"Why is Germany the most anti-American of NATO members?

"Germany started and lost two world wars -- and was defeated due in part to the late entrance of the United States. The unification of Germany brought millions of East Germans into the West, many of them raised under a communist system that blamed the U.S. for the world's ills.

"When Russia will be providing more than half of Germany's natural gas instead of threatening to fire tactical nuclear missiles at Berlin, the U.S. military is no longer deemed so important to German security.

"Add up all these disparate realities and the real crisis of NATO becomes clearer. The alliance's most affluent and dominant European member sets a pernicious example by failing to meet its alliance obligations.

"Germany demands that the United States continue to be the largest funder of NATO and yet has an unfavorable view of America -- and an increasingly favorable view of NATO's supposed common threat, Russia.

"Other fearful European NATO nations are used to being dominated by Germany and either keep quiet or follow its lead.

"This is the NATO that Mr. Trump inherited and that he tried to shake up with his customary art-of-the-deal antics."

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"Former FBI Director James Comey tweeted late Tuesday night that 'all who believe in this country's values must vote for Democrats this fall.'

"Comey blamed the Republicans in Congress for proving 'incapable of fulfilling the Founders' design that 'Ambition must ... counteract ambition.'

"'Policy differences don't matter right now. History has its eyes on us,' Comey added. ...

"Trump fired Comey in May 2017 which caused a series of events that led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to lead the Justice Department's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Since being fired, Comey has compared Trump's leadership to a Mafia boss and called him 'morally unfit' to hold the presidency. Trump responded by calling Comey an 'untruthful slime ball' and the worst FBI leader ever.

"Comey has also been criticized for his actions as FBI director and the decisions in the investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server, with many Democrats -- including Clinton -- blaming him for her election loss. The Justice Department Inspector General found he made serious errors in judgment throughout the probe, including his late-October letter to Congress announcing a re-opening of the investigation."

"The Treasury Department will allow some nonprofit groups to provide less information about donors on their tax forms in a win for conservative organizations engaged in politics.

"Until now, nonprofit groups, including charities and trade associations, had to list contributors who give at least $5,000 on what is known as Schedule B. The IRS received the complete version, and the groups publicly released redacted forms without identifying information about donors. ...

"'Americans shouldn't be required to send the IRS information that it doesn't need to effectively enforce our tax laws, and the IRS simply does not need tax returns with donor names and addresses to do its job in this area,' Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. 'This change will in no way limit transparency. The same information about tax-exempt organizations that was previously available to the public will continue to be available, while private taxpayer information will be better protected.' ...

"'The IRS's decision is a move in the right direction to end activist regulators' culture of intimidation to silence political speech,' said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) 'More and more states were using these documents to chill political discourse, rather than encourage it.'

"In 2016, a federal judge blocked then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris's demand for Americans for Prosperity's donor list, saying she needed it for investigative purposes. In his ruling, the judge pointed out that the state's 'pervasive, recurring pattern' of accidental Schedule B disclosures to the public made it impossible to believe the attorney general would keep Americans for Prosperity's donor list confidential."

"The left wing of the Democratic party believes that history is on its side and that they can sweep away the party's weak-kneed leadership. They point to surveys suggesting that younger people are increasingly interested in socialism as a desirable economic system. A recent Emerson College survey, for instance, found that Americans ages 18 to 34 prefer capitalism to socialism as the better system by only one point: 42 percent for capitalism to 41 percent for socialism. 'The future belongs to us,' bellows Bernie Sanders to his audience.

"But no so fast. Overall, voters prefer capitalism, by 54 percent to 24 percent. Among Americans 35 and older, the difference in support for capitalism over socialism was between 38 and 42 percentage points. And we can't forget the famous adage from French jurist Anselme Batbie (often wrongly attributed to Winston Churchill) about the fickle nature of young political views with the passage of time: 'If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.'"

"FBI agent Peter Strzok was full of indignant outrage Thursday as he testified before Congress, and all sides reacted accordingly. ...

"Strzok and his inamorata, Lisa Page, can insist forever that their bias didn't impact either probe, but their lack of restraint is proof that they'd lost all objectivity.

"And the fact that their colleagues either saw no sign of the romance, or didn't care, speaks poorly of their professionalism, too.

"Democrats took Strzok's claims at face value, literally applauding him at one point. Republicans stuck to their partisan points, too.

"But the basic facts speak for themselves: With his flagrant misconduct, Peter Strzok brought shame to the FBI and the entire Justice Department. He should be ashamed of himself, rather than playing the victim."

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"NATO leaders made an 'unwavering commitment' to shoulder a greater share of the military-preparedness burden Wednesday after President Trump lambasted alliance members generally, and Germany specifically, for failing to pull their weight.

"Following a contentious meeting with Trump, NATO members signed a joint declaration voicing their commitment 'to improving the balance of sharing the costs and responsibilities of alliance membership.'"

"This time, Trump Derangement Syndrome is getting a bad rap. Paranoids have real enemies and leftists whose heads are exploding over the president's nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court have real reasons to be horrified.

"And, no, it's not because of abortion, which is probably the least of their problems right now. It's all the other tentacles of coercive liberalism that Democrats were able to ram down the throats of ordinary Americans for more than half a century thanks to activist courts.

"Their heyday is over -- if Kavanaugh is confirmed and becomes the reliable fifth vote to uphold the original intent of the Constitution. In that case, Dems would be out in the cold and America would be witnessing the advent of a new legal era, though it will take years to be fully realized because of the Supremes' deference to earlier rulings. ...

"The Supreme Court was designed to check the power of the other two branches of government, not assume it.

"Besides, the smearing of Kavanaugh's character and threats of violence probably will convince even more voters that the left isn't ready for prime time."

"Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump's new nominee for the Supreme Court, is a whip-smart legal conservative. As a judge in the highest-profile appeals court in the nation, he has shown an exemplary dedication to the rule of law. He has defended the separation of powers against threats coming from multiple directions. He has repeatedly cautioned his colleagues on the bench not to attempt to play a legislative role. He has also insisted on enforcing constitutional structures of accountability on government agencies. He has vindicated the right to free speech (against certain campaign-finance regulations), to bear arms (against the D.C. government's attempts to implement sweeping bans), and to religious liberty (against a version of the Obama administration's 'contraceptive mandate'). And he has followed Supreme Court precedents even when gently suggesting they should be rethought."

"The victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over long-time Democratic congressman Joe Crowley of New York inspired some hysterical punditry. We were told that the 28,000 people who voted in a district of more than 600,000 had decided the fate of the political universe. Ocasio-Cortez, in this telling, heralds the coming of Democratic-Socialist, multiracial, female-dominated America. The 28-year-old bartender and community activist is the Democrat of the future -- according to no less an authority than the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. And in a polarized media climate, with hyperbolic insinuations of 'civil war' and calls for the harassment of political opponents, one is tempted to believe that romanticism and extremism grow ever stronger.

"I remain skeptical. For one thing, New York politics is sort of the equivalent of the Las Vegas party scene -- what happens there tends to stay there. Crowley was boring and out-of-touch; Ocasio-Cortez is appealing and a tireless campaigner. Her picture of democratic socialism is all rainbows and unicorns, platitudes and aspirations. And the numbers involved in the primary were so small that randomness has to have played some part in her 4,000-vote win. Ocasio-Cortez is neither a threat to America nor to the American right. But she is representative of the transformation of the American left.

"The only civil war happening at the moment is within the Democratic party. The old-guard corporatists are under attack from activists with radical goals and immoderate tempers. You can trace a line from Occupy Wall Street in 2011 through Black Lives Matter in 2013 through Bernie Sanders in 2016 through the Women's March a year later, Tom Steyer's and Maxine Waters's impeachment campaigns, the growing prominence of Democratic Socialists of America, and the movement to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement today."

"The Trump agenda enrages the Left in much the same manner that Obamacare, the Obama tax hikes, Obama's liberal Supreme Court picks, and the Iran nuclear deal goaded the Right.

"Yet the current progressive meltdown is about more than just political differences. The outrage is mostly about power -- or rather, the utter and unexpected loss of it. ...

"Voters in 2016 bristled at redistribution, open borders, bigger government, and higher taxes, but progressives are now promising those voters even more of what they didn't want.

"Furious over the sudden and unexpected loss of power, enraged progressives have so far done almost everything to lose even more of it.

"And that paradox only leads to more furor."

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