"After years of mocking Republicans' election security concerns, denying the very existence of voter fraud and fighting voter ID laws, Democrats have suddenly found religion on the issue of election security.

"Following frightening demonstrations of how to breach voting machines at a recent Las Vegas hacker conference, Democratic lawmakers are pointing the finger at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., accusing him of blocking so-called 'election security' measures passed by Democrats in the House.

"There's one problem: it's all just a pretext. If their solutions are any indication, the Democrats don't actually care about election security. What they care about is securing power.

"Like their solutions to climate change, the Democratic solutions to problems with election security are not serious. The supposed solutions are just another way to justify an unprecedented consolidation of power in a federal government Democrats hope to control."

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"Sen. Elizabeth Warren's strategy to curb gun violence is a jumbled patchwork of nonstarter policy proposals and red meat for the Democratic base, in case you were wondering how seriously she takes the issue.

"The Massachusetts senator's campaign team unveiled her plan this weekend in a blog post titled, 'Protecting Our Communities from Gun Violence.' ...

"The post lists three specific courses of action the senator plans to take in order to hinder mass shootings. Warren says she will issue executive orders, eliminate the filibuster, and send Congress a bill loaded with strict gun control initiatives. The senator's executive orders would require background checks for all firearm purchases, even those between nonfederally licensed, private individuals. Warren also says she will issue executive orders requiring all sellers to report multiple purchases to the same individual and that all sales be conducted with persons who are 21 years of age or older."

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"Move over, Lee Harvey Oswald.

"Jeffrey Epstein's supposed jail-cell suicide looks so fishy that the conspiracy theories could eclipse JFK and the grassy knoll in the public imagination.

"Coming 24 hours after court documents implicated big names in his kiddie-sex ring, it's all too neat.

"Not since Jack Ruby shot Oswald has there been so much skepticism about a death in custody.

"I subscribe to the cock-up theory of life: 'Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice.'

"But whoever authorized the alleged pedophile's removal from suicide watch deserves to be sacked."

"School districts across the country are increasingly becoming a major target of malicious cyberattacks, leaving both the federal government and state governments scrambling to find ways to fight back.

"Recent cyberattacks on school districts in Louisiana, Virginia, and Oklahoma have highlighted the threat. In Louisiana, Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) declared a statewide emergency last month in response to ransomware attacks on three school districts, and authorized state resources and cyber assistance to help the districts. ...

"While school districts may not seem to be the obvious target for hackers in comparison to governments or essential services, Doug Levin, the founder and president of EdTech Strategies, a consulting firm, told The Hill that they are easy targets due to outdated systems and the fact that they handle large amounts of money.

"'They are a soft target, for those that are doing not-very-sophisticated attacks and they are looking to ransom people and steal data, they are just scanning the internet for easy targets and outdated systems,' Levin said.

"'They manage a lot of money, facilities, buses, food service, providing some degree of health care, providing special education services, telecommunications systems,' he added. 'Schools are major expenditures.'"

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"Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has proven himself a master of both the Senate and the judicial branch. ...

"Those on the left are hoping to use McConnell as a boogeyman for everything they hate, because he has so deftly outmaneuvered them in the Senate.

"In fact, a large part of the success of President Trump comes from his ability to work with McConnell to get big things done.

"Under McConnell's leadership the Senate has confirmed two Supreme Court justices, 43 Circuit Court of Appeals judges, and 99 U.S. District Court judges.

"There are only 179 federal appeals court judges, so in less than three years the Trump-McConnell team has nominated and won confirmation for almost one-quarter of them. Trump and McConnell have shepherded in one-seventh of the district court judges. ...

"If President Trump is reelected (and McConnell gets reelected in Kentucky) at this pace by the end of Trump's second term they will have appointed and confirmed over half of all our federal judges.

"When you think about the lifetime nature of these appointments, you can see why McConnell can legitimately be considered a master of the judiciary as well as the Senate."

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"Here is the fundamental, quite real, problem that gun-control advocates face when they try to persuade the gun-owning public to support additional restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms: The burden of every single currently popular large-scale gun-control proposal will fall almost exclusively on law-abiding gun owners.

"Even in the case of our dreadful epidemic of mass shootings, the available evidence indicates that so-called 'common sense' gun-control proposals popular in the Democratic party (and the New York Post) are ineffective at stopping these most committed of killers. As my colleague Robert VerBruggen pointed out yesterday, a large-scale RAND Corporation review 'uncovered "no qualifying studies showing that any of the 13 policies we investigated decreased mass shootings."'

"It's one thing to ask millions of Americans to sacrifice their security for the sake of the larger common good. It's quite another to ask for that same sacrifice in the absence of evidence that the policy will accomplish what it is designed to accomplish."

"The very idea of democracy depends on the ability of those reading this to draw this important distinction. Political speech and opinion are not violence or threats. As convenient as it probably seems to blame constitutionally protected political debate for the heinous actions of a few individuals, such scapegoating will be the ruin of this nation and of the people's right and ability to govern themselves. When ordinary people of good will discuss politics, no matter how fringe their ideas are, the only people who are responsible for shootings are the shooters themselves and those who directly incite or aid them in their crimes."

"The Trump administration just announced it is taking steps to introduce a 'safe importation action' pilot program authorizing states, wholesalers, and pharmacists to import drugs from Canada under one scenario and from other countries under another scenario. There is no specific timeline for implementation of a plan yet. According to the Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, the goal of the initiative is to 'lower prices and reduce out of pocket costs for American patients.'

"It won't work. Instead, importing prescription drugs would put our lives in danger.

"Almost every Food and Drug Administration commissioner in recent history has argued as much. In 2017, a group of them wrote to Congress, stating, 'Drugs purchased from foreign countries may be substandard, unsafe, adulterated, or fake' and are 'likely to harm patients and consumers.'

"Even drugs from developed countries like Canada can pose serious risks. In 2005, an investigation conducted by the FDA found that 85% of drugs from online pharmacies labeled as 'Canadian' actually came from 27 different countries. Many of them proved to be counterfeit. Canadadrugs.com, the nation's largest internet pharmacy, was fined $34 million by U.S. prosecutors in 2018 for selling two cancer drugs that contained no active drug ingredients."

Read entire article here.

"The Justice Department's chief watchdog is preparing a damning report on James Comey's conduct in his final days as FBI director that likely will conclude he leaked classified information and showed a lack of candor after his own agency began looking into his feud with President Trump over the Russia probe.

"Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz's team referred Comey for possible prosecution under the classified information protection laws, but Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors working for Attorney General William Barr reportedly have decided to decline prosecution -- a decision that's likely to upset Comey's conservative critics.

"Prosecutors found the IG's findings compelling but decided not to bring charges because they did not believe they had enough evidence of Comey's intent to violate the law, according to multiple sources."

Read entire article here.

"All night long, almost every candidate on stage aimed their attacks at Joe Biden. Early on, Kamala Harris referred to him as 'Senator Biden,' a perhaps not-so-accidental demotion. Julian Castro, Bill de Blasio, and Cory Booker all went after him in rapid succession. Even Kirsten Gillibrand claimed that Biden opposed women working outside the home, a particularly implausible accusation.

"Here's the good news for Biden: If tonight doesn't do any damage to his numbers, he will probably cruise to the nomination. This is life as the frontrunner -- you get attacked by everybody, all the time, on any issue that they think will get them some traction. Biden got socked in the jaw in the first debate, lost some ground in the subsequent polls, but gradually floated back to a solid lead. With the vast majority of Democrats living today having voted for him twice as vice president, and generally liking him and not all that bothered by long-ago not-so-progressive positions, all Biden has to do is not fumble.

"The weirdest aspect of the attacks on Biden was the suggestion that the Obama presidency was some sort of right-wing nightmare, full of draconian deportation enforcement, Americans desperately yearning for health care and having no way to get it, a Department of Justice that shrugged at police abuses . . . almost everyone assumes that Barack Obama will remain on the sidelines during this primary process. But if Biden is the lone defender of the Obama legacy, and every other upstart is painting the previous presidency as a failure, maybe Obama will come out and formally endorse his old wingman."