Mr. Horowitz announced that his office had recovered them.
Unlike in July, this time Mr. Sessions responded publicly that Justice had “initiated the appropriate process” to investigate the FBI issues. He added that as long as he is AG, he’d continue to discharge his duties “with integrity and honor” and the department would do its work “in a fair and impartial manner.”
Mr. Trump has a point about investigations dragging on without conclusions. But a big reason is that key government institutions, including the FBI and Justice, have stonewalled efforts to get answers. Yet for some reason he refuses to use his presidential power to declassify the FISA court and FBI documents so the public can judge.
Instead of whining about Mr. Sessions, Mr. Trump could order him to appoint someone at Justice with the sole responsibility of making public the documents that would give the American people the answers they deserve.
4b) The White House Family Business
Jared and Ivanka have to decide if they’ve become political liabilities.
By The Editorial Board
Politics is blood sport, as presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner is learning the hard way. The 80% of Washington that wants Donald Trump out as President is now targeting Mr. Kushner as a means to that end.
Hiring family for high-profile jobs is always high political risk. Proximity to the throne means they may intimidate dissenting views that need to be heard. Their loyalty can be an asset, but they inevitably become high-profile political targets. Above all they are hard to fire even when they become liabilities. Exhibit A is Hillary Clinton, who brought scandals like Travelgate and cattle futures and the debacle of HillaryCare as first lady.
Mr. Kushner is merely an in-law, but he poses some of the same political risks. The latest uproar concerns the loss of his interim “top secret” security clearance on Friday as the FBI continues its clearance investigation. After the fiasco over former White House aide Rob Porter’s clearance, chief of staff John Kelly has put a limit on interim clearances. Mr. Kelly is right not to make an exception for Mr. Kushner, which would have inevitably leaked and looked like family favoritism. This is another example of Mr. Kelly’s value to the President.
Mr. Kushner’s enemies piled on Tuesday with an egregious leak to the Washington Post that foreign countries including China and Mexico have discussed how to exploit Mr. Kushner’s vulnerabilities in negotiations. Imagine that: A foreign country trying to exploit the weaknesses of American counterparts. The leak gave away to the foreign officials who discussed this that the U.S. was spying on them. Let’s hear no more complaints from the media about compromising “sources and methods.”
However outrageous, the leak is proof that the long knives are out for Mr. Kushner, and they’ll keep slashing. Without a top-secret clearance Mr. Kushner will lack crucial information that could be helpful in his role as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians. He also won’t be able to see the President’s daily intelligence briefing. While Mr. Kushner has other policy portfolios, such as prison reform, his value as a formal White House adviser will be diminished.
The larger problem is that—thanks to another leak—we know Mr. Kushner is on special counsel Robert Mueller’s subject list. This includes his personal business dealings. Last year Mr. Kushner offered the House and Senate Intelligence committees an account of what he said were his complete dealings with Russians during the presidential campaign. But only he and his lawyers know if there are other vulnerabilities. If there are, he and President Trump would both better off if Mr. Kushner were out of the White House before they become public.
Giving up their White House positions would be a bitter remedy, but Mr. Kushner and first daughter Ivanka could still offer advice as outsiders. Every President needs loyal counselors detached from the White House hothouse, and George W. Bush sometimes played that role for George H.W. Bush. There are specific and significant diplomatic roles the two could perform, or projects they could lead, such as Ivanka’s admirable performance at the Olympics.
Mr. Trump’s second year could determine his presidential fate as Mr. Mueller’s probe rolls on and midterm elections give Democrats a chance to take the House and impeach him. Mr. Trump needs the discipline that Mr. Kelly has imposed, and the White House announced Wednesday that communications aide Hope Hicks plans to resign after she became a political target.
Mr. Kushner and Ivanka have to decide if they’d serve themselves and the President better by walking away from their formal White House roles.
4c) Career Civil Servants Illegitimately Rule America
Leslie Kux has never been elected or confirmed by the Senate. She’s issued nearly 200 regulations.
By Todd Gaziano and Tommy Berry
Ms. Manor estimates that her business has helped more than 500 people quit smoking, most of them longtime smokers in their 50s or older. Yet the Food and Drug Administration is discouraging more such enterprises. In a regulation issued in 2016 known as the “deeming rule,” the agency ordered that vaping products would be subject to the same regulations developed for the cigarette industry under the Tobacco Control Act of 2009.
The deeming rule has been devastating to businesses like Ms. Manor’s. To give just one example, vape shop owners frequently experiment by mixing new flavors for the liquid “juice.” Now, each separate creation requires its own prohibitively expensive application for FDA approval, which means that vape shops have been forced to stop innovating.
There are many reasons to criticize the FDA’s action, but its most fundamental flaw—and the one that our legal foundation raises in three lawsuits on behalf of Ms. Manor and nine others—is that the rule was finalized by someone without authority to do so. The rule was not issued or signed by either the secretary of health and human services or the FDA commissioner, both Senate-confirmed officials. Instead, it was issued and signed by Leslie Kux, a career bureaucrat at FDA.
This isn’t the first time the FDA bureaucracy has exceeded its authority. HHS officials in prior administrations purported to delegate their rule-making power to the bureaucrats who held the position Ms. Kux now fills—and she has issued nearly 200 rules.
All these rules are invalid. The attempted delegation of rule-making authority to someone not appointed as an “Officer of the United States” violates one of the most important separation-of-powers clauses in the Constitution.
The question of who signs off on such decisions isn’t a mere formality. Suppose a Supreme Court justice said to one of his law clerks, “You know how I want to rule on the cases this term, so I authorize you to write the opinions assigned to me—but issue them in your name so I am not responsible for the final wording.” Justices certainly do ask clerks to help write their opinions. But given that the precise wording of an opinion is crucially important, does anyone think the power to sign and issue them can be delegated to a law clerk?
Political accountability matters; that’s why the Framers included the Appointments Clause in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. According to that design, certain powers can be exercised only by principal officers of the U.S. who were confirmed by the Senate. Thus (with the exception of temporary recess appointees), only Senate-confirmed judges may issue binding judicial opinions, and only Senate-confirmed principal officers in the executive branch may issue regulations that are binding on the public as a matter of law. This constitutional requirement preserves democratic accountability for both judicial decisions and significant executive-branch actions.
The progressive vision has been to insulate “impartial” bureaucrats from supposedly political influences—thereby undermining this core guarantee of democratic accountability. But as a constitutional matter, it is well-settled that career bureaucrats can’t issue regulations. Forty-two years ago, in Buckley v. Valeo , the Supreme Court invalidated the original statute creating the Federal Election Commission. The high court ruled that the commission’s powers were reserved to officers of the U.S., and therefore that it must be reconfigured so that its members would be appointed as the Constitution requires. The rule-making power was among the powers that the court explicitly noted were reserved to officers.
Many agencies still issue rules the constitutional way. Within HHS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, for example, issued more than 100 rules since 2010, and all but 12 (correcting typographical errors in previous rules) were signed by the secretary of health and human services. It isn’t too much to ask that other Senate-confirmed officers take responsibility for regulations issued by their agencies.
All too often, however, cabinet secretaries and agency heads have tried to delegate responsibility to low-ranking staff in ways that are irresponsible and unconstitutional. A career bureaucrat shouldn’t have the power to disrupt thousands of lives like Kimberly’s. The lawsuits filed Jan. 30 in Texas, Minnesota and the District of Columbia are the first step in making that principle a reality.
Mr. Gaziano is director of Pacific Legal Foundation’s Center for the Separation of Powers. Mr. Berry is an attorney and lead strategist for PLF’s Constitutional Rules for Rulemaking Litigation Campaign.
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5) Stratfor
The United States is in fact already in the middle of its next great war — even if it's only just starting to realize it. In the latest National Security Strategy, the White House highlighted China's growing technological prowess as a threat to U.S. economic and military might.
As hard as it may be for Washington to admit, China is catching up in the tech race. The question now is whether tech firms in the United States will be able to keep up with their Chinese counterparts' breakthroughs.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
5) Stratfor
The United States is in fact already in the middle of its next great war — even if it's only just starting to realize it. In the latest National Security Strategy, the White House highlighted China's growing technological prowess as a threat to U.S. economic and military might.
As hard as it may be for Washington to admit, China is catching up in the tech race. The question now is whether tech firms in the United States will be able to keep up with their Chinese counterparts' breakthroughs.
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