Since 1917,
whenever a president has selected a judicial nominee to fill a court vacancy,
the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has issued blue slips of paper to each senator representing the state where the vacancy occurred.
The historical purpose of the blue slip has been to gather insights about judicial nominees from home-state senators and encourage the White House to consult with them before choosing a nominee.
This change allowed Democrats to block a lot of former President George W. Bush's judicial nominees.
My policy,
which is based on the policies of the vast majority of my predecessors,
is that the lack of two positive blue slips will not necessarily preclude a circuit-court nominee from receiving a hearing unless the White House failed to consult with home-state senators.
The Democrats justified their decision by arguing that 41 senators should not be allowed to block nominees with majority support.
They now argue that one senator should singlehandedly be able to stall the process before the nominees are even considered in the committee.
Whether a nominee is suitable for the federal appellate bench is a decision for the entire Senate.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/chuck-grassley-senate-democrats-are-trying-to-stall-trumps-nominations-by-rewriting-the-history-of-blue-slips/article/2649670
Nikolas Cruz did not use a bump stock at Parkland,
but Stephen Paddock did in Vegas,
and even most Second Amendment stalwarts seemed to agree at the time that you don't need a bump stock - which is basically an add-on making a non-automatic rifle function like an automatic - in order to exercise your right to keep and bear arms.
So when President Trump announced on Tuesday that he wants the Justice Department to issue regualtions effectively banning them,
that would seem if nothing else to be a minimal move everyone could get behind.
President Trump - under pressure from angry,
grieving students from a Florida high school where a gunman killed 17 people last week - ordered the Justice Department on Tuesday to issue regulations banning so-called bump stocks,
which convert semiautomatic guns into automatic weapons like those used last year in the massacre of concertgoers in Las Vegas.
A day earlier,
Mr. Trump signaled that he was open to supporting legislation that would modestly improve the national gun background check system,
and on Tuesday night,
he posted on Twitter that Democrats and Republicans "
Must now focus on strengthening Background Checks!".
The National Rifle Association supports the background check legislation and also backs bump stock regulation,
although not an outright ban.
I'm not convinced banning bump stocks will make any different at all if the goal is to prevent mass shootings,
for the same reason I've argued all along that legal access to firearms is not the cause of the problem.
As for the bump stock ban,
what you're really talking about is banning one method of modifying an already powerful rifle.
http://canadafreepress.com/article/left-trump-move-to-ban-bump-stocks-expand-background-checks-is-terrible-bec
"
National healthcare spending trends are unsustainable in the long term,"
President Donald Trump's budget acknowledges.
On healthcare,
projected to increase 5.5 percent annually over the next nine years,
pushes the total to $
5.7 trillion a year by 2026.
Put another way,
American healthcare spending in 2026 equals the entire size of the 1990 U.S. economy and eclipses the current gross domestic product of every other country not named China.
It's not that we spend more on healthcare than every other country - we spend more on healthcare than every other country,
save China,
spends on everything.
While growth in spending on private plans slows over the next decade,
government programs that promise more coverage,
cover more people,
and cater to an aging clientele in an aging country fuel the boom in healthcare spending.
"
Spending growth in Medicare and Medicaid is a substantial contributor to the faster projected overall growth in national health spending through 2026,"
the authors affiliated with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services note.
Prescription drugs,
a healthcare sector heavily subsidized through George W. Bush's Medicare Part D and deemed an "
Essential Health Benefit"
through Obamacare,
somewhat predictably,
given its recent entitlement status preceded Baby Boomers becoming senior citizens,
see prices rise faster than any other sector of healthcare.
https://spectator.org/healthcare-spending-to-reach-5-7-trillion-by-2026/
WOLF BLITZER,
CNN ANCHOR:
You know,
it's very interesting,
Kaitlan,
because the president tweeted once again today this: "
I have been much tougher on Russia than Obama.
Just look at the facts.
Total fake news."
What does the White House point to as evidence of that?
As the live discussion went on,
CNN's chyron,
quoted and pictured above,
for a number of minutes blared CNN's interpretation as opposed to objective reporting of the "
Breaking news."
It was obviously an editorial judgment,
since its claim is by no means a universally agreed on fact.
The left-of-center media analysis Web site Mediaite took note of CNN's performance on Tuesday in a story titled "
CNN Completely Jumps The Shark With Chyron Fact-Checking Subjective Trump Claim."
The author,
Aidan McLaughlin,
is no friend of President Trump's judging by his recent Mediaite articles and his Twitter.
On another subject of current trending interest - the mounting campaign supporting legislation to restrict Second Amendment rights and enact new gun laws in the wake of last week's school shooting at the Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,
FL - CNN anchor Chris Cuomo was immediately called out for repeating a lie that was exposed as such two years ago.
Thanks to the high profile newly accorded the fake story by Cuomo and CNN,
Sam Zief,
a student at Stoneman Douglas High School and a participant in the listening session on school violence with President Trump in the White House State Dining Room on February 21,
tearfully and angrily repeated the false claim about the 20-year old and the AR-15.
On Tuesday evening,
I was watching CNN when I observed a new low point - and considering the recent history of CNN,
that's really saying something.
Like all of the hosts on CNN,
including news anchors,
Blitzer is consistently anti-Trump so I wasn't expecting anything close to fair and balanced.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/02/cnn_hits_a_new_low_point_no_longer_pretending_to_be_fair_at_all.html
Apparently,
the Poles disagreed with both Putin and Obama.
By the time Obama,
and most Democrats,
were mocking Mitt Romney for warning about Russian geopolitical threats,
Medvedev had little reason to "
Transmit"
the president's promise on missile defense "
To Vladimir."
Obama and Medvedev had already signed a treaty to shrink their nations'
nuclear arsenals.
Bill Browder,
one of the driving forces behind the act,
noted that the Obama administration, "
Starting with Hillary Clinton and then John Kerry,
did everything they could do to stop the Magnitsky Act.".
"
President Obama has made Russia's W.T.O. membership a top priority for U.S.-Russia relations in 2011,"
the administration explained at the time.
Putin,
according to Obama,
helped make the Iran Deal happen.
If there's any evidence of Obama calling our Russian human rights violations,
I have yet to find it.
If there is any evidence of Obama calling out Putin directly,
it is well hidden.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/21/democrats-try-to-rewrite-history-on-russia-to-make-trump-look-bad/
The Democratic Party,
and concomitantly,
the Leftist "
Mainstream"
media,
can and must be made to pay.
Those voters may feel about President Trump's first year,
an electoral alignment with the president is the best way to show disgust about what has been orchestrated at the highest levels of the Deep State bureaucracy,
the top-tiers of our federal law enforcement agencies,
and by the Democrat Party apparatus.
Nevermind that certain high-stakes players may be card-carrying members of the GOP. If one core truth about this debacle can be told,
from the very beginning it has been about acting on behalf of Hillary Clinton,
President Obama,
and the Deep State.
Whoever has been instrumental in promulgating this attempt to stage a silent coup against a duly elected president must pay a price - if not legally,
at least in terms of a severe upbraid from members of the freedom-loving,
fair-minded citizenry.
Voting for Trump-aligned candidates is the best,
if not the only,
avenue available to average citizens who wish to show their disapproval.
Whatever nuanced,
issue-by-issue positions such a coalition of Republican/independent/Democrat voters may hold vis-a'-vis President Trump,
it is imperative they return to the polls as they did in 2016.
They must preserve Republican majorities in the House and Senate,
bolster the president,
and demonstrate that - whatever the affiliated partisanship of those in opposition - the principles of the Founding Fathers and their vision for our form of government must remain sacrosanct.
https://pjmedia.com/election/make-deep-state-pay-way/
The great lengths that FBI Director Christopher A. Wray took last month to keep secret a four-page memo on his bureau's Russia-Trump probe do not mark the first time headquarters sought to block Congress - and protect its image.
Democrats have rallied behind the FBI as Rep. Devin Nunes,
California Republican and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,
issued the memo that accused the bureau of exploiting a Democrat-funded,
unverified dossier to target Donald Trump as a presidential candidate.
The IG found: "
The FBI never opened even a preliminary inquiry on any FBI employee in connection with the search for the mole ultimately identified as Hanssen.
This was true even though the FBI had access to information suggesting that the mole might be an FBI employee,
and believed that the mole had compromised certain FBI assets and operations."
More damning: "
Most importantly,
the FBI demonstrated a reluctance to consider itself as a possible source for a penetration in the absence of leads identifying a specific FBI target.
Thus,
the FBI maintained a focus on the CIA as the mole's employer despite information indicating that the mole might be an FBI employee."
"
The FBI did its job.
Rank-and-file national security professionals within the FBI and DOJ acted appropriately when obtaining a FISA warrant of Carter Page,"
he said.
"
The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000,"
said an April 2015 article in The Post.
"
The FBI is out of control.
It is stunning that the FBI '
found'
these Clinton-Lynch tarmac records only after we caught the agency hiding them in another lawsuit,"
Mr. Fitton said in an October statement.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/21/devin-nunes-memo-response-shows-fbi-commitment-pro/
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russian nationals for allegedly conspiring to sow confusion in the 2016 presidential election.
Three,
unlike with the Russians,
no one disputes that American citizens - Hillary Clinton,
members of the Democratic National Committee,
and anti-Trump partisan Glenn Simpson and his Fusion GPS team - colluded by paying for Steele's work.
Hillary Clinton aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills likely lied to FBI investigator Peter Strzok when they claimed they had no idea that Clinton was using a private and illegal email server until the story went public.
Former attorney general Loretta Lynch met secretly with Bill Clinton on a jet parked on a tarmac in Phoenix shortly before the Justice Department closed the probe of Hillary Clinton and chose not to pursue charges against her.
Mueller was appointed at a time of national hysteria,
brought on by partisan journalism based on a leaked dossier - itself a product of a discredited British agent working with Russian sources while being paid by the Clinton campaign.
Investigating any possible crimes committed by members of the Clinton campaign or the Obama administration apparently is taboo,
given the exalted status of both.
Every time Mueller seeks to find incidental wrongdoing by those around Trump,
he only makes the case stronger that behavior by those involved in the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration should be investigated.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/mueller-investigation-indictments-paradoxes-christopher-steele/
None of the 16 lawyers known to work for special counsel Robert Mueller are registered Republicans.
There are 13 registered Democrats on the investigation and three lawyers with no party affiliation.
Campaign finance records reveal that 11 lawyers are Democratic donors.
The special counsel's office has previously disclosed that nine of the 16 lawyers have made a total of $
62,000 in donations to Democrats,
with one of those nine lawyers having also donated $
2,750 to Republican candidates.
As his team has grown,
details about the lawyers hired by Mueller have fueled accusations of political bias on the probe investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.
The growing list of Democratic donors have led some to wonder whether any of the lawyers on Mueller's team are Republicans.
No other lawyers working for Mueller are known to have contributed to Republican campaigns.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/02/21/exclusive-zero-registered-republicans-mueller-lawyer/
I want to tell you about my night at Mar-a-Lago this past weekend with President Trump.
We all hear all kinds of stories about President Trump...and all kinds of opinions about him...but few have ever actually met him,
let alone spent quality time with him.
Second,
this is the story of the real President Trump-
up close and personal.
In the middle of it all sat President Donald J. Trump.
As soon as President Trump saw mehe yelled "
Wayne"
and waved me to join him at his dinner table.
President Trump is so different than any other politician.
That's the real President Donald Trump the media will never tell you about.
https://townhall.com/columnists/wayneallynroot/2018/02/22/the-real-donald-trump-you-wont-hear-about-from-the-liberal-media-n2452468
