The Front Page Cover
~ Featuring ~
Why Is Kim Jong Un Our Problem?
by Patrick Buchanan
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. Top Headlines
Senate is expected to vote to end Supreme Court filibuster Thursday. (The Wall Street Journal)
House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes recuses himself from Russia probe. (The Washington Post)
There was more than one unmasker, and Susan Rice didn't unmask Mike Flynn. (Washington Examiner)
On Susan Rice, the issue is abuse of power, not criminality. (National Review)
GOP health care talks stall. (The Hill)
Repeal of liar-nObamaCare could lead to $1.07 trillion in net deficit reduction. (The Washington Free Beacon)
Seventh Circuit rules that civil rights laws protect LGBT employees from workplace bias. (USA Today)
LGBTQ advocates demand that Donald Trump compiles a registry of all gay Americans. (The Federalist)
Trump removes Bannon from National Security Council. (CNS News)
IRS seized millions from legal businesses because of how they made deposits (Hot Air)
Policy: Can Trump clean up liar-nObama's mess in Syria? (Investor's Business Daily)
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Gorsuch confirmed to Supreme Court
by Judson Berger
{foxnews.com} ~ The Senate confirmed Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court on Friday, filling the critical ninth seat that has been vacant for over a year and capping a tumultuous debate that saw Republicans overhaul the way the chamber operates... in order to overcome what they described as an unprecedented Democratic filibuster. The 54-45 vote, in which three Democrats crossed party lines to support the appeals court justice, is expected to restore a 5-4 conservative tilt on the bench. Once sworn in, Gorsuch will join the court and begin to hear cases, in the seat once held by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016. “He’s going to make the American people proud,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said. Republicans lauded Gorsuch as an eminently qualified jurist and a fitting successor to Scalia...
Left Will Claim It Was To Prove Trump’s
Not liar-nObama, Not Putin’s Boy...
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ President Trump and we Americans in general had better hope that the diplomatically dicey cruise missile strikes against Syria he ordered are supported by evidence from the upcoming multinational UN investigations... Those are investigations that we were apparently too anxious to wait for the results of. If it turns out that the chemical attack actually was the false flag many suspect it to have been, then the administration has greatly escalated tensions unnecessarily. Early Friday morning Syrian time, the United States fired cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for the Tuesday chemical weapons “attack” that killed 85 civilians, many of them children. Although candidate Trump vowed during the campaign not to allow America to be pulled into the Syrian civil war, here we are, less than three months into his administration, having inserted ourselves in a most decisive manner. Approximately 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles were fired from US warships in the Mediterranean, targeting a Syrian air base reportedly used in the Assad domestic chemical attack... http://rickwells.us/left-claim-prove-trump-not-obama-not-putin-boy-us-now-middle-syria-mess/
.Smoking-Gun Documents Prove liar-nObama
IRS Targeting Worse Than We Thought
by James Barrett
{dailywire.com} ~ Reports that the liar-nObama administration "weaponized" federal agencies against political opponents keep coming. In new "smoking-gun" documents obtained via a FOIA lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)... Judicial Watch has uncovered evidence that the targeting of conservative groups by the liar-nObama IRS was even more expansive than we knew. On Tuesday, Judicial Watch released 695 pages of new documents showing IRS officials admitted the agency used "inappropriate political labels" to screen conservative organizations, as well as evidence that the IRS offered "expedited consideration" to 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organizations if they agreed "to restrict their alleged political activities" — a tactic Katie Pavlich aptly describes as "bribery" that served to silence the administration's opponents. Judicial Watch filed the FOIA lawsuit after the IRS revealed it had located thousands of documents that potentially related to audits of Tea Party and other 501(c)(4) organizations. Hundreds of these documents, Judicial Watch says, were previously "withheld" by the liar-nObama administration from congressional review:...
.Elizabeth dinky-Warren’s Latest Hypocrisy...
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Sense and reality have no place in Senator Elizabeth dinky-Warren’s world. The fact that this woman was able to get elected speaks to the mental and moral deficiencies of the people in Massachusetts’ Democrat Party... She embarks on a tirade about Judge Gorsuch that is so ridiculous and convoluted it almost requires explanation because of a complete absence of logic. dinky-Warren states that because there is a courtesy investigation into the hoax of Russia – Trump collusion during the campaign, the cover story for both liar-Clinton reckless inattention to security and her loss, the prospect that Judge Gorsuch might have to rule on an appeal of a conviction to some unnamed, imaginary and completely fabricated charges somehow means he has to be rejected as a Supreme Court nominee. Fortunately Judge Jeanine Pirro provides a reasoned explanation of the unreasonable. She says, “It rises to the level of outrage because there are no facts to support it...
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Sentenced to Death for "Insulting Islam"
Sina Dehghan, 21, has been sentenced to death in Iran for "insulting Islam".
Sina Dehghan, 21, has been sentenced to death in Iran for "insulting Islam".
by Majid Rafizadeh
{gatestoneinstitute.org} ~ To radical Islamist groups, Islam is not a religion which all are free to pursue; it is a weapon. It is the most powerful tool that can be wielded with manipulative skill to control entire populations... Beneath their fierce rule, every aspect of daily life is dictated. What is worn, what is eaten, what you say and what you write are all scrutinized; violations of these stringent laws are met with extreme punishments. Can you imagine making a joke and facing death as a result? Can you imagine the constant fear of doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing, when you have seen people beaten, stoned, or killed in the street for nothing more than a mild transgression? Freedom of speech and press are the Islamists' top enemies. They are targeted on a regular basis, making it difficult or impossible for the truth to be revealed to the world. While others may take their privacy for granted, the people living under this kind of tyranny must think about everything they say and do. Sometimes even the bravest of souls turn away in the face of such intimidation. Can it really be as restrictive as described? Yes, and far worse than you can imagine...
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by Patrick Buchanan
{freedomsback.com} ~ “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will.”
So President Donald Trump warns, amid reports North Korea, in its zeal to build an intercontinental ballistic missile to hit our West Coast, may test another atom bomb.
China shares a border with North Korea. We do not.
Why then is this our problem to “solve”? And why is North Korea building a rocket that can cross the Pacific and strike Seattle or Los Angeles?
Is Kim Jong Un mad?
No. He is targeting us because we have 28,500 troops on his border. If U.S. air, naval, missile and ground forces were not in and around Korea, and if we were not treaty-bound to fight alongside South Korea, there would be no reason for Kim to build rockets to threaten a distant superpower that could reduce his hermit kingdom to ashes.
While immensely beneficial to Seoul, is this U.S. guarantee to fight Korean War II, 64 years after the first wise? Russia, China and Japan retain the freedom to decide whether and how to react, should war break out. Why do we not?
Would it not be better for us if we, too, retained full freedom of action to decide how to respond, should the North attack?
During the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, despite John McCain’s channeling Patrick Henry — “We are all Georgians now!” — George W. Bush decided to take a pass on war. When a mob in Kiev overthrew the pro-Russian government, Vladimir Putin secured his Sebastopol naval base by annexing Crimea.
Had Georgia and Ukraine been in NATO, we would have been, in both cases, eyeball to eyeball with a nuclear-armed Russia.
Which brings us to the point:
The United States is in rising danger of being dragged into wars in half a dozen places, because we have committed ourselves to fight for scores of nations with little or no link to vital U.S. interests.
While our first president said in his Farewell Address that we might “trust to temporary alliances” in extraordinary emergencies, he added, “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”
Alliances, Washington believed, were transmission belts of war. Yet no nation in history has handed out so many war guarantees to so many “allies” on so many continents, as has the United States.
To honor commitments to the Baltic States, we have moved U.S. troops to the Russian border. To prevent China from annexing disputed rocks and reefs in the South and East China Seas, our Navy is prepared to go to war — to back the territorial claims of Tokyo and Manila.
Yet, our richest allies all spend less on defense than we, and all run trade surpluses at America’s expense.
Consider Germany. Last year, Berlin ran a $270 billion trade surplus and spent 1.2 percent of GDP on defense. The United States ran a $700 billion merchandise trade deficit and spent 3.6 percent of GDP on defense.
Angela Merkel puts Germany first. Let the Americans finance our defense, face down the Russians, and fight faraway wars, she is saying; Germany will capture the world’s markets, and America’s as well.
Japan and South Korea are of like mind. Neither spends nearly as much of GDP on defense as the USA. Yet, we defend both, and both run endless trade surpluses at our expense.
President Trump may hector and threaten our allies that we will not forever put up with this. But we will, because America’s elites live for the great game of global empire.
What would a true “America First” foreign policy look like?
It would restore to the United States the freedom it enjoyed for the 150 years before NATO, to decide when, where and whether we go to war. U.S. allies would be put on notice that, while we are not walking away from the world, we are dissolving all treaty commitments that require us to go to war as soon as the shooting starts.
This would concentrate the minds of our allies wonderfully. We could cease badgering them about paying more for their defense. They could decide for themselves — and live with their decisions.
In the Carter era, we dissolved our defense pact with Taiwan. Taiwan has survived and done wonderfully well. If Germany, Japan and South Korea are no longer assured we will go to war on their behalf, all three would take a long hard look at their defenses. The result would likely be a strengthening of those defenses.
But if we do not begin to rescind these war guarantees we have handed out since the 1940s, the odds are high that one of them will one day drag us into a great war, after which, if we survive, all these alliances will be dissolved in disillusionment.
What John Foster Dulles called for, over half a century ago, an “agonizing reappraisal” of America’s alliances, is long, long overdue.
Why Is Kim Jong Un Our Problem?
{freedomsback.com} ~ “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will.”
So President Donald Trump warns, amid reports North Korea, in its zeal to build an intercontinental ballistic missile to hit our West Coast, may test another atom bomb.
China shares a border with North Korea. We do not.
Why then is this our problem to “solve”? And why is North Korea building a rocket that can cross the Pacific and strike Seattle or Los Angeles?
Is Kim Jong Un mad?
No. He is targeting us because we have 28,500 troops on his border. If U.S. air, naval, missile and ground forces were not in and around Korea, and if we were not treaty-bound to fight alongside South Korea, there would be no reason for Kim to build rockets to threaten a distant superpower that could reduce his hermit kingdom to ashes.
While immensely beneficial to Seoul, is this U.S. guarantee to fight Korean War II, 64 years after the first wise? Russia, China and Japan retain the freedom to decide whether and how to react, should war break out. Why do we not?
Would it not be better for us if we, too, retained full freedom of action to decide how to respond, should the North attack?
During the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, despite John McCain’s channeling Patrick Henry — “We are all Georgians now!” — George W. Bush decided to take a pass on war. When a mob in Kiev overthrew the pro-Russian government, Vladimir Putin secured his Sebastopol naval base by annexing Crimea.
Had Georgia and Ukraine been in NATO, we would have been, in both cases, eyeball to eyeball with a nuclear-armed Russia.
Which brings us to the point:
The United States is in rising danger of being dragged into wars in half a dozen places, because we have committed ourselves to fight for scores of nations with little or no link to vital U.S. interests.
While our first president said in his Farewell Address that we might “trust to temporary alliances” in extraordinary emergencies, he added, “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”
Alliances, Washington believed, were transmission belts of war. Yet no nation in history has handed out so many war guarantees to so many “allies” on so many continents, as has the United States.
To honor commitments to the Baltic States, we have moved U.S. troops to the Russian border. To prevent China from annexing disputed rocks and reefs in the South and East China Seas, our Navy is prepared to go to war — to back the territorial claims of Tokyo and Manila.
Yet, our richest allies all spend less on defense than we, and all run trade surpluses at America’s expense.
Consider Germany. Last year, Berlin ran a $270 billion trade surplus and spent 1.2 percent of GDP on defense. The United States ran a $700 billion merchandise trade deficit and spent 3.6 percent of GDP on defense.
Angela Merkel puts Germany first. Let the Americans finance our defense, face down the Russians, and fight faraway wars, she is saying; Germany will capture the world’s markets, and America’s as well.
Japan and South Korea are of like mind. Neither spends nearly as much of GDP on defense as the USA. Yet, we defend both, and both run endless trade surpluses at our expense.
President Trump may hector and threaten our allies that we will not forever put up with this. But we will, because America’s elites live for the great game of global empire.
What would a true “America First” foreign policy look like?
It would restore to the United States the freedom it enjoyed for the 150 years before NATO, to decide when, where and whether we go to war. U.S. allies would be put on notice that, while we are not walking away from the world, we are dissolving all treaty commitments that require us to go to war as soon as the shooting starts.
This would concentrate the minds of our allies wonderfully. We could cease badgering them about paying more for their defense. They could decide for themselves — and live with their decisions.
In the Carter era, we dissolved our defense pact with Taiwan. Taiwan has survived and done wonderfully well. If Germany, Japan and South Korea are no longer assured we will go to war on their behalf, all three would take a long hard look at their defenses. The result would likely be a strengthening of those defenses.
But if we do not begin to rescind these war guarantees we have handed out since the 1940s, the odds are high that one of them will one day drag us into a great war, after which, if we survive, all these alliances will be dissolved in disillusionment.
What John Foster Dulles called for, over half a century ago, an “agonizing reappraisal” of America’s alliances, is long, long overdue.
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