"In promoting national vote-by-mail legislation, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her caucus of radical House Democrats are following the advice of Rahm Emanuel, who famously said while Obama chief of staff, 'You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.'

"Pelosi recently announced that she will try to insert the controversial election measure into the next stimulus package, which is supposed to focus on helping our country overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.

"In the midst of this crisis, the American people want our leaders in Washington to combat the coronavirus and plan for an economic recovery. Instead, Democrats plan a crass political move that will not even secure the right of each registered voter to cast his or her vote on Election Day. What it will do is undermine states' ballot security measures -- such as voter ID requirements -- in order to lock in future Democrat election victories regardless if they are free, fair and legitimate."

Read entire article here.

"How will the plague affect this season's campaigns? Let's count the ways.

"Governing itself is an indoor affair and a behind-the-scenes matter, but running for office is a true contact sport, involving flesh pressed and hands shaken, babies adored at close range, people massing in rallies (the bigger, the better), running mates embracing each other in moments of triumph, and young people taking time off from their classes to knock upon strange people's doors.

"These things fade away in the face of the crisis. People stand if they can at a safe 6-foot distance, keep their faces covered, and wipe off the knobs of their doors. Gone are the days when huge crowds all liked Ike, grew giddy when close to magnetic John Kennedy, filled huge stadiums to swoon over Barack Obama, and became so overwrought in 1968 over Robert F. Kennedy that they tried to pull the very shoes off his feet.

"Today, President Trump and presumed nominee former Vice President Joe Biden might not get the chance to rally large audiences at all if conditions don't change by this fall. And suppose things are not back to normal in August? What will the parties do then? Suppose things are back nearly to normal, but not quite enough to justify going ahead with conventions? Will they stage them remotely? Will it all end with both Trump and Biden speaking on screens while delegates watch from their homes?"

"In the end we were unprepared for what has happened, just as we were unprepared for 9/11. Administration after administration, over decades, gave lip-service to the possibility of a pandemic but made no real plans for all of the equipment necessary to be available -- we had no effective early-warning pandemic system, no stockpile of masks, no effective testing, no technology alliance for safety monitoring. Even Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, initially thought this would pass without much effect. In short, we didn't know what to do, and so we had no choice but to shut down society to save lives and to figure it all out. ...

"We all know what needs to be done now: We need to beat the virus and get people back to work. There is widespread consensus that we need to get the number of cases down through our lockdown and, in the interim, build up ubiquitous testing and treatment regimes that allow us to go back with relative safety while we create a vaccine. These are still huge obstacles to reopening that will require government and private-sector cooperation as never before, or many millions will pay the health and economic costs that will continue to rage.

"To get this done, we do need some optimism. We do need to believe we can get it done and that our amazing research scientists are closer every day to finding promising treatments. Yes, it must be tempered by realism and careful decision-making. We also need all of our politicians to stop the blame game and work together; we need our media to take greater responsibility for its actions that too often serve more to divide than to unite us. We need to be united as a country again on a common mission. We need to remember that, against this virus, we are One America."

"U.S. Attorney John Durham's review of the Russia investigation is putting increased scrutiny on former CIA Director John Brennan, searching for any undue influence he may have had during 2017's intelligence community assessment of Russian interference.

"Durham, selected by Attorney General William Barr last year to lead this inquiry, drove to Washington, D.C., in March to ensure the investigation stayed on track during the coronavirus outbreak. The top Connecticut federal prosecutor is looking into highly sensitive issues, including whether Brennan took politicized actions to pressure the rest of the intelligence community to match his conclusions about Russian President Vladimir Putin's motivations, according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal.

"Officials said Durham has been interviewing CIA officials this year, zeroing in on those at the National Intelligence Council, a center within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence which oversaw the collaboration between the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency in putting together the 2017 assessment, and looking at how the work product was finalized."

"The city of San Francisco is forbidding shoppers from carrying reusable bags into grocery stores out of fear that they could spread the coronavirus.

"As part of its shelter-in-place ordinance, the California city barred stores from 'permitting customers to bring their own bags, mugs, or other reusable items from home.' The city noted that transferring the bags back and forth led to unnecessary contact between employees and shoppers.

"This decision leaves shoppers with few options to carry home their goods. The city was the first to ban plastic shopping bags in 2007 to reduce the amount of plastic waste produced by residents."

"To characterize Biden's response to the most serious and immediately pressing issue of our time as a series of featherweight banalities would be an insult to the oeuvre of Rupert Holmes.

"Biden has called for - imagine this! - 'a decisive public-health response.'

"Biden proposes to respond decisively with a combination of platitudes ('restoring trust, credibility, and common purpose'), wishful thinking (magicking a vaccine into existence), and memos ('The Biden Plan calls for issuing guidance to states and localities to ensure first responders and public health officials are prioritized to receive protective personal equipment and launching an education campaign to inform the general public about equipment that should be reserved for professionals').

"How serious is Joe Biden about this kind of thing? Consider his earlier campaign promises: 'I promise you, if I'm elected president, you're going to see the single most important thing that changes America: We're gonna cure cancer.' Primitive peoples believed that the touch of a king could cure them of leprosy and other illnesses.

"Perhaps it is the case that Biden, who plagiarized his way through law school at Syracuse, dabbles brilliantly in oncology."

"The Justice Department's chief watchdog issued an extraordinary warning Tuesday that the FBI is failing to follow its own rules when pursuing surveillance warrants in sensitive intelligence and terrorism cases, confirming that problems first exposed in the Russia collusion probe extend to other cases.

"DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote FBI Director Chris Wray in a management alert memo that a review of more than two dozen Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant cases found agents were not complying with the so-called Woods Procedures designed to protect American civil liberties during such probes.

"Among the problems cited was a failure by agents to substantiate allegations submitted to courts, similar to the missteps the FBI made in failing to ensure allegations in the Steele dossier back in 2016 were verified before securing a FISA warrant targeting the Trump campaign and former adviser Carter Page.

"'As a result of our audit work to date and as described below, we do not have confidence that the FBI has executed its Woods Procedures in compliance with FBI policy,' Horowitz wrote."

Read entire article here.

"The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is waging a ferocious, global propaganda campaign designed to deflect blame for the origin and spread of the COVID-19 outbreak from Wuhan, China. Moreover, Beijing is trying to take advantage of the pandemic to increase its global standing and influence. ...

"If Beijing escapes blame for its failure to curb the coronavirus pandemic, its lies, and its attempts to cover up the pathogen's seriousness -- or, worse yet, if it actually earns global plaudits for its actions -- then no country will feel the need to be honest with the world when another epidemic breaks out, and the same deadly fiasco will repeat itself. Meanwhile, an emboldened CCP will grow only more aggressive and repressive, having learned that it can fool and bully the world into submission. Quite simply, if nation states do not understand that there will be repercussions for such malfeasance, then our globalized world will suffer more coronavirus-style pandemics in the future.

"Beijing freely chose to deny the truth of COVID-19, and its governing malpractice and incompetence helped unleashed a pandemic on the world. For the sake of morality, political governance, and the future, the world must speak truth to power, remember the facts, and condemn the CCP's actions."

"New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called on the federal government to take control of the medical supply market. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker demanded that President Trump take charge and said 'precious months' were wasted waiting for federal action. Some critics are even more direct in demanding a federal takeover, including a national quarantine.

"It is the legal version of panic shopping. Many seem to long for federal takeovers, if not martial law. Yet like all panic shopping, they are buying into far more than they need while not doing as much as they could with what they have. For decades, governors tried to retain principal authority over public emergencies, but they did very little with those powers. While many are doing impressive work now, some governors seem as eager to contain the blame as the coronavirus. Call it political distancing.

"Even if Trump nationalized the crisis by deploying troops, imposing price controls, and forcing production of ventilators, the Constitution has left most police authority and public health safety to the states in our system of federalism. The Framers believed liberties and powers were safest when held closest to citizens in local and state governments. Elected officials at the local and state levels are more readily held accountable than unknown Washington bureaucrats. Of course, with authority comes responsibility, and the latter notion is not always as welcomed as the former.

"Despite all the hyperbole of the last few days, the federal authority of the president to act is much more limited than many appear to believe. Trump cannot, and should not, simply take over the crisis. While he may want to 'open for business' by Easter, he has no clear authority to lift state orders for citizens to stay at home. His greatest authority is supplying assistance in the production and delivery of necessary resources such as ventilators. While he can put conditions on some assistance, he cannot commandeer the authority of governors in their responses to the pandemic. ...

"Our leaders need to play to their strengths to fight the current war. The coronavirus battle must be won in months and not years. The only way to do this is to use existing structures and markets. Vastly different situations are presented in each state, some with relatively small numbers of cases while others like New York face a full fledged pandemic. Indeed, this is precisely where federalism is a strength rather than a weakness.

"Unlike highly centralized European countries, our leaders have the ability to make far more tailored responses on a state by state basis. Each state can tailor its response to its individual threats or needs, and look to the federal government for badly needed resources. When the coronavirus shifts, the federal government will have these fully functioning systems with people who are intimately familiar with the local terrain. Simply put, our balanced form of federalism was made for this pandemic."

Read entire article here.

"As if the world isn't crazy enough, some extremists want more crazy -- namely a falling out between President Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

"The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci is the country's No. 1 immunologist and has advised six presidents in times of trouble.

"So the anti-Trump obsessives are all but praying for the president to can him, and so justify their contempt for the chief executive. Meanwhile, the 'we hate this quarantine' crew imagines life can go back to normal if the science dude just shuts up.

"Fauci sees no split: 'Even though we disagree on some things, [Trump] listens,' he told Science magazine. 'He goes his own way. He has his own style. But on substantive issues, he does listen to what I say.'

"On Tuesday, he said he wishes media bids to sow division 'would stop, because we have a much bigger problem here' Amen."