"President-elect Joe Biden's first big test is already clear, a month before he takes office: what to do about to a vast cyberattack almost surely waged by Russia.

"This was no run-of-the-mill hack. A key starting point seems to be 'backdoor' malware that infected a flawed product from software firm SolarWinds used by thousands of customers, including US government agencies, most Fortune 500 companies and the widely used cybersecurity firm FireEye.

"The penetration was global and months-long, with the extent of damage yet unknown; it may not even be over. They hit the Pentagon, US intelligence agencies, nuclear labs, the Commerce, Justice, Treasury and Homeland Security departments and several utilities. FireEye cybersecurity tools were likely stolen, giving the hackers a future leg up. ...

"Fact is, it's time for a new 'reset' with Russia. The entire civilized world needs to treat Vladimir Putin's regime as the rogue nation it is, waging wars to grab land on its periphery, attempting assassinations at home and abroad, cheating on a mass scale wherever it can. Europe can start by shutting down Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, now set to go online within the year.

"The costs may be high, but continuing to pretend Putin has a scrap of honor will cost far more in the end."

"In our constitutional system, Congress is supposed to make the laws. Yet in today's federal government, presidents do most of the lawmaking through regulation. That's why, when the White House changes hands this January, thousands of law-like rules will pivot 180 degrees, affecting every aspect of life. To end these jarring legal shifts and restore crucial safeguards for 'We the People,' Congress must regain its footing within our constitutional system.

"Although the Constitution vests 'all legislative powers' in Congress, that body has 'delegated' much of its lawmaking capacity to an alphabet soup's worth of regulatory agencies under presidential management, collectively known as the 'administrative state.' Think: the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, among countless others. Last year, for example, Congress passed about 100 laws, while agencies issued about 3,000 regulations with the force of law.

"Upon taking office, one of Joe Biden's first actions will be to order a halt to all administrative lawmaking that started under the Trump presidency. Then, the machinery of the administrative state will recalibrate and start producing thousands of new rules that have a different ideological gloss from the ones they replace. This happens every time the White House changes hands in the modern era.

"By now, alas, Congress has given away enough of its policymaking authority such that the legislature rendered itself expendable. When a president wants a law made, he can go it alone."

"It is now obvious that President-elect Joe Biden has no original ideas for national security and simply plans to implement liberal foreign policy orthodoxy and restore the disastrous policies he backed when he was President Barack Obama's vice president.

"This is a huge mistake that will endanger America's security. Obama's foreign policy was an enormous failure that destabilized the world and weakened America's power and influence.

"And because the world has changed and faces new, more dangerous threats today than when Biden was vice president, reverting to the Obama-Biden administration foreign policy now would be even harmful than it was when it was in force from 2009 until President Trump's inauguration in January 2017. ...

"The strongest indication of Biden's 'back to the Obama years' foreign policy is his unremarkable national security team, composed mostly of Obama administration retreads.

"Unlike previous presidents who chose well-known and distinguished men and women to be secretary of state or national security adviser, there will be no luminaries like John Foster Dulles, Colin Powell, Mike Pompeo, or Henry Kissinger in these posts."

"News that former Disney CEO Bob Iger is under consideration to serve as Joe Biden's Chinese ambassador is a concerning indication the president-elect's relationship with Beijing will be even worse than expected.

"Iger, currently the executive chairman of Disney, has collaborated closely with the Chinese government to produce and release films in the Middle Kingdom, a venture that ultimately makes him complicit in the country's mounting human rights abuses.

"Iger is exactly the wrong person to nominate for this position which, by the way, is among the most important jobs in the world right now. He's qualified to negotiate with Beijing, but for all the wrong reasons -- cozy ties, long relationships, and tolerance for the government's terrible conduct."

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"The year 2020 showed just how important governors are -- and the next two years could dramatically reshape who occupies those offices.

"Thirty-eight of 50 states -- accounting for nearly 85 percent of the U.S. population -- will hold gubernatorial elections between 2021 and 2022. A dozen states are likely in play, if not more, raising the potential for one party to expand its influence across the nation. Republicans will have a four-seat advantage in statehouses starting in January, though the majority of Americans will still live under Democratic governors.

"The races could serve as referendums on state leadership during times of crisis as the nation begins to move on from a pandemic that has thrust governors, their leadership styles, their philosophies and their values into the spotlight like never before. Will the decisions governors have made this year, some of which shaped the daily lives of their constituents, become anchors or buoys for their careers?

"The elections will also mark an important checkpoint in President-elect Joe Biden's nascent administration and demonstrate the salience of the coronavirus as a political issue after the deployment of vaccines developed to curb the outbreak."

"The recall campaign targeting Gov. Gavin Newsom is looking less like a long-shot bid, as Californians show signs of increasing dissatisfaction with how the Democrat is handling the coronavirus pandemic.

"'The recall is halfway there,' Orrin Heatlie, who is leading the effort, recently told local TV station KPIX-TV.

"Heatlie, a retired sergeant with the Yolo County Sheriff's Office, said 820,000 people have already 'weighed in' on the issue and predicted at least 820,000 more will do the same in the next couple of months.

"To be sure, those numbers would, if accurate, put the effort daringly close to the 1.5 million valid signatures needed to recall the first-term governor, who has frequently been mentioned as a future presidential candidate. ...

"[A] series of missteps by Newsom also has helped the effort and has him poised to become the state's second Democratic governor in roughly the past 17 years to be recalled.

"In 2003, Gov. Gray Davis was ousted in a recall effort largely fueled by residents upset with skyrocketing energy bills."

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"One of Joe Biden's first tests in office will be the urgent question of giving a big pile of money to rich people.

"Biden wants a little welfare for the affluent in the form of a $10,000 college-loan giveaway accomplished through legislation, while the Democrats' Left wants a lot more welfare for the wealthy in the form of a $50,000 student-loan giveaway accomplished through unilateral executive action.

"And welfare for the wealthy is precisely what is in question here: The majority of student debt is held by relatively high-income people, poor people mostly are not college graduates, and those who attended college but did not graduate hold relatively little college-loan debt, etc. As the New York Times puts it, 'Debt relief overall would disproportionately benefit middle- to upper-class college graduates.' Which ones? 'Especially those who attended elite and expensive institutions, and people with lucrative professional credentials like law and medical degrees.'

"The Democrats have become the party of moneyed urban and suburban professionals, and, on the matter of college loans, progressives are happy to see the rich get richer as Americans of more modest means subsidize relatively high-income Democratic households. Biden's approach is distinguished from the progressives' only by being a little less of the same."

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"WASHINGTON -- As parents remain bitterly divided over the return of in-person classroom instruction, children faced a greater risk of abuse or neglect because their contact with the outside world has been significantly curtailed by school closures and other restrictive measures. Those are the findings of two separate studies published on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The studies -- along with other recent findings about learning outcomes, food insecurity and mental health -- paint a grim picture of childhood development in the midst of a pandemic, leading UNICEF, the United Nations childhood agency, to warn of 'a lost COVID generation' in a recent report.

"Researchers blamed the increased risk of child abuse on factors including 'heightened stress, school closures, loss of income, and social isolation.' They also suggested that 'strengthening families' economic supports' could help ease contributing stressors.

"Congress is currently locked in negotiations to pass a new coronavirus relief package. The White House stepped in earlier this week, endorsing $600 stimulus checks over new unemployment benefits. Stimulus checks, of course, cannot alone compensate for the social and familial disruptions caused by the coronavirus, which has also devastated the mental health of adults, leading millions to experience anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. Drug and alcohol use have also increased.

"Sadly, children appear to be bearing the brunt of those adverse adult outcomes."

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"The mainstream media appears to finally be taking Hunter Biden seriously, at least now that his father has already won the presidential election.

"In the final weeks of the campaign, there was an unprecedented media blackout of the explosive reporting from the New York Post that shed light on Hunter Biden's questionable business dealings overseas. On Wednesday, the Biden-Harris transition announced that his 'tax affairs' were being investigated.

"'I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs,' Hunter Biden said in a statement. 'I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.'

"A well-placed government source told Fox News that Hunter Biden is a subject/target of a grand jury investigation. According to the source, a 'target' means that there is a 'high probability that person committed a crime,' while a 'subject' is someone you 'don't know for sure' has committed a crime."

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"With nearly 3,000 people a day dying of COVID-19, our country faces a renewed, full-blown medical emergency. And yet, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has fallen behind the United Kingdom in approving distribution of life-saving vaccines developed here in the United States. Every day that the FDA delays the obvious is a day that thousands of lives may be lost. This delay is inconceivable and, to the extent it may be due to political or public relations concerns, it is unconscionable."

Read entire article here.