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Turkish jets struck a Kurdish base near the Iraq-Syria border late Monday night, the first grim fruits of President Trump’s decision to order US forces out of the way — a decision we fear Trump will come to regret. We’ll grant that the president is delivering on a campaign promise here: Like most Americans, he doesn’t want this nation serving as the world’s policeman; other countries should share more of the burden when it comes to both troops and money. Or, as he tweeted Monday, “it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars.” He has...

I am excessively neutral on the subject of Joe Biden as a candidate for president. History would indicate that giving him another shot at it would be rather like handing Joe Hazelwood another supertanker. Nonetheless, considering the alternative, I'd walk through fire to vote for him. However, this piece in The New York Times is a vivid reminder that a) Biden's skills as a campaigner remain dodgy, and b) that he also seems to have lost a step as well. For more than a week, President Trump had been hurling unfounded accusations about Mr. Biden, his son Hunter and their...

Andrew Card, who served as White House chief of staff during the George W. Bush administration, on Monday expressed support for House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry of President Trump, saying that "clearly lines have been crossed." "I do think an impeachment inquiry is warranted," Card, who led Bush's White House team between 2001 and 2006, said on MSNBC while addressing revelations about Trump's alleged efforts to enlist Ukraine's help in his 2020 reelection campaign. Card cautioned that he wasn't sure if Trump's actions qualified as an "impeachable offense" and implored members of Congress to let the investigation play out before reaching...

As Donald Trump began his meteoric rise to the presidency, the Obama White House summoned Ukrainian authorities to Washington to coordinate ongoing anti-corruption efforts inside Russia’s most critical neighbor. The January 2016 gathering, confirmed by multiple participants and contemporaneous memos, brought some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ). The agenda suggested the purpose was training and coordination. But Ukrainian participants said it didn’t take long — during the meetings and afterward — to realize the Americans’ objectives included...

The Star Tribune is nevertheless tired of being played for a chump. Coolican notes: “This again raised questions about her marriage to Elmi and whether it was sincere or some effort to help Elmi’s immigration status, or even whether Elmi is her brother. She has denied Elmi is her brother but declined to answer any questions about the circumstances of her marriage to him.” • Her 2016 statement to the contrary notwithstanding, the evidence strongly suggests that Omar never split from Hirsi before her election to Congress last year. Their alleged 2011 divorce “in their faith tradition” appears to be...

We the media have “fact-checked” President Trump like we have fact-checked no other human being on the planet—and he’s certainly given us plenty to write about. That’s probably why it’s so easy to find lists enumerating and examining his mistakes, missteps and “lies.” But as self-appointed arbiters of truth, we’ve largely excused our own unprecedented string of fact-challenged reporting. The truth is, formerly well-respected, top news organizations are making repeat, unforced errors in numbers that were unheard of just a couple of years ago. Our repeat mistakes involve declaring that Trump’s claims are “lies” when they are matters of opinion,...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a 2020 presidential contender, on Monday issued a judicial ethics plan that would close a loophole and allow misconduct investigations of federal judges to continue even if they are elevated to the Supreme Court or resign from the bench. “It’s time to ensure that judges do not hear cases where they have conflicts of interests, strengthen our nation’s ethics rules for judges, and ensure accountability for judges who violate these rules,” Warren wrote in the proposal. Closing the loophole would have ramifications for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who has faced sexual assault allegations, which he...

I have a confession to make: I hate the pseudo-conservative scribblings of David French with the same kind of smoldering loathing I reserve for foot fungus, movies about spunky young women who triumph over the patriarchy, and the music of Maroon 5. With rare exceptions explicable due only to the vagaries of chance, I hate his prose, his premises, his conclusions and his insufferable fussiness. I contend that his writings are fit only to be served up to traitors and terrorists at Gitmo to wring out confessions, and the only thing I enjoy about his terrible, terrible views is that...

Allies to President Trump are furious with acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan for how they say he threw his boss and department officials under the bus in a recent interview. “At a time when President Trump is facing the most partisan attacks of his administration, one of his own Cabinet-level officials aired his grievances with the president in the court of public opinion,” said Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council. “Regardless of your readers' political leanings: Left, right, or in the middle, the airing of grievances by a Cabinet-level official must be considered dishonest and unforgivable.”...

Violent Crime Drops, Trump Gets No Credit On September 30, the FBI released its annual report on crime for 2018. It showed that violent crime declined over 2017 in every category except rape, where a revised definition was applied. The number of homicides declined by 6.1%; the rate went down by even more than that, to 5.0 per 100,000.The FBI’s good news about crime got very little publicity, and I can’t find a single publication that gave the Trump administration any credit for the trend. Why should they, you might ask, since homicide and other violent crimes have been declining...

The president's troubles in the Rust Belt state are a potential warning sign for his reelection prospects. MACKINAC ISLAND, Mich. — Donald Trump has long heralded Michigan as the crown jewel of his 2016 victory. But the president's campaign team is increasingly grim about a repeat performance in the traditionally blue Rust Belt state. After a midterm election that decimated the ranks of Michigan Republicans, Trump's campaign is looking to other battlegrounds he lost last time — such as Minnesota and New Hampshire — that they see as more promising. The assessment illustrates how Trump’s support in the Rust Belt...

Whatever you do, don't call Austrian Green Party politician Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek a "corrupt oaf" or "lousy traitor of the people" on Facebook. If you do, the European Union (E.U.) has ruled that Facebook can be forced to take your comments down, regardless of where you are in the world. In all likelihood, you have no idea who Glawischnig-Piesczek even is, but you should definitely worry about today's ruling and how it impacts your ability to express your opinions about politicians online. I blogged about this case back in June when the E.U. was first considering it. Glawischnig-Piesczek is a retired...

The Garbage Party and their media sycophants have often lambasted President Trump over his criticisms of the U.S. intelligence community and its motivation behind the release of so-called ‘intelligence’ information that has turned out to be false. The entire “Russian collusion” scandal was allegedly based on ‘hard data’ from the intelligence community that the FBI discovered in its harmless, ‘just doing our jobs’ counterintelligence investigation of the president’s 2016 campaign. Now it’s “Ukrainegate.” The intel community is trotting out one liar after another to discredit Trump and create the impression he committed an impeachable offense in talking to the Ukrainian...

Giuliani defends his role on Ukraine as Trump's lawyer. FOX News operates the FOX News Channel (FNC), FOX Business Network (FBN), FOX News

Queued Up Before The Under The Bus Toss Here.

Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker came to the defense of his 2020 rival former Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday as Biden continues to face unfounded attacks from President Donald Trump. "I've said time and time again that this is unacceptable, that if you come after Joe Biden, you're going to have to deal with me in this case. There is no — as you said — these are baseless, unfounded, scurrilous lies, plain and simple, trying to undermine the character of one of the statesmen of our country, not our party, but our country. And so, yeah, you've got...

President Donald Trump’s shocking request Thursday on the White House lawn that not only Ukraine, but also China, should investigate the Bidens, may have shown his open defiance of impeachment threats, but it also gave major air time to the innuendo the president and his allies have been trying to spread about Hunter Biden's links to a company funded by a Chinese investor. While the substance of news reports focused on the brazenness of the president’s publicly calling on foreign governments to investigate a rival, their headlines and chyrons often communicated a simpler message: “Trump: Ukraine & China Should Investigate...

Back in the old days, it was understood that reporters were supposed to hunt down stories and seek out hidden truths. There was even a name for it. A good reporter was said to have a nose for news. So what happened? How did we reach the point where journalists presented with a major scandal -- an almost self-evident abuse of power -- just yawn and turn away? Instead of expressing curiosity about why the Bidens had been the subject of a criminal investigation in Ukraine, reporters fell into lockstep with the Democrats’ impeachment narrative. Everywhere you turned for the...

Today’s Campaign Update, Part II (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Another day, another fake controversy. – The bipartisan Warmonger lobby is out in full force this morning after false media reports claiming President Donald Trump had decided to “pull all American forces out of Northern Syria” made their way into the public domain. That decision – which is not the decision that has in fact been made – has been further reported to mean that the President has “given the green light” to Turkish thug Recep Tayyip Erdogan to invade and seize that region from the Kurds, who currently occupy...

Frustrated liberals have been asking for the last four years what it’s going to take for President Trump’s supporters to abandon him. Because, like, don’t they know he’s about to be impeached!? New York Times columnist David Brooks attempted to answer the question last week by imagining a conversation with someone he simply referred to as “Flyover Man,” because apparently he didn’t know a single real Trump supporter. It never seems to occur to liberals that perhaps the real problem isn’t that a lot of people continue supporting the president even though he can be strange, vulgar, and sometimes even...