"As of this moment, a fragile truce holds in southern Israel. After Hamas volleyed 600 missiles at Israeli civilian targets on Saturday and Sunday, prompting Israel to attack hundreds of targets in Gaza, the air-raid sirens have fallen silent, for now.

"But over the weekend, when the rockets fell, we saw all the old arguments against Israel's acts of self-defense crop up. The air raids were 'disproportionate,' we were told. There were arguments over individual civilian casualties, as if it would somehow discredit Israel if its precision strikes killed more than a handful of noncombatants. Yes, there were rote condemnations of Hamas's efforts to kill as many civilians as it could, but once again all too many voices on the left rose at once, demanding that the nation under attack -- the nation defending its schools, hospitals, and homes from an indiscriminate rocket barrage -- exercise restraint.

"It's important, however, to be very clear about Israel's legal obligations. When it comes to Hamas, 'restraint' is Israel's choice -- one it may make for tactical and strategic reasons of its own. The actual law of war would allow Israel to invade Gaza, utterly destroy Hamas, and occupy Gaza City until Israel's safety is ensured, even if it burned in the fight."

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"I understand that Nadler is upset about the refusal of the A.G. to participate in some kind of show trial he was arranging after 5 hours of Barr's testimony before the Senate, but to the extent anyone is acting like a dictator here it's unfortunately Nadler. He has lost all perspective.

"Nancy Pelosi then piled on as well calling the Attorney General a criminal. You may or may not like Barr's demeanor, answers or his summary of the Mueller report, but he is no criminal nor does he deserve this kind of unrestrained disrespect. It's really hard to understand why Nadler or Pelosi believe this kind of personal vitriol will be rewarded at the ballot box. The evidence is that similar behavior during the Senate hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh may have cost Democrats several U.S. Senate seats. For presidential candidates wooing Iowa voters, over the top words and behavior at least makes some political sense. But Nadler and Pelosi should know better. ...

"Legislative oversight is not a specifically enumerated power in the Constitution -- it's a limited power implied from the 'necessary and proper' clause and subject to privileges, separation of powers, and the need for a legitimate legislative purpose. It's not an open-ended power but bounded by the checks and balances of our constitution."

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"We have to stop using the criminal justice process as a political weapon."

"By all appearances, they are mortal enemies. President Donald Trump has been at war with Democratic leaders in Congress for months, as the two sides trade subpoenas, lawsuits and accusations of bad faith.

"But on Tuesday, Trump, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer did something few people expected: They got along -- or at least pretended to.

"After a 90-minute Oval Office meeting to discuss a potential infrastructure bill, both sides gushed about what may have been their first point of agreement this year, on a plan to spend $2 trillion to repair crumbling roads and bridges. Never mind that they left unresolved how to foot the gigantic bill. ...

"There's at least one explanation: Both Trump and Democrats are eager for a legislative win -- or short of that, the appearance of genuine legislative effort -- before the 2020 elections. Trump is about to embark on a tough reelection campaign with key promises, including a grand infrastructure plan, still unmet. Democrats are eager to pivot from the subject of Russia to more tangible issues like the economy, and to provide swing-district moderates with talking points about bipartisan action."

"The Green New Deal (GND) is a set of policy proposals, some more concrete than others, with the central advertised goal of ameliorating a purported climate crisis by implementing policies that would reduce US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to zero, or to 'net zero,' by 2050 in some formulations. In addition, GND incorporates other important social-policy goals as a means of forging a majority political coalition in support.

"The GND's central premise is that such policies -- either despite or by reducing sharply the economic value of some substantial part of the US resource base and the energy- producing and energy-consuming capital stock -- would increase the size of the economy in real terms, increase employment, improve environmental quality, and improve distributional equity. That is a 'broken windows' argument: The destruction of resources increases aggregate wealth. It is not to be taken seriously.

"Moreover, notwithstanding the assertions from GND proponents that it is an essential policy to confront purportedly adverse climate phenomena, the future temperature impacts of the zero-emissions objective would be barely distinguishable from zero: 0.173 C by 2100, under the maximum Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change parameter (equilibrium climate sensitivity) about the effects of reduced GHG emissions. Under an assumption consistent with the findings reported in the recent peer-reviewed literature, the effect would be 0.083 C by 2100, a policy impact not measurable against normal variation in temperatures. This conclusion is not controversial and suggests strongly that the GND's real goal is wealth redistribution to favored political interests under the GND social-policy agenda and a dramatic increase in government control of resource allocation more generally."

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"The Democrats' talk of impeachment is partly about 2020, but it's mainly about 2016, and their adolescent psychic need to believe that the presidential election that brought Donald Trump to the White House was illegitimate rather than an opportunity they simply blew. The theory that the election was thrown by Russian trolls posting dank memes on Twitter is hard to take seriously. If we had a list of every voter whose mind was changed in 2016 by an anonymous social-media account with a Cyrillic bio, then disenfranchising those voters would be a good start on improving things for 2020. Alas and alack, we don't do that sort of thing. But the argument that bot-executed shenanigans nullified democracy in 2016 amounts to the Democrats protesting: 'These trolls robbed us of the support of our natural base: morons!'

"There's no quality control in social media -- and less quality control in ordinary news media than there used to be. Lies, distortions, exaggerations, and pure inventions are going to be out there in the intellectual marketplace, whether they originate in Moscow or in Brooklyn. That's a real problem, but it doesn't invalidate the outcome of the 2016 election.

"There are many reasons to oppose an impeachment at this time: One is that no one has made a very persuasive case for one, all of the Democrats' arguments up to this point having been transparently pretextual. Another is that the Republican majority in the Senate all but ensures that the process would be purely symbolic, an exercise in chaos for pleasure's sake. A third is that it normalizes the invocation of a procedure that should be reserved for extraordinary circumstances in the service of ordinary short-term partisan interests. For comparison, consider that there was no serious impeachment talk when Barack Obama authorized the assassination of U.S. citizens without so much as a by-your-leave from Congress -- or when he took executive actions that he himself had described as unconstitutional only months before. That suggests a pretty high standard -- and if 'I think that guy is a fink!' ends up being a common rationale for impeachment, then you'd better make your peace with anarchy, because Washington is going to be a ghost town.

"But the most important reason for forbearance here is that a political judgment already has been rendered on Donald Trump's character -- and, if you don't like how that came out, there's another chance right around the corner."

"Text messages between former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page indicate they discussed using briefings to the Trump team after the 2016 election to identify people they could 'develop for potential relationships,' track lines of questioning and 'assess' changes in 'demeanor' -- language one GOP lawmaker called 'more evidence' of irregular conduct in the original Russia probe.

"Fox News has learned the texts, initially released in 2018 by a Senate committee, are under renewed scrutiny, with GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley and Homeland Security Committee chair Ron Johnson sending a letter Thursday night to Attorney General Bill Barr pushing for more information on the matter.

"'Any improper FBI surveillance activities that were conducted before or after the 2016 election must be brought to light and properly addressed,' the senators wrote.

"President Trump, speaking to Fox News' 'Hannity' Thursday night, responded to this report by unloading on Strzok and Page.

"'They were trying to infiltrate the administration,' Trump told Sean Hannity. 'Really, it's a coup. It's spying. It's hard to believe in this country we would have had that.' Trump called the news 'very disconcerting,' and emphasized that the Justice Department's watchdog previously faulted Strzok's communications with Page."

Read entire article here.

"SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook said on Wednesday that it expected to be fined up to $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission for privacy violations. The penalty would be a record by the agency against a technology company and a sign that the United States was willing to punish big tech companies.

The social network disclosed the amount in its quarterly financial results, saying it estimated a one-time charge of $3 billion to $5 billion in connection with an 'ongoing inquiry' by the F.T.C. Facebook added that 'the matter remains unresolved, and there can be no assurance as to the timing or the terms of any final outcome.'

Facebook has been in negotiations with the regulator for months over a financial penalty for claims that the company violated a 2011 privacy consent decree. That year, the social network promised a series of measures to protect its users' privacy after an investigation found that its handling of data had harmed consumers.

The F.T.C. opened a new investigation last year after Facebook came under fire again. This time, the company was accused of not protecting its users' data from being harvested without their consent by Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm that was building voter profiles for the Trump campaign. Facebook also suffered a data breach that exposed the personal information of nearly 50 million users."

"President Donald Trump opened a new flank in his battle against illegal immigration on Monday when he ordered his administration to crack down on 'visa overstays' -- foreigners who legally enter the country but remain in the U.S. after their visas expire.

"The president signed a memorandum ordering the secretary of state and the secretary of homeland security to submit plans within four months to crack down on overstays, such as punishing countries whose citizens have high rates of overstays and requiring foreign travelers to post 'admission bonds' that would be repaid once they leave the country.

"The order is the latest example of Trump's renewed push on immigration, following a shakeup of the Department of Homeland Security and his increasing frustration with the rising number of Central American migrants entering the country.

"Members of both parties have long complained that overstays are just as problematic as undocumented immigrants who cross the southern border. More than 1.2 million foreigners overstayed their visas from 2016 to 2017, according to the most recent Homeland Security data."

"The credibility of the Democratic Party is now at issue.

"If Mueller could not find collusion, what reason is there to believe Rep. Jerry Nadler's judiciary committee will find it, and then convince the country that they have discovered what ex-FBI Director Mueller could not.

"With conspiracy and collusion off the table, and Mueller saying the case for obstruction is unproven, the renewed attack on Trump takes on the aspect of a naked and desperate 'deep state'-media coup against a president they fear they cannot defeat at the ballot box."