"The Spanish Armada, Waterloo, the Battle of Britain and Brexit: Once again 'Little England' boldly defied a European tyranny. ...

"This was a triumph of democracy over bureaucracy, of the average citizen over a new aristocracy, of cherished identity over the left's dreams of a global meta-state.

"For now, economic hysteria reigns, irrational, vindictive and bewildered. But just as things never turn out as well as politicians promise, they rarely turn out as badly as 'experts' warn."

"LONDON -- British voters didn't just shock the world and the financial markets by voting to leave the European Union hours ago: They also ignored President Barack Obama, handed Hillary Clinton a potential economic burden and injected new energy into the populist currents roiling politics on both sides of the Atlantic. ...

"A Brexit represents nothing less than the partial splintering of the world's largest political union and trading bloc -- an $18 trillion economy. Many fear that other European countries will now hold their own exit referendums, leading to a chain reaction that will reverberate across the Atlantic. The Brexit vote could also break apart the UK, scramble transatlantic political unity amid growing tensions with Russia, and complicate U.S. trade ties."

"This episode is a neat little demonstration of just how topsy-turvy the moral universe of the Democratic party has become. What they are actually demanding, in the form of a 'no-buy' list of the sort proposed by Senator Chris Murphy in his filibuster last week (14 hours of theater that had even Philip Glass fans in the Slough of Despond), is the abrogation of American citizens' Fifth Amendment rights in order to then strip them of their Second Amendment rights. Meanwhile, anyone who uses their First Amendment right to oppose this scheme is accused of wanting to sell guns to ISIS (as Murphy and Elizabeth Warren have both said). It would be difficult to think of a better demonstration of Democrats' wholehearted embrace of an ends-justify-the-means philosophy of governing."

"The Obama Administration 'grossly misrepresented' the number of crimes the criminal aliens it released from custody in FY 2014 subsequently committed by nearly tenfold, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) charges.

"According to FAIR, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) records the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FIOA) request on FAIR's behalf reveal that the 30,558 criminal aliens ICE released in FY 2014 committed 13,288 additional crimes. The number of subsequent convictions contained in FIOA documents is far higher than the 1,423 additional offenses ICE reported to the House Judiciary Committee last July.

"The criminal aliens released in FY 2014 who went on to commit those additional crimes had convictions for offenses like homicide, kidnapping, assault, sexual assault, and drunk driving. The new crimes, according to ICE's report to Congress, included vehicular homicide, domestic violence, sexual assault, DUI, burglary and assault.

"'Rather than end dangerous politically-driven policies that have put a total of 85,000 deportable criminal aliens back onto the streets in the last three years, ICE tried to hide them by providing grossly inaccurate information to Congress and the American people,' Dan Stein, the president of FAIR, said in statement."

"Few policy proposals are as routinely irrelevant as so-called common-sense gun-control measures -- and seemingly, the less relevant they are, the more passionately their advocates support them. The three proposals that the Left always calls for -- prohibitions of purchases by people on the watch list; ending the alleged gun-show loophole; universal background checks -- usually have nothing to do with the shootings they are meant to stop. They are a trinity of non sequiturs.

"Consider the Orlando and San Bernardino killers. They weren't on the terrorism watch list when they bought their guns; they didn't go to gun shows to get them; and they all passed background checks. Democrats could have passed their preferred legislation on all these matters long ago, and it wouldn't have discomfited these monsters in the least. ...

"Everyone understands and feels the impulse to do something after the horror of Orlando -- and we should do all we can to crush ISIS and thwart its sick propaganda and recruitment campaigns -- but gun control simply isn't a good tool for fighting terrorism."

"For years now the Obama administration has been regaling us with stories of our great success in 'degrading and destroying' the Islamic State terror group -- but according to CIA Director John Brennan, nothing could be further from the truth.

"Five days after the Orlando terrorist atrocity, Mr. Brennan testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in the most blunt way, describing a failure of the Obama administration that can only be described as monumental. Even as the president was out touting our supposed continuing success against ISIS or ISIL, other names for the Islamic State, Mr. Brennan contradicted him on every point, and in every way.

"This is especially remarkable for an administration that has been clearly mired in Group Think illustrated in part by the fact that rarely, if ever, has a cabinet official personally and directly contradicted not just the narrative of the White House, but the words of the president himself.

"'Our efforts have not reduced the group's terrorism capability and global reach,' said Mr. Brennan, who then went on to warn of more attacks on the scale of Paris and Orlando."

"Tighten your seat belts because the U.S. economy is in for another frightening bumpy ride that Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen calls the 'new normal.'

"That means we're facing a prolonged period of much slower job creation and painfully anemic economic growth in the middle of a deeply divisive presidential election.

"In a downbeat assessment of the economy's prospects, the Fed again postponed raising interest rates in the face of weakening economic data that is teetering on the edge of another recession. ...

"And the Fed doesn't expect the Obama economy to do much better over the next two years."

"In the wake of the worst mass shooting in US history, the search for ISIS's role in the carnage has focused on whether the group directed or merely inspired the attack, but the terror in Orlando shows that we're missing the point.

"The truth is that ISIS is creating a new role for themselves, not as the director who maps out the plans, or even the actors who carry it out, but rather as the producers of terror who ensure that operations are a success by attracting the right cast, providing a rough draft of the script, and ensuring publicity after the fact. ...

"Orlando brings up a new specter of fear for Americans. Instead of trained ISIS operatives slipping into our country to form sleeper cells, we must now confront the reality that 'lone wolf' attackers are far from alone when we consider the world of training and online inspiration at their fingertips.

"ISIS has found a way to bring the fight to us, and it is more crucial than ever that we find a way to effectively counter their online propaganda before they recruit others."

"A future president needs to ask Congress for a declaration of war against all jihadi organizations that threaten to attack the United States, our military, our citizens or our interests. No phony limits, such as just declaring war only on ISIS or al Qaeda (names change). All violent jihadis who target us, now or in the future, are mortal enemies.

"Why formally declare war? It brings focus, unleashes resources, eases our self-defeating rules of engagement, clarifies laws and, critically, changes mind-sets. It lets us cull the political generals and replace them with fighters and gets the lawyers off the battlefield.

"We need to use whatever military tools are required and employ them with resolve and without second-guessing those who fight. The best way to save lives, military and civilian, is to kill those you need to kill as quickly as possible."

Read entire article here:

"ISIS ... has learned the West's true vulnerability. A free society simply can't police everyone at once, and a relentless propaganda campaign aimed at radicals worldwide will yield jihadists who are ready to kill with any and all weapons available. The Paris attacks were conducted in a nation with far tighter gun controls than any state in the United States, and it resulted in more than twice the casualties of Orlando. Europe has suffered more than the U.S. in spite of its restrictive legal regime. The virus is spreading.

"The gun-control debate is nothing more than a destructive distraction. Is there a single viable gun-control proposal of the last decade that would keep a committed jihadist from arming himself? Indeed, the gun-control debate keeps us from focusing on the true danger: a terrorist movement that's learning how to attack a free society. It keeps us from focusing on the terrorists' capabilities and motivations. It keeps us from asking the very hard questions about how to defeat a movement that's based not just in a jihadist army that takes and holds territory but also in an ancient religious idea that has never gone away."