"Are Marines combat troops?

"In Barack Obama's world, the answer is apparently not -- not even when they are on the ground exchanging fire with the enemy. This is the fiction supported by Hillary Clinton and largely unchallenged by any of the three Republican candidates for president.

"A recent headline in the Marine Corps Times summed it up this way: 'Marines in Iraq technically not in combat but still getting some.'

"Welcome to Mr. Obama's hidden war."

"The Obama administration is doing its best to give the nation another mortgage meltdown.

"As Paul Sperry recently noted in The Post, Team Obama has pushed mortgage lenders to offer home loans to folks with shaky credit, setting up conditions for another housing-market collapse.

"Wasn't the last one bad enough? ...

"The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency recently warned that mortgage underwriting standards have slipped and now reflect 'broad trends similar to those experienced from 2005 through 2007, before the most recent financial crisis.'

"When the economy and housing prices turn south again, a lot of these loans will go bad, just as they did last time."

"After a recent surge in threatening behavior by Iran and reports that it may soon be given access to the U.S. financial system, the House Intelligence Committee opened an investigation into whether Obama officials misled Congress about the July 2015 nuclear deal with Iran (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA). The 'historic' deal, they said, would help bring Iran into the 'community of nations' and lead to improved relations between Iran and the United States. ...

"The House Intelligence Committee's investigation will not kill the JCPOA or lead to new sanctions against Iran. Its report might condemn Obama officials for misleading Congress, but these officials are certain to ignore the report. Nevertheless, this is an important investigation: If it exposes the JCPOA as a fraudulent agreement that has only exacerbated Iran's destabilizing behavior, it will pave the way for a Republican president (if one is elected in November) to throw out the JCPOA entirely and begin the process of forging a better agreement with our European allies. The committee's investigation also may give Americans a better understanding of what kind of legacy President Obama really earned from the JCPOA and his nuclear diplomacy with Iran."

"The Veterans Affairs-scandal headlines speak for themselves. The Daily Beast: 'Veteran Burned Himself Alive outside VA Clinic'; azfamily.com: 'Dead veterans canceling their own appointments?'; New York Times: 'Report Finds Sharp Increase in Veterans Denied V.A. Benefits,' 'More than 125,000 U.S. veterans are being denied crucial mental health services,' and 'Rubio, Miller ask committee to back VA accountability bills.'

"Are these headlines from 2014, when the VA scandal broke? The sad answer is no. All these headlines -- and so many more -- are from the past ten days, a fact that also speaks for itself."

"The head of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is linked to a Russian bank involved with an emerging international scandal, according to documents reported on Tuesday.

"Registration forms indicate that the Podesta Group signed up to lobby for the Sberbank of Russia in Washington about a month ago, in early March. The bank has been implicated in a scheme unearthed on Sunday in which leaders worldwide illegally stashed their assets overseas.

"The Podesta Group was founded by John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton's 2016 campaign for president and a chief of staff to former president Bill Clinton. His brother, Anthony Podesta, is listed as a lobbyist for the account on the March filing."

"Two senior intelligence analysts at U.S. Central Command say the military has forced them out of their jobs because of their skeptical reporting on U.S.-backed rebel groups in Syria, three sources with knowledge of their claim told The Daily Beast. It's the first known instance of possible reprisals against CENTCOM personnel after analysts accused their bosses of manipulating intelligence reports about the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in order to paint a rosier picture of progress in the war.

"One of the analysts alleging reprisals is the top analyst in charge of Syria issues at CENTCOM. He and a colleague doubted rebels' capabilities and their commitment to U.S. objectives in the region. The analysts have been effectively sidelined from their positions and will no longer be working at CENTCOM, according to two individuals familiar with the dispute, and who spoke on condition of anonymity."

"Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes he's found the solution to global Islamic terrorism: love and empathy. He has announced that, essentially, all we need to do is hug it out, that perhaps one Giant Hug will overcome the global jihadist network of maniacs who exist only to murder. ...

"To have someone as engaged in the tech and information world as Mr. Zuckerberg propagate the nonsense that all the world needs is a hug, highlights the dramatic importance of rejecting this tripe, showing global leadership the door and elevating those who understand the worldwide threat. You won't be surprised to learn the solution is actually very kind -- introducing Islamists to Allah. As quickly as possible."

"Merrick Garland, President Obama's choice to fill Antonin Scalia's position on the Supreme Court, falsely blamed the YouTube video 'Innocence of Muslims' for the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens during the Benghazi attacks, court transcripts show.

"Judicial Watch flagged Garland's comments, which came during a Jan. 10, 2013 hearing as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the conservative watchdog group for 52 photos of the body of Osama bin Laden. ...

"Garland and the two other judges voted unanimously in favor of the government against Judicial Watch, thus withholding the photos."

"President Obama's weekly radio address on Saturday was his latest attempt to reassure the country that the U.S. is making significant progress in the fight against Islamic terrorism, notwithstanding the Brussels airport attack last week and the Paris massacre in November. Alas, it didn't take long for reality to contradict the soothing rhetoric. The very next day, a Taliban splinter group inspired by Islamic State bombed a crowded park in Lahore, Pakistan, killing more than 70 people, mostly women and children. ...

"The New York Times recently reported that the Pentagon had presented the White House 'with the most detailed set of military options yet for attacking the growing Islamic State threat in Libya,' where U.S. officials believe the group may be setting up a new base. The White House's response? The 'plan is not being actively considered, at least for now,' said the paper, 'while the Obama administration presses ahead with a diplomatic initiative to form a unity government from rival factions inside Libya.'

"Mr. Obama's biggest foreign-policy blunder was drawing a red line on the use of chemical weapons in Syria and then not enforcing it, which ultimately facilitated the spread of ISIS. The administration badly underestimated what would quickly become the world's most ruthless terror group, and now it may be overestimating its ability to deal with Islamic State's homicidal leaders diplomatically."

"Think of ISIS as the Facebook of Islamic extremism. When it started out in 2004, Facebook was just a bunch of nerdy Harvard undergraduates. Today it has more than 1.5 billion users. When ISIS started out in 2006, it was just a bunch of Iraqi jihadists. Today, according to data from the Pew Research Center, ISIS has a minimum of 63 million supporters -- and that is based on opinion polls in just 11 countries.

"Only a very small minority of members of the ISIS network need to carry out acts of violence to kill a very large number of people indeed. Naively, the US government talks about 'countering violent extremism.' But what makes the network so deadly is precisely the non-violent extremism of the majority of its members. Some preach jihad: they are the hubs around which clusters of support form. Some tweet jihad, with each tweet acting as a link to multiple others nodes. Non-violently, the network grows."