"So, now we know.

"We know that the Texas church shooter should not have been able to own or obtain a gun under federal law. He had a long history of mental illness and criminal behavior: He escaped from a mental institution in 2012, threatened his superior officers and attempted to smuggle weapons onto a military base to carry out those threats, cracked the skull of his infant stepson, beat his wife, abused a dog. He was convicted of domestic violence and did twelve months in the brig and was busted down in rank to E-1. The Air Force failed to inform the FBI, and so the shooter successfully bought four weapons in four years.

"This isn't unique. The racist Charleston church-massacre perpetrator obtained his gun despite pending felony charges; the FBI screwed up. The Orlando nightclub shooter had been investigated twice by the FBI, but they didn't charge him with a crime. The Sandy Hook shooter obtained his weapons illegally. The FBI simply missed the San Bernardino terrorists, despite years of open talk about carrying out a terror attack.

"And yet the Left continues to maintain that government action should be the chief methodology for stopping mass shootings. In particular, it insists that we pass new gun-control laws. There has been no significant call to make government agencies more efficient or staff them more appropriately; in fact, the Left has repeatedly shied away from blaming the government generally. Instead, we're told that a few more words on a few more pieces of paper should ensure that babies aren't shot in church pews."

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"Trump may have received setbacks by proxy at the ballot boxes in New Jersey and Virginia, but in the realm of foreign policy he is achieving signal success. Who knew this would be the area of his greatest accomplishments, the area where he appeared to have no prior experience whatsoever? ...

"On the foreign front ... Trump is succeeding as no American president has in years. By taking the gloves off our troops, he has given ISIS the boot (at least in their quondam caliphate) and helped put in place conditions that are causing the current shakeup in Saudi Arabia that most see as salutary. This will enable the Saudis to modernize and confront Islamo-imperialist Iran before the mullahs run rampant over the entire Middle East -- something any decent person should applaud, at least if he or she isn't part of the former Obama administration.

"In the next day or so Trump will facing his biggest foreign test yet... no, not Putin, though he is apparently on the schedule... Xi Jinping. China is obviously our primary adversary with Russia not much more than a sideshow, despite what Robert Mueller or Fusion GPS might tell us. The battle for the 21st century will be between China and the U.S., possibly with India, not Russia, as a distant third."

"The Air Force is investigating why it didn't send Devin Kelley's court-martial and conviction for domestic violence to the FBI database used to approve gun buyers.

"If the database had included information about Kelley's criminal record, the man responsible for gunning down 26 people in a Texas church would have not been allowed to purchase a gun from a store.

"'Federal law prohibited him from buying or possessing firearms after this conviction,' Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokeswoman, said in a statement. The Air Force has asked the Defense Department's inspector general to investigate the lapse."

"Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is defending the recently released GOP tax-reform bill, saying in an interview on Sunday that he acted as both a deficit hawk and a pro-growth advocate in drafting the plan. ...

"However, debt watchdogs are not happy with the proposal, which could add up to $1.5 trillion in debt over a decade.

"Various key Senate Republicans, including Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Mike Lee (Utah) have already raised concerns about various proposals in the tax measure, setting the stage for a showdown in the upper chamber."

"The [Clinton] campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearinghouse. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign. But the limits are much higher for contributions to state parties and a party's national committee.

"Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund -- that figure represented $10,000 to each of the 32 states -- parties who were part of the Victory Fund agreement -- 320,000 -- and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.

"'Wait,' I said. 'That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You're telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?' ...

"When I got back from a vacation in Martha's Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.

"The agreement -- signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias -- specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

"I had been wondering why it was that I couldn't write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer."

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"Senate Republicans this week successfully accelerated the pace of confirming President Trump's judicial nominees, and in doing so won at least a temporary concession from Democrats who have suddenly agreed to stop stalling these confirmation votes.

"The breakthrough came in a week in which Republicans were pushing to confirm four judicial nominees, and threatened to keep the Senate in over the weekend to get that done, if necessary. Under the current rules, nominees get 30 hours of debate, and to slow down the works, Democrats have been insisting on the use of all 30 hours.

"Republicans also threatened to change the rule unilaterally to reduce the number of hours available for debate, unless Democrats agreed to speed things up. But one key Democrat indicated it was the threat of weekend work that made them agree to shorten the debate time and allow faster votes on President Trump's judges."

"With the hyper politicization of nearly every aspect of our lives, it's no surprise that a majority of Americans say it's taking a toll on not only the free exchange of ideas in the country but also in their own lives.

"According to Cato's 2017 Free Speech and Tolerance Survey, a national poll of 2,300 adults in the U.S. found 71 percent of Americans are concerned that political correctness has silenced debate in the country, while 58 percent said the political milieu has made them hide their own political beliefs.

"There is a significant difference between the percentage of Democrats who believe they must self-censor versus Republicans who felt this way. Fifty-three percent of Americans on the left said they keep some of their political beliefs to themselves, while 73 percent of those on the right hide some of theirs. As for independents, 58 percent said they self-censor."

"For those hoping that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation will take down President Trump, Monday brought reason to ... keep on hoping. ...

"Democrats no doubt will play politics and start ramping up the impeachment talk again. But so far, there's a lot less here than meets the eye."

"Despite massive hurricanes and Congress' failure to pass free-market healthcare reforms, the economy grew at an annual rate of 3 percent in the third quarter of 2017, exceeding even the expectations of President Trump. ...

"The stock market's gains since Election Day should be seen as anticipation of the economically friendly actions Trump promised. Even the GDP figures reflect hope for the near future: companies are building their inventories, presumably in expectation of increased demand.

"That is, the positive effects of Trump's economic reforms are already, to some extent, priced into the market and into GDP. So, Trump needs to continue his deregulation, and Congress and the White House simply cannot afford to fail on the other big pillar of Trump's economic plan: tax reform. ...

"If tax reform efforts fail, the economic growth caused by its anticipation won't just be nullified, it'll be reversed. The Trump administration's deregulations should be applauded, but in terms of finalizing economic growth, we're only halfway there. The economy is livin' on a prayer, a prayer that Congress needs to answer with tax reform, and soon."

"Don't expect an end to the conspiracy theories about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy -- even after the vast network of JFK-obsessed researchers pore over the final trove of government documents.

"That's because the thousands of files made public by the National Archives late Thursday -- and others that President Donald Trump announced will undergo an additional 180-day review -- are still vastly incomplete, according to former government officials and leading assassination scholars, including those who believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and the many more who don't.

"They insist that much of what the government knew or suspected about people who may have had knowledge of Kennedy's murder, or who had a motive to take part in a conspiracy or cover-up, remains hidden from the public or was destroyed.

"The Secret Service, for example, has acknowledged it destroyed some of its records about the events in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Army and Navy intelligence files on key individuals have never been made available, and in some cases were shielded from a trio of government probes into Kennedy's killing in the 1960s and 1970s.

"Also missing, they say, is part of a CIA report on Oswald, an ex-Marine who defected to the Soviet Union before returning to the United States. And much mystery remains about all the files maintained by the late James Jesus Angleton, the top CIA counterintelligence official who took over the agency's probe of the assassination."

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