"Former FBI director James Comey is formally refusing to answer questions submitted to him by a bipartisan group of senators, suggesting he no longer must do so as a private citizen.

"Comey sent an email from his private account last week rebuffing the seven questions that had been submitted to him by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley and the committee's ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein after Comey's final testimony as FBI director to the panel last month. Comey was fired by President Donald Trump shortly after his appearance. ...

"The 'private citizen' excuse was considered unusual by the senators since numerous former government officials have testified before Congress in recent weeks."

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"Call in the cops. Release the tear gas. Make arrests. Convict the arrested. Give the convicts real punishments.

"Repeat those steps, again and again.

"That's how colleges and the civil authorities with jurisdiction over them should react to campus protests that turn violent, or that block free access to public spaces, or that physically interrupt people's work or 'occupy' their workspaces, or that shut down the right of others to speak.

"It is long past time to overrule mob rule, to protect the rights of interested listeners to listen, to insist that words and viewpoints are not violence and should not be met with violence. And it's time to teach spoiled brats that they are the ones abusing an unearned privilage - the privilege of higher education - if they use force or its threat or even their vocal cords to deny free speech to others that the agitators denounce for being 'privileged.'"

"Of all the endless commentary on President Trump's NATO speech, let's at least put to rest the claim that his thundering at delinquent members to pay their share is somehow a threat to the alliance. ...

Of NATO's 28 members, only the United States, Britain, Greece, Estonia and Poland meet the target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense.

Angela Merkel's Germany manages just 1.2 percent. If 'we Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands' (as she said after Trump headed home), she'll have to put a lot more money where her mouth is. ...

As the president noted, if every member had met the target these last eight years, 'We would have had another $199 billion for our collective defense.'"

"According to a recent National Economic Research Associates Economic Consulting study, the Paris Agreement could obliterate $3 trillion of GDP, 6.5 million industrial sector jobs and $7,000 in per capita household income from the American economy by 2040. Meeting the 2025 emissions reduction target alone could subtract $250 billion from our GDP and eliminate 2.7 million jobs. The cement, iron and steel, and petroleum refining industries could see their production cut by 21% 19%, and 11% respectively.

"Not only would these unfair standards reduce American job growth and wages and increase monthly utility costs for hardworking families, they would fundamentally disadvantage the United States in the global economy. The result: our economic output would lag while other countries continued to expand their GDPs.

"The agreement's proponents market it as a panacea for addressing the impacts of climate change, but at its core, it is about increasing government control -- over the economy, the energy sector and nearly every aspect of our daily lives. It represents the exact misguided, top-down, government-knows-best approach that American voters resoundingly rejected in 2016."

"Most Democratic leaders are dynastic and geriatric: Bernie Sanders (75), Hillary Clinton (69), Elizabeth Warren (67), Diane Feinstein (83), Nancy Pelosi (77), Steny Hoyer (77), or Jerry Brown (79). They are hardly spry enough to dance to the party's new 'Pajama Boy' and 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot' music.

"Yet those not past their mid-sixties appear unstable, such as the potty-mouth DNC head Tom Perez and his assistant, the volatile congressman Keith Ellison. Or they still believe it is 2008 and they can rally yet again around 'hope and change' and Vero possumus. That politicos are talking about an amateurish Chelsea Clinton as a serious future candidate reflects the impoverishment of Democratic political talent.

"In such a void, a traditionally progressive media, including the entertainment industry, stepped in and fused with what is left of the Democratic party to form the new opposition to the Republican party and in particular to Donald Trump. The aim now is to alter culture through the courts and pressure groups rather than to make laws."

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

"Leaking classified information has become the new norm, and the leakers are providing a feeding frenzy for the media. However, these leakers are criminals, and their actions have already alienated key allies and caused distress in the Trump White House and in the intelligence agencies. The leakers' goal is to undermine Mr. Trump and his agenda, even at the high price of committing a criminal act. The Department of Justice has already initiated steps to cut off the illicit information channels but it might be difficult to find and punish those responsible.

"These leakers are not heroes but cowards, cowards willing to put our security at risk to score a point for their own agendas on the front page of The New York Times."

"The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community.

"More than 5 percent, or one out of every 20 searches seeking upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSA's so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011, according to one classified internal report reviewed by Circa."

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"While it's impossible to predict any given terror attack, there are two laws of terrorism that work together to guarantee that attacks will occur, and they'll occur with increasing frequency. First, when terrorists are granted safe havens to plan, train, equip, and inspire terror attacks, then they will strike, and they'll keep striking not just until the safe havens are destroyed but also until the cells and affiliates they've established outside their havens are rooted out. Second, when you import immigrants at any real scale from jihadist regions, then you will import the cultural, religious, and political views that incubate jihad. Jihadist ideas flow not from soil but from people, and when you import people you import their ideas. ...

"The Western world knows the price it has to pay to decisively reduce the terror threat. It's no longer willing to pay that price. It's no longer willing even to let their militaries truly do the jobs they volunteered to do. So there will be more Manchesters, more Parises, more Nices, and more Orlandos. But that's what happens when we're not willing to do what it takes. I hope at least our hashtags can make us feel better about our choice."

Read entire article here.

"Fake news crowds out real news. Here is what we do not read much about: North Korea, long appeased, could well send missiles against our allies, perhaps even with nuclear payloads. Afghanistan is at a crux and will either implode or need more American troops. China's role is in the balance, and it may or may not help defang North Korea. The greatest tax-and health-reform packages in years are now in the hands of Congress. Executive orders have revolutionized the domestic energy industry and achieved a stunning and historic reduction in illegal immigration. The stock market is soaring, employment is up, and confidence in the economy has returned. Wall Street seems to dip only on talk of impeaching Donald Trump."