McConnell's Nuclear Victory Should Spur GOP to Fight the War Progressive Democrats Are Waging against America

THURSDAY BREAKING NEWS : House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes on Thursday said he will temporarily step aside in his House Intelligence Committee's investigation into the Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Nunes said in a statement he thinks it is in the "best interests" of the committee and the Congress for Texas GOP Representative Mike Conaway to temporarily take over the committee's investigation into the Russian meddling, with assistance from Representatives Trey Gowdy and Tom Rooney. Nunez said he will continue to fulfill his other duties as chairman. Nunes said in a statement : "Several leftwing activist groups have filed accusations against me with the Office of Congressional Ethics. The charges are entirely false and politically motivated, and are being leveled just as the American people are beginning to learn the truth about the improper unmasking of the identities of US citizens and other abuses of power. I am requesting to speak to the Ethics Committee at the earliest possible opportunity in order to expedite the dismissal of these false claims.” • If any conservative / Republican has had thoughts about getting along with the Democrats in Congress if only there were enough effort put into negotiation and compromise, this is the final answer. The Progressive Democrat leadership and their serf-minions elected in the "hinterland" to do their "two-coast" bidding are at war with America and the Republican Party that represents America and its Constitution. There is no reason for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Deven Nunes to recuse himself from the Russian investigation. He is being hounded out by Democrat operatives following Party orders to get rid of him because he has finally -- despite all Democrat and mainstream media efforts to prevent it -- found the smoking gun that points to monumental abuse of power by President Obama and his White House in the form of using legal but highly regulated surveillance authorizations for foreign persons as a way of tapping into and using the information gleaned, illegally for political purposes, against the Trump team -- understand, the Dems are after Trump and the GOP, too. The war is in full battle formation. Why would the Republicans, who control the House and Senate, and therefore the Office of Congressional Ethics, roll over one more time and let the Democrats and their MSM lapdogs build a fake news story that accuses Nunes and the GOP and Trump of inventing the abuse of power that leaps from the Trump team logs and spreadsheets requested, used and circulated by Susan Rice? WHY??? • • • McCONNELL HAS THE GUTSTO GET THE JOB DONE. Is Mitch McConnell the only Republican who understands that America is at war and so is ready to fight the marauding Democrats by enforcing GOP party unity? His comment that the Democrats in the Senate would filibuster Ruth Bader Ginsburg if Trump had named her to the Supreme Court provides a "Yes" answer. • But, more than that, Senate Majority Leader McConnell is following up his words with actions -- something sadly lacking in most other Republican leaders. Speaker Paul Ryan's seeming abandonment of Intelligence Committee Chairman Nunes and the rumor that Vice President Mike Pence is taking the lead over Speaker Ryan in pushing through the second attempt at repealing Obamacare are just two more indications that Congress is full of non-confrontational Republicans who would not fight the Mongol Horde if it was camped in the congressional parking lot. • • • THE NUCLEAR OPTION IS HERE. Lawmakers convened late Thursday morning to vote to end debate and advance to a final vote to confirm Federal Court of Appeals Judge Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. The Democrats chose filibuster -- that is, fewer than 60 Senators agreed to proceed to the final vote -- and so McConnell, who voted against the cloture for the procedural reasons that it put him on the prevailing side, asked for a revote. Following the failed vote, the second cloture vote only required 51 yeas -- all provided by Republican Senators. After the cloture vote, the Senate Democrats could not extend matters by talking any more. At that point, McConnell "went nuclear," calling for the vote that changed Senate procedure to require only 51 votes for the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice, instead of 60. These changes to Senate procedure can be done by a simple majority vote. McConnell initiated the rules change by raising a point of order asserting that simple-majority votes should advance Supreme Court nominees to final confirmation votes. Democrats tried to delay it by offering motions to postpone a vote and to adjourn the chamber, but both fell short as Republicans stayed remarkably unified. Earlier on Thursday, McConnell said the rules change would restore the Senate’s tradition of considering a Supreme Court nominee based on credentials instead of ideology. He called the Democratic filibuster of Gorsuch “a radical move” and something “completely unprecedented in the history of the Senate : "This threatened filibuster cannot be allowed to succeed or to continue for the sake of the Senate, for the sake of the Court and for the sake our country,” he said. A final vote on Gorsuch is expected on Friday. • • • THE ORIGINAL NUCLEAR OPTION WAS A HARRY REID TRICK USED ON THE GOP. National Review's Ed Whelan reminds us that : "Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer shrugged in 2013, after nuking the filibuster for non-Supreme Court nominees, when asked whether they had concerns that Republicans could someday eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. 'Let ’em do it,' Reid said. 'Why in the world would we care?...If they want simple majority, fine.' " • One reason it’s worthwhile to tune in to the MSM and leftist publications occasionally is they reveal the thinking of ProgDems. Mother Jones offers a fascinating look at how Democratic strategists think triggering the nuking of the filibuster is a loss, whereas the activists are convinced it’s a long-term win. Given the possibly terrifying likelihood that awaits Progressives if they lose the filibuster -- not just with Trump’s Supreme Court nominee this time, but also with future fights -- what’s the upside? Some fear there is none, and that the Democrat Party is rushing toward a decision it will likely regret, at the behest of the party’s increasingly powerful Progressive base. A filibuster “prevents a revolt by the base -- it’s the base here that’s not being smart,” said a political consultant who asked not to be named because of a client list that includes Democrat Senators. The small donor base and activist core of the party “have boxed these folks in to a position that is not the wisest one.” The decision to oppose Gorsuch, and to let Republicans put an end to the filibuster entirely, the consultant said, is more about survival today than long-term planning...it’s not hard to find Progressive activists convinced this is a winning issue for them in next year’s elections. Neil Sroka, communications director for Democracy in America, agrees with Mother Jones : “This is an exercise of a raw political power grab, and the hope is that the American people see that for what it is in coming elections.” Note that Democracy for America is a Progressive group that supports the Democrats strategy of threatening to filibuster Gorsuch. This is a position echoed by Schumer himself. When asked at a press conference on Tuesday what would happen if Republicans ended the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, he responded, “They will lose if they do it.” That’s because Schumer and all ProgDems believe the voters will see that McConnell “will do anything to get his way,” and Republicans will not be seen as acting in a reasonable or bipartisan fashion. Democrat Minority Leader Senator Schumer said on Thursday morning on the Senate floor : “We believe the Republican Party has been far more aggressive in the escalation of tactics and in the selection of extreme judicial candidates, while Democrats have tended to select judges closer to the middle. “We believe the Republican Party has been far more aggressive in the escalation of tactics and in the selection of extreme judicial candidates, while Democrats have tended to select judges closer to the middle." That, dear readers, may qualify as The Whopper of the Week. • As Ed Whelan points out, Democrats believe the filibuster "is already dead." Undoubtedly true. But, now the Progressive Democrat strategy will be to pin the death on Republicans and McConnell, when it was really killed by the former and current Senate Democrat leaders Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer. • Any Republican will recall the dispicable treatment of Judge Bork, the filibuster of Miguel Estrada (“because he is Latino” as a Democratic memo put it), the attempted filibuster of Samuel Alito, Harry Reid nuking the filibuster for non-Supreme Court nominees -- and all the while the Progressive Democrats are blaming Republicans for being partisan about the filibuster. It’s all Republicans’ fault. We get it. That, friends, is the war we are fighting. Deal with it. • • • DO PROGDEMS REALLY THINK THE GORSUCH CONFIRMATION WILL HELP THEM WIN IN 2018? That is what they say -- the nuked filibuster is a winning issue in 2018. This was the ProgDem plan in 2016, too, when Democrats said the failure to confirm Merrick Garland was going to really hurt Republicans on the campaign trail. Right. Trump won and took with him the House and Senate. No Democratic Senate candidate ran a TV commercial on the issue of Garland’s nomination. No major Democratic figure mentioned his nomination during the Democrat Convention in Philadelphia. Neither Garland nor the Supreme Court even came up in the first presidential debate. Hillary Clinton barely mentioned Garland on the campaign trail, and indicated that she might nominate someone else if elected. Paul Waldman said during the presidential campaign : “Not only are Republicans losing on this issue, they can’t even keep their own voters in line. I think the vast number of voters in states with vulnerable Republicans are expressing disapproval over the failure of the Senate to treat Garland fairly and my sense is this expression will only grow over the next several weeks and months.” Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, said in 2016 : “[Senate Republicans] have this death wish, and that’s what it is. They are going to end up losing really, really big.” Then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said the same thing. Nobody knows how 2018 will shake out, but clearly Republicans didn’t get punished by voters for allegedly “defying any sense of decorum in their treatment of Barack Obama” in 2016. • It is another aspect of the war we conservatives and Republicans are in -- Democrats do whatever they think will help them win elections and then blame Republicans for their loss and tell Americans to vote for ProgDems as a punishment for the GOP. We get that, too. The ProgDem strategists seem to have forgotten that one of the key reasons for the election of Donald Trump was to be able to have a Republican President name the conservative replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia. Moving right along... • • • HOW THE PROGDEMS HOPE TO SPIN THE GORSUCH CONFIRMATION. Progressive Democrats are already declaring victory over Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination. Oh sure, they know Gorsuch will be confirmed because they have no procedural tool to stop it, but they're claiming victory anyway. ProgDems see their "victory" not just in winning congressional seats away from Republicans in 2108, they see Republicans facing a voter backlash over changing the Senate’s rules -- thinking the rule changes will force Republicans to own any controversial decisions handed down by the Supreme Court heading into the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election. • We know what the ProgDems are talking about here -- a pro-life vote; a confirmation of the right of Christians to practice their faith; a reaffirmation of the right of Americans to own and carry firearms; and, a Court decision to allow President Trump to control immigration. • • • DEAR READERS, it is just as difficult now as it was in 2016 to see how the ProgDems can rachet a GOP elimination of the Senate filibuster rule that will confirm a conservative Supreme Court Justices into electoral success in 2018. American voters are tired of, and frightened by, the Progressive Democrat congressional leadership that was instrumental in protecting President Obama and his insiders from the scrutiny of Congress as they went about ignoring the Constitution -- governing by executive order. Only the Supreme Court -- at that time with a 5-4 conservative majority led by Justice Scalia -- rebuffed Obama, several times rejecting his argument that his executive branch overreaching to enact laws without going to Congress where lawmaking power resides was consitutional. The United States will, as of Friday, we are told, once again have a 5-4 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. That is the real fear of the Progressive Democrats -- that the Court will re-instate constitutional rule of law and eliminate much of the Progressive anti-constitutional acts of Obama and his Progressive Democrat Congress. • We can only hope that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's bold step in eliminating the Senate filibuster will spark the desire in other Republican leaders to take up the cudgel against these ProgDems who are determined to ignore the will of the American people and make of the United States a carbon copy of Europe -- globalist, open border, bowing to the undemocratic tendencies of the United Nations, and eager to undercut the Western tradition of independent nation states for a one-size-fits-all vision of the world where culture, religion and civil liberties are sacrificed for the elitist goals of unelected autocrats. • Bravo Mitch !!! Keep up the good and vital work. We will win this war !!!

Susan Rice's Trump Team Unmasking : What Did President Obama Know and When Did He Know It?

CNN is now a political action committee for the Democrat Party. Susan Rice is the last cog that sent CNN crashing down beyond repair as a bonafide news outlet. It has become a full-fledged propaganda arm for the Progressive Democrats and their leader -- Barack Obama. The New American website had the right headline on Tuesday : "Susan Rice Spied on Trump — And CNN Doesn't Care." Despite the explosive revelations about Susan Rice's unmasking of Trump team members and her even asking for “detailed spreadsheets” of legal phone calls involving then-private citizen Donald Trump and his aides -- clearly for political purposes -- many in the liberal mainstream media choose to ignore the story or downplay its importance. CNN has gone so far as to call the story nothing more than a “fake scandal ginned up by right-wing media and Trump.” Don Lemon led off CNN Tonight, “On this program tonight, we will not insult your intelligence by pretending” the story was legitimate : “Nor will we aid and abet the people trying to misinform you, the American people, by creating a diversion. Not going to do it.” The chief national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto, was just as adamant, calling it a non-story created to distract from the story of Trump’s tweet that Trump Tower was “wiretapped.” Sciutto told Anderson Cooper : “Again, to senior intelligence officials who work for both Democrats and Republicans, this appears to be a story, largely ginned up, partly as a distraction from this larger investigation." Sciutto even defended Rice on her claim that she did not even know about the unmasking -- when she was the person who was directing it! But, according ot Sciutto : “From her perspective, she didn’t know what specific unmasking Deven Nunes and others are talking about, in part because that is something she asks -- or asked during the regular course of her work as national security advisor.” [Work that one out -- Sciutto says Rice didn't know what Nunes was talking about because she unmasked US citizens regularly...???] When it comes to talking about "unmasking," CNN has moved beyond any pretence of objectivity in its zeal to attack the Trump administration, while taking on the role of defending Susan Rice -- and above all, Barack Obama. • • • THE ONLY QUESTION NOW IS WHAT AND WHEN DID OBAMA KNOW. What is now clear -- although CNN loudly denies it -- is that as early as 2015 in the presidential campaign, and especially after the 2016 presidential election, Obama's then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice asked for the names of US persons found in what has been described as “raw intelligence reports.” Normally, when US intelligence agencies are surveilling foreigners, the names of US persons who are involved in conversation with those foreigners are edited out in summaries of the monitored conversations. Instead of using the American citizen’s actual name, the citizen is referred to as “US Person One,” etc. In this case, however, Rice wanted the real names of the persons. These names were later leaked to media friendly to the Obama administration. • Former US Attorney Joseph diGenova has declared : “What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Rice were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals...the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the people in the calls." DiGenova said that there was nothing illegal about activities of the Trump associates -- that they were in “perfectly legal conversations.” • Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence for the National Security Council, in the course of a routine review, discovered that Rice had made multiple requests to “unmask” US persons found in the reports. When he brought this dubious activity to the General Counsel’s office at the Obama White House, he was told to drop his probe. One unnamed US official noted that the reports contained political information, such as with whom the Trump transition people were meeting, the views of Trump’s foreign policy aides, and what plans were being made for the incoming Trump administration. • Apparently, House Intelligence Committee Chariman Deven Nunes has seen actual logs of Rice’s multiple requests to unmask US persons -- persons who have apparently committed no crimes, and for whom no FISA surveillance warrants existed. Fox News reported : “For a private citizen to be ‘unmasked,’ or named, in an intelligence report is extremely rare. Typically, the American unmasked is a suspect in a crime, is in danger, or has to be named to explain the context of the report.” None of that seems to be the case concerning Susan Rice's unmasking the Trump team names and turning them over to officials at the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, CIA Director John Brennan, and DNI Director James Clapper -- Obama's top national security team -- plus Rice's assistant Ben Rhodes. • SUSAN RICE HAD ONLY ONE BOSS. His name -- President Barack Obama. And, it would be a mistake to think that only Rice was involved in the Obama administration surveillance of Trump and his associates. Retired Colonel James Waurishuk, who has served with both the National Security Council and as deputy director for intelligence at the US Central Command, insists that others had to be involved : “The surveillance initially is the responsibility of the National Security Agency. They have to abide by this guidance when one of the other agencies says, ‘We’re looking at this particular person which we would like to unmask.’ ” Waurishuk said, “It’s unbelievable....This is really, really serious stuff. The lawyers and counsel at the NSA surely would be talking to the lawyers and members of counsel at CIA, or at the National Security Council or at the Director of National Intelligence or at the FBI.” Waurishik even stated : “We’re looking at a potential constitutional crisis from the standpoint that we used an extremely strong capability that’s supposed to be used to safeguard and protect the country. And we used it for political purposes by a sitting President, to spy on the elected, yet-to-be-seated President.” And, Michael Doran, a former senior director at the National Security Council, was even more direct, stating : “That’s a felony And you can get 10 years for that. It is a tremendous abuse of the system. We’re not supposed to be monitoring American citizens....somebody blew a hole in the wall between national security secrets and partisan politics.” • • • SO LET'S ASK THE OBVIOUS QUESTION. Just how high up the chain of command does this go? Obviously, Susan Rice was a person with extremely close ties to President Obama. Remember, Obama wanted to make her Secretary of State after Hillary Clinton's resignation, but because of Rice's public lies about the Benghazi attacks, there was far too much congressional resistance to her confirmation to the top position at the State Department. So, Obama named her National Security Advisor, which does not require Senate confirmation. It is also a position that gave her daily access to President Obama. For her to ask for such sensitive unmasked information at least causes us to wonder if she had discussed it with Obama. In the words of the late Senator Howard Baker regarding the Watergate scandal, “What did the President know -- and when did he know it?” • • • THE FACTS. As reported by Circa News (a new, highly reliable internet news outlet), Rice requested the unmasking of the names of Trump team officials mentioned in the so-called “incidental” surveillance of the Trump transition team. Daniel John Sobieski reported in American Thinker that computer logs left behind at the White House by former President Obama’s team indicate that Rice accessed numerous intelligence reports during Obama's last seven months in office that contained National Security Agency intercepts involving Donald Trump and his associates. Intelligence sources told Circa the logs discovered by the National Security Council staff suggested Rice’s interest in the NSA materials, some of which included unmasked Americans' identities. Rice's interest appeared to begin last July around the time Trump secured the GOP nomination and accelerated after Trump’s election in November, starting his transition that continued through January. The intelligence reports included some intercepts of Americans talking to foreigners and many more involving foreign leaders talking about the future President, his campaign associates or his transition, the sources said, while most had nothing to do with the Russian election interference scandal. • Circa sources said Rice requested the unmasking of names, which is something only three people, according to Circa, were authorized to do -- Obama’s national security advisor Susan Rice, his CIA Director John Brennan and Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Sobieski says : "Dozens of times in 2016, those intelligence reports identified Americans who were directly intercepted talking to foreign sources or were the subject of conversations between two or more monitored foreign figures. Sometimes the Americans’ names were officially unmasked; other times they were so specifically described in the reports that their identities were readily discernible. If Susan Rice had worked for Richard Nixon, she could have been one of his Watergate 'plumbers,' perhaps retiring as plumber emeritus. We are all familiar with Susan Rice’s tour of the Sunday talk shows after the Benghazi terrorist attack. That was no accident, but a calculated part of the Obama administration’s disinformation campaign to protect President Obama’s re-election chances and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chances to be Obama’s successor in the White House." • Investor’s Business Daily stated in an editorial : "Newly obtained emails on Benghazi show then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice was coached by a key White House aide to lie and ignore the facts known and reported on the ground to make the administration look good." If further proof is needed, Sobieski quotes a September 14, 2012, email from Ben Rhodes, assistant to the President and deputy national security advisor for strategic communications. The email was contained in documents released by Judicial Watch and obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request -- the email subject line was "RE: PREP Call with Susan: Saturday at 4:00 p.m. ET." The Rhodes email was sent to other key White House staffers such as then-Communications Director David Plouffe and Press Secretary Jay Carney the day before now-National Security Advisor Susan Rice made her whirlwind tour on five Sunday news show appearances to specifically and emphatically blame an Internet video for the September 11, 2012, attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, in which US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other nationals were killed. One of the goals listed in the emails was the need for Rice "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy." She was also to "reinforce the President and Administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges." Sobieski concludes : "Rice was ordered to lie about Benghazi and blame it on a video. • Rice was [also] sent out to lie for the Obama administration about Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl, for whom the Obama administration would trade four top captured Taliban leaders. Says Sobieski : "Despite the uncontestable fact that Bergdahl walked away from his post in time of war, leaving his weapon and gear behind, and the unanimous statements of those who served with him and over him and those who tried to find him....The White House sent National Security Advisor Susan Rice, of Benghazi video lie fame, to the talk shows to say Bergdahl served with 'honor and distinction.' " • Sobieski also points out that Rice was involved with administration lies to protect another administration -- Bill Clinton's -- after the terrorist attacks on US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, precursors to Benghazi. Again, her motive was not to tell the truth but to protect the interests of her political bosses, according to Sobieski : "A mission was attacked after warnings, Americans were killed after security requests were denied, and a diplomat went on TV to explain it all -- our current UN ambassador, after embassy bombings in 1998." Senator Susan Collins said : "What troubles me so much is the Benghazi attack in many ways echoes the attacks on both embassies in 1998, when Susan Rice was head of the African region for our State Department. In both cases, the ambassador begged for additional security." Just like Benghazi, requests in 1998 for more security were denied, warnings were issued, prior incidents were ignored and Susan Rice went on TV to explain it all. Sobieski explains : "Within 24 hours, Rice, then assistant secretary of state for African affairs, went on PBS as spokesperson for the administration -- just as she was regarding Benghazi when she parroted the administration's false narrative on five Sunday talk shows on September 16, 2012, that Benghazi was caused by a flash mob enraged by an Internet video. Then, as now, she worked for a Clinton. Also then, as now, she went on TV to claim, falsely, that we 'maintain a high degree of security at all of our embassies at all times' and that we 'had no telephone warning or call of any sort like that, that might have alerted either embassy just prior to the blast.' There were plenty of warnings and our East African diplomats were begging for help as Ambassador Chris Stevens was in Benghazi." • • • DESTROYING PRESIDENT TRUMP. Susan Rice has been a key part of both the Clinton and Obama administrations’ disinformation machines designed to keep the truth from the American people and hide what was likely criminal negligence in the deaths of Americans at the hands of terrorists. That she should be up to her eyeballs in the 'unmasking' round of political corruption by Obama & Co, using classified data gleaned by surveillance of Americans to sabotage an incoming President, is unconscionable, but not a surprise. • On Monday, Attorney Sam Nunberg, a former Trump advisor, told Newsmax that he believes misconduct surrounding intelligence collection went as high as former President Barack Obama himself : "I think that Susan Rice, I think that [former deputy national security advisor] Ben Rhodes, I think that most likely Barack Obama himself through his conduits were leaking about the names they got through intelligence." Nunberg told Newsmax : "Democrats "want to use this issue to delegitimize President Trump, to delegitimize his agenda...." • Andrew McCarthy told Newsmax on Tuesday that asking for the names of American citizens to be unmasked for intelligence gathering was a serious abuse of power : "I think it's extraordinarily serious. I've been trying to underscore to people the difference between what's illegal and what's an abuse of power. When Richard Nixon was impeached, or left office on the verge of impeachment, only part of it was a crime in which he had some participation. A lot of the allegations of impeachment against him involved the abuse of power, specifically the abuse of power or attempts to abuse the powers of government agencies like the CIA and the IRS. There's a difference between a violation of criminal law and something that makes somebody unfit for political office. Sometimes those two overlap, but, in this instance I think what we're going to find is what happened here was an abuse of power after a lawful intelligence collection." McCarthy said it constitutes an abuse of power because "the intelligence collection, to the extent it catches Americans which is inevitable, is one of things that the law really grapples with. Because on the one hand we know these powers are very important in terms of knowing what countries that may not have our interest at heart are up to, and at the same time protecting Americans because there's no court order that authorizes the targeting of Americans of these surveillances." When Newsmax asked McCarthy if Rice could claim "executive privilege" if her actions are probed by the FBI, he answered : "Executive privilege belongs to the President, and the President right now is Donald Trump." • • • WILL THE GOP STAND TALL AND PROSECUTE OBAMA AND HIS AIDES? President Trump on Wednesday told the New York Times that former President Obama's National Security Advisor Susan Rice may have committed a crime by requesting the identities of his associates mentioned in communications intercepted by security agencies. In an Oval Offce interview, Trump said : "I think it's going to be the biggest story...It's such an important story for our country and the world. It is one of the big stories of our time." Asked if Rice, who denied leaking any information, had committed a crime, the President told the Times, "Do I think? Yes, I think." Trump said he would explain himself "at the right time." • Republican Senator John Cornyn, a member of both the Senate Judiciary and Select Committee on Intelligence, suggested in a tweet earlier Tuesday that Rice "needs to testify under oath." Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Judiciary Committee, told Fox News earlier that while he doesn't know whether Rice acted improperly, “when it comes to Susan Rice, you need to verify, not trust." Graham said he does not want to form an opinion -- just yet : "There's a way to find out. I intend to find out.” • Senator Rand Paul suggested Rice "ought to be under subpoena," adding that the stories emerging about Rice are "actually eerily similar to what Trump accused them of, which is eavesdropping on conversations for political reasons." Senator Paul, calling it "a big deal," also suggested Rice needs to be asked whether she communicated with President Obama directly about the surveillance information. • And in a letter to both the House and Senate Intelligence committees released Tuesday night, a group of GOP lawmakers who served as members of the Trump transition demanded that Rice be called to testify, suggesting the matter is worthy of an immediate Congressional investigation. In the letter, Representatives Marsha Blackburn, Chris Collins, and Lou Barletta suggest Rice's behavior "appears negligent at best and criminal at worst." • Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich pointed out what she sees as the irony in the situation : "Democrats have gone from: Trump is insane for suggesting Obama admin spied on him, [to] Susan Rice was just doing her job." • It is now the turn of the Republican leadership to earn their salaries and the trust, weak as it is, that America has placed in them to be honest voices for law and order. Appropriate congressional investigations, referrals to the Justice Department for prosecution, and all other legal recourses should be employed. We have had enough of the GOP's laissez faire attitude of lying down so that Progressives can walk all over them while destroying the US Republic and Consitiution. • • • DEAR READERS, the Fourth Amendment shields American citizens from unreasonable search and seizure of not only their person or belongings but also their private communications. This is why government officials must ask a FISA court for permission if they seek to monitor a citizen suspected of acting as an “agent of a foreign power.” These FISA requirements protect US citizens from direct and indirect surveillance. The government has very specific instructions : minimize surveillance of the US citizen -- “minimization procedures” are codified in US law at 50 USC. § 1801, which defines minimization procedures as “specific procedures...to minimize the acquisition and retention, and prohibit the dissemination, of nonpublicly available information concerning unconsenting United States persons.” The accompanying procedures issued by the Director of National Intelligence -- under Obama it was James Clapper, who lied to Congress about surveillance of US citizens and later refused to correct his false testimony -- provide two exceptions for when a US citizen’s name can be unveiled or “unmasked” in the course of monitoring a foreigner: (1) where there is evidence of crime or (2) when it is necessary to understand intelligence information. • Shortly after Nunes announced that “[d]etails about US persons associated with the incoming administration...with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value, were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting,” CNN’s Manu Raju reported : “[s]ome of the communications picked up were Trump transition officials talking about Trump’s family, Intel source says.” Why were conversations about Trump’s family picked up and potentially unmasked and disseminated by the Obama White House? Where was the use if the minimization procedure to protect US citizens from such surveillance. • On Wednesday, American Thinker ran a story with the headline "Somebody's got to go to jail." As late as last October, nobody believed Trump would win the presidency and yet Obama surveillance began three months after Trump announced his candidacy in 2015. American Thinker asks : "What did these spies hope to discover? Something to take him out, to be sure. Of what were they so afraid? That he could actually win? Indeed they were apparently afraid of exactly that and were determined to prevent it." • Obama seems to have made sure that the Trump intel was leaked to the media, and especially after Trump unexpectedly won. It worked : the mainstream media leaked like a sieve. And, as a fallback, Obama &Co devised the "Russian card" -- plant the suspicion that Trump colluded with Russia -- Trump is a world class businessman, and he and his associates would be talking to people around the world, so their intel sweep could 'snare' him. The Obama administration already knew there was no "collusion." Susan Rice's unmasking of Trump intel sweeps had already told them that. There was NO Evidence of any Trump wrongdoing. But, Obama & Co didn't care -- their goal was to take Trump down, and impeach him. This is about civil liberties, but it’s also about the extent to which the Obama administration used the US intelligence apparatus for political means. If Obama and Rice cannot ultimately justify their actions – and they can only do so by conclusively tying Trump to some level of collusion with Moscow – then this is a scandal of historic proportions. We knew of Obama’s contempt for the Constitution. We did not have any idea just how vast that contempt actually was. • Very serious, Soviet-style crimes have been committed by operatives in the Obama administration. But, now it seems that Obama & Co have been uncovered. And someone has to go to jail. • CNN has refused to cover the story. The mainstream media are frantically publishing ridiculous stories in the attempt to convince us of Trump's collusion with Russia. The MSM presents the Trump-Russia collusion story as true even though there is absolutely No Evidence to show that. They present the claim that Trump was spied on as a false story even though we have 100% proof that Trump people were listened to and that the information was leaked to the press. It is the world turned upside down, with truth being ridiculed as lies and lies being spread as truth. As American Thinker put it : "Anyone who believes that Trump wasn't specifically targeted for political reasons probably still believes the Benghazi killings were caused by a video, that Obama had no idea that IRS was targeting political opponents, that Obama had no idea that Hillary was violating the law by using a non-secure server until three years after she left, that Obama had no idea that his administration was gun running to Mexico and that Hillary and her aides had no intent to break the law." • Common Sense, America, Common Sense. We heard that immortal phrase from Tom Paine in 1776 : “Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions....It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies; yet our present numbers are sufficient to repel the force of all the world.” __Thomas Paine, Common Sense. The media and Democrats are colluding -- they mean to destroy President Trump and America for their own personal and collective Progressive socialist gain. Wake up, America.

Is Susan Rice the Leader or the Fall Guy in the Obama Administration Spying on Trump and his Team?

OBAMA WHITE HOUSE UNMASKED TRUMP TEAM NAMES. Sources have told Fox News that National Security Advisor Susan Rice was the Obama White House insider who requested the unmasking of the names of Trump transition officials. On Monday, Fox published an article by Adam Housley, who reported : "Multiple sources tell Fox News that Susan Rice, former national security adviser under then-President Barack Obama, requested to unmask the names of Trump transition officials caught up in surveillance." The unmasked names of people associated with Donald Trump were then sent to everyone at the National Security Council, some at the Defense Department, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan. These were essentially the officials at the top of the Obama naitonal security network. Susan Rice even included former Rice deputy Ben Rhodes. The names, says Housley, were part of "incidental electronic surveillance of candidate and President-Elect Trump and people close to him, including family members, for up to a year before he took office." The Fox article does not make clear how Rice knew to ask for the names to be unmasked, and the question was being posed by the sources late Monday. • • • THE OBAMA SPIN BEGINS. We all remember Susan Rice, who was the Ambassador to the UN when she went on Sunday news shows in September 2012 to say the Benghazi attack was prompted by an internet video. And, in 2014, Rice also told ABC News that Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl "served the United States with honor and distinction" and that he "wasn't simply a hostage, he was an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield." Bergdahl is currently facing court-martial on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy for allegedly walking off his post in Afghanistan. • Former Obama State Department spokeswoman and Fox News contributor Marie Harf told Fox : "What I know is this...If the intelligence community professionals decide that there’s some value, national security, foreign policy or otherwise in unmasking someone, they will grant those requests." former Obama State Department spokeswoman and Fox News. Harf added : "And we have seen no evidence...that there was partisan political notice behind this and we can’t say that unless there’s actual evidence to back that up." • As the Obama administration left office, it also approved new rules that gave the NSA [Susan Rice, for example] much broader powers by relaxing the rules about sharing intercepted personal communications and the ability to share those with 16 other intelligence agencies. When names of Americans are incidentally intercepted, they are supposed to be masked, meaning the name or names are redacted from reports -- whether it is international or domestic collection, unless it is an issue of national security, crime, or if their security is threatened in any way. There are loopholes and ways to unmask through backchannels, but Americans are supposed to be protected from incidental collection. Sources told Fox News that in this case, they were not. As evidence of this, in March Evelyn Farkas, former Obama Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, gave a television interview in which she said : “I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill -- it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration.” • • • HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN NUNES BLOCKED BY INTEL PRO'S. Fox News also reported that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes knew about the unmasking and leaking back in January, well before President Trump’s tweet in March alleging "wiretapping." Nunes has faced criticism from Democrats for viewing pertinent documents on White House grounds and announcing their contents to the press. But sources told Fox : “the intelligence agencies slow-rolled Nunes. He could [eventually] have seen the logs at other places besides the White House SCIF [secure facility], but it had already been a few weeks. So he went to the White House because he could protect his sources and he could get to the logs.” According to the Associated Press, Representative Nunes has said he has seen incidental surveillance reports he fears were used for political reasons. But, Nunes has also said : “I’m not going to comment on this any further until [congressional] committees have come to a conclusion,” adding that there is a noticeable difference between the media’s alleged “lack” of interest in these revelations and the intense coverage of suspected Trump-Russia links. • • • SENATOR RAND PAUL CALLS FOR RICE TO TESTIFY UNDER OATH. Former Obama administration National Security Adviser Susan Rice should be grilled under oath about her reported requests to "unmask" Donald Trump associates contained in intelligence reports, according to Senator Rand Paul. The Kentucky GOP Senator called the unmasking of Americans an "enormous deal," accroding to TheHill. Senator Paul told TheHill : "I don't think we should discount how big a deal it was that Susan Rice was looking at these, and she needs to be asked, did President [Barack] Obama ask her to do this? Was this a directive from President Obama? Is there a possibility that Susan Rice was politically motivated? Let's ask her why she was opening up all of the conversations with Trump transition figures." Senator Paul said Rice's testimony should be "under oath on this. I think she should be asked under oath, did she reveal it to the Washington Post," Paul added, referring to the newspaper that first reported on the unmasking requests. Paul said : "I think they were illegally basically using an espionage tool to eavesdrop or wiretap -- if you want to use the word generally -- on the Trump campaign." The explosive report on the Rice unmasking followed House Intelligence Committee's chairman Nunes statements that information was incidentally collected on Trump transition members in foreign surveillance activities and widely disseminated in the intelligence community. Nunes said he was particularly concerned with the possibility Trump associates were "unmasked" in the intelligence reports. Senator Paul said : "I have been very impressed with Devin Nunes. All of the intelligence hawks don't like him because he appears to have found something, and he's willing to talk about it with the President." Paul said the incidental collection on Americans without a warrant "is inappropriate, and it should be illegal. I don't think you should be allowed to listen to Americans' conversations without a warrant. They are doing it without a warrant. They are targeting a foreigner, and because they are targeting a foreigner, they are gathering all of this information on Americans." • • • TRUMP WHITE HOUSE REACTS. House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, asked about the Susan Rice revelations at Monday’s briefing, declined to comment specifically on what role Rice may have played or officials’ motives. But, President Trump was more direct. Through his private Twitter account on Monday, Trump pointed to expanded Fox News coverage concerning electronic surveillance of himself and people close to him, quoting a Fox reporter's assertion that the incidents were unprecedented : "FoxNews from multiple sources: 'There was electronic surveillance of Trump, and people close to Trump. This is unprecedented.' " • Trump was referring to the Adam Housley report on Friday, prior to the Susan Rice revelation, that numerous private citizens connected with President Trump's campaign team had been "unmasked" in intelligence information swept up in "incidental collection," giving further details in his initial report : "There was electronic surveillance of Trump and the people close to Donald Trump, including some supporters, for up to a year before the inauguration," Housley said. "That information was disseminated. It was unprecedented the way this was done." Housley said that it is still not known who spoke with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes concerning the surveillance, but "we know it's not someone at the White House. We don't know who spoke to the White House about this, other than what Nunes said about the press conference," said Housley, but he added that intelligence sources are "frustrated with the agency they say are being politicized more than they've seen in their career." His sources, Housley continued, "want to make sure it's done correctly," and have told him that they may as well clarify information "since Nunes has been leaked to by someone they don't know or at least they tell me they don't know." • The New York Times last week reported that several sources identified the leakers as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel's Office, but Housley denied Monday that either man was involved. • Messages involving US citizens are supposed to be removed from reports, but on the Trump reports, the names remained [that is, the names were "unmasked"], and "that is unprecedented," said Housley. "They say the information that was unmasked, these names of Americans who had done nothing wrong, was disseminated to all of the National Security Council, some at the Department of Defense, to [James] Clapper and other people at the top." However, Housley continued, his sources did not know just what papers Nunes saw. But, the fact that the information of unmasking names from Donald Trump and his team and his family and disseminating the names to a very select few at the top, and that it was done for a significant amount of time, is "a blockbuster;" according to Housley, who added, "As far as we know. this hasn't been done at least in modern times when it comes to this type of thing." • Also last Friday, Newsmax reported that NBC News had revealed that officials within former President Barack Obama's administration created a list, using serial numbers, to document all of the classified files related to the Russia-election investigation. The purpose was to get the documents in front of Senate Intelligence Committee members before President Trump took office for fear they might get buried come January 20, according to NBC. A former Obama official told NBC they wanted "to share it with those on the Hill who could lawfully see the documents" and keep them in a second safe outside of CIA headquarters. Newsmax stated that the NBC report "echoes what a former Obama Defense Department official has been saying in recent weeks," quoting DOD Deputy Assistant Secretary Evelyn Farkas, now also a national security analyst for NBC News as well as for Fox News. NBC said Farkas "had urged the Obama administration as well as lawmakers to gather and preserve intelligence about the Trump-Russia probe." Farkas told MSNBC last Thursday : "I got worried that the process wasn't being followed with regard to Capitol Hill, with regard to Congress, because it wasn't clear to me that the [Obama] White House was keeping them in the loop. And that was really important, especially since we were about to have a transition in the government." • • • DEAR READERS, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes had to go to the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House in order to secretly view the classified reports that documented what Nunes had known since January -- that private US citizens had been improperly unmasked. Two intelligence sources had approached Nunes about the unmasking, according to Fox reports, telling him who was responsible and giving him at least one of the names that had been unmasked. The sources also gave Nunes the serial numbers of reports that documented the activity. But when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Nunes asked intelligence agencies to see the reports, he was "stonewalled," Fox reports. Nunes finally viewed the information last week, but at the one location that would not compromise the identities of the sources : the Old Executive Office Building on the White House grounds, where there is a secured area in which classified or similar information can be viewed. The White House did not tell Nunes that the reports existed, only helping him get access to them, the sources told Fox. In addition, the sources were not the Trump White House individuals named in a report by The New York Times last Thursday as helping Nunes obtain the information, according to Fox. Nunes then briefed President Trump on the data, drawing fire from Democrats, including Vice Chairman Representative Adam Schiff, for not providing the information to panel members. Nunes apologized the next day, but said that he briefed Trump because the data had no connection to Russia or its investigation of Moscow's role in the election. • That in itself is a shocking revelation -- that the Chairman of the House Intelligence committee had to go to the White House to see classified doculments he is entitled to see as Chairman is an indication of the Deep State's determination to prevent the Trump administration from functioning and to prevent the GOP House majority from doing its job in getting to the bottom of the Obama misuse of classified information. • FURTHER, the idea that any US President and his national security staff would use classified information for political purposes is an astonishing damnation of President Obama and his renegade advisors. A congressional source told Fox News : "The main issue in this case, is not only the unmasking of these names of private citizens, but the spreading of these names for political purposes that have nothing to do with national security or an investigation into Russia's interference in the US election." • The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) only allows for individuals to be revealed in data collected incidentally when it is critical to the intelligence -- and such information is only collected on US residents who communicate with foreign targets. But in this case, according to a Fox source, the names of private citizens connected to the Trump campaign were revealed, even before Trump became the GOP presidential nominee, and it was not out of national security concerns : "Unmasking is not unprecedented, but unmasking for political purposes...specifically of Trump transition team members...is highly suspect and questionable," Fox said, adding that the intelligence source told Fox : "Opposition by some in the intelligence agencies who were very connected to the Obama and Clinton teams was strong. After Trump was elected, they decided they were going to ruin his presidency by picking them off one by one." • Housley insisted in his Monday report naming Susan Rice as the "unmasker" : “It took, obviously, a number of weeks to try to figure out a way for him [Nunes] to see this intelligence, because the agencies were stonewalling, we’re told, to not allow him and others to see it. This is all coming from folks that are in these agencies and frustrated with the politics that is taking place in these agencies. We’re told that the main issue here is not only the unmasking of the names, but the spreading of names for political purposes that have nothing to do with national security and everything to do with hurting and embarrassing Trump and his team.” Housley added : "...after Nunes had been approached by his source, the agencies basically would not allow him in at all." That is why Nunes went to the White House grounds location to read the classified documentation -- it was the only place he could get access to it. • If this disgusting sequence of quasi-criminal events does not put a fire under the Republican House and Senate Intelligence Committees to get all the facts out -- and if it does not move moderate Democrats over onto the GOP side in the investigation -- then we will have the answer to a critical question : "Are Obama and Progressive Democrats deliberately trying to destroy President Trump, the Republican Party and the American majority who support them? The answer is obviously "YES." It is time for every member of the Grand Old Party to wake up and smell the stench -- it is not roses but swamp miasma and the rotting flesh of corruption that has destroyed a major American political party -- the Democrats -- and if any Democrats are appalled by what their Party represents -- the party of Jackson, who was by the way, a landgrabbing enemy of Native Americans -- it is now time to get busy forming its successor. There is no place in the United States or under its Constitution for the elitism that breeds criminality and destroys the foundations of American Republic. Barack Obama and George Soros and the Clintons, and all their minions, must be brought to the bar of justice for their acts. • As for Susan Rice -- she told PBS on March 22 that she “was not aware of any orders given to disseminate that information,” skirting the issues of whether she herself unmasked or disseminated information outright. Rice also limited her remarks to Trump’s debunked early March tweet claiming a wiretap of Trump Tower and vague remarks made by House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes. Rice said : "I know nothing about this. I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today...So today, I really don’t know to what Chairman Nunes was referring. But he said that whatever he was referring to was a legal, lawful surveillance and that it was potentially incidental collection on American citizens.” Rice’s remarks on March 22 focus on the strict legality of the issue -- instead of whether the unmasking was appropriate or of intelligence value. Since Monday's reporting, Rice has remained silent. Whether Susan Rice is once again the pivot in the deliberate dissemination of lies about illicit activiites as in the Benghazi affair, we do not know. Perhaps, she is just the chosen "fall guy" for the latest cover-up of the possibly criminal activities of Obama, Clinton, Soros & Co.

Trump Says North Korea Is on His List, with or without China

Incredible as it is, Progressive Democrats and their mainstream media are blaming President Trump for "sabre rattling' while North Korea's psychotic dictator is showing pictures of ICBMs on state advertisements. • • • TRUMP SAYS IT IS TIME TO STOP NORTH KOREA. In an interview with the Financial Times on Sunday, President Donald Trump said he is open to the possibility of unilateral action against North Korea, should China fail to join the US in pressuring North Korean leader Kim John Un over the nuclear threat his regime poses. Trump said he would discuss the issue at his Florida resort later this week in his first meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping : "China has great influence over North Korea. And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won't. If they do, that will be very good for China, and if they don't, it won't be good for anyone. Well if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. That is all I am telling you." Trump told the FT that it is "totally" possible for the US to act unilaterally, but would not provide details. The White House views North Korea as "the most imminent threat" to the U, and even former President Barack Obama finally agreed, warning Trump about North Korea. • Trump has criticized China over its economic and trade policies, but indicated ahead of the US-China meeting that he thought he could find common ground with the Chinese president. Trump said : "I have great respect for him. I have great respect for China. I would not be at all surprised if we did something that would be very dramatic and good for both countries, and I hope so." • After taking office, Trump asked the National Security Council to put together a list of options which he could present at his meeting with the Chinese president, according to two FT sources. The options include sanctions and more covert activities. Dennis Wilder, a former CIA China analyst and aide to former President George W. Bush, told The Financial Times the list could include pressure on the Chinese government to cut back on North Korean labor or more "controversial" tactics, "like taking covert action against North Korea, for example using cyber." Deputy national security advisor McFarland told the FT in a separate interview that there is "a real possibility that North Korea will be able to hit the US with a nuclear-armed missile by the end of the first Trump term." And, Secretary of State Tillerson, in a visit last month to Asia, announced that the "policy of strategic patience has ended." China voiced concerns over the threat posed by North Korea when its Foreign Minister Wang Yi last month called for a halt to its nuclear program, while also urging the US to cease military exercises in the region. Wang said : "The two sides are like two accelerating trains coming towards each other with neither side willing to give way. The question is, are the two sides really ready for a head-on collision?" • In a separate interview, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the United States is looking to China to take action against North Korea. Haley told ABC on Sunday : "The only country that can stop North Korea is China and they know that. We're going to continue to put pressure on China to have action." The Mar-a-Lago meeting this week will be the two leaders' encounter. Last Thursday, Trump predicted a "very difficult" summit with Xi, noting the disputes over trade policy between the world's two most powerful nations and leading economies. But Haley emphasized that at the meeting "the most important conversation will be how we're going to be dealing with the nonproliferation of North Korea." China is clearly frustrated with Pyongyang's nuclear and missile activities and recently announced a suspension of all coal imports from the North until the end of the year. Haley deemed that measure -- which was in keeping with UN sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear program and missile program -- insufficient, saying that coal is "going in other ways. At some point, we need to see definitive actions by China condemning North Korea and not just calling them out for it." • After North Korea's March missile tests, which came provocatively close to Japan, Trump emphasized his commitment to "deter and defend against North Korea's ballistic missiles using the full range of United States military capabilities." Former US defense secretary Ash Carter, who served under Barack Obama, said the US has "always had all options on the table." Carter was also speaking on ABC, where he recalled that the United States drew up a "preemptive strike plan" in 1994 to knock out North Korea's Yongbyon reactor, during a confrontation over its nuclear program. Carter said : "We have those options. We shouldn't take them off the table." But Carter also said a US strike on North Korea would likely trigger a North Korean attempt to invade South Korea : "This is a war that would have an intensity of violence associated with it that we haven't seen since the last Korean War. Seoul is right there on the borders of the DMZ, so even though the outcome is certain, it is a very destructive war. And so one needs to proceed very carefully here." Carter seemed at odds with his own logic when he added that Washington should continue to pressure China to lean on North Korea, but said he was not optimistic that would lead to anything," because Beijing fears a potential North Korean collapse, which would result in "a unified Korea allied with the United States on their border." • President Trump, for his part, seems to be disappointed in China's lack or cooperation over North Korea. He told the Financial Times : “I do believe in alliances. I believe in relationships. And I believe in partnerships. But alliances have not always worked out very well for us." As a candidate, Trump accused China of unfair trade practices and threatened to raise import taxes on Chinese goods and declare Beijing a currency manipulator, though it is unclear whether Trump will follow through with either threat, but he said on Sunday that he doesn't "want to talk about tariffs yet, perhaps the next time we meet." • • • DEFENSE SECRETARY MATTIS SAYS IT'S TIME TO STOP NORTH KOREA. Newsmax reported last Friday that during a meeting in Great Britain Mattis said North Korea must be stopped on its path toward being able to threaten the United States with nuclear attack, calling North Korea America's top national security concern at the moment. He emphasized diplomatic means of changing Pyongyang's "reckless" agenda. On his first visit to Britain as Pentagon chief, Mattis also took on Russia and said America's priority in Syria is defeating the Islamic State group rather than bringing down President Bashar al-Assad. At a joint news conference with his British counterpart, Michael Fallon, Mattis was reminded by a reporter that as commander of US forces in the Middle East several years ago, he considered Iran to be the biggest threat to US interests. Asked how he would deal with Iran as Secretary of Defense, Mattis called Teheran a problem but quickly pivoted to condemning North Korea and described the isolated, communist country as the more immediate threat : "This is a threat of both rhetoric and growing capability....We are working diplomatically, including with those that we might be able to enlist in this effort to get North Korea under control. But right now it appears to be going in a very reckless manner. That's got to be stopped." • • • NBC INTERVIEWS A HIGH-RANKING NORTH KOREA DEFECTOR. The NBC Nightly News, led by Lester Holt, is telecasting from South Korea early this week and Holt had an exclusive interview with Thae Yong Ho, a senior North Korean defector, who told him that the country's "desperate" dictator is prepared to use nuclear weapons to strike the United States and its allies. Thae Yong Ho is the most high profile North Korean defector in two decades, so he is able to give a rare insight into the secretive regime. According to Thae, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is "desperate in maintaining his rule by relying on his [development of] nuclear weapons and ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missiles]....Once he sees that there is any kind of sign of a tank or an imminent threat from America, then he would use his nuclear weapons with ICBM." • Thae was living in London and serving as North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom when he and his family defected to South Korea and were announced to the world in August. He was not directly involved in North Korea's weapons program but believes his country "has reached a very significant level of nuclear development." North Korea is estimated to have as many as eight nuclear weapons but has not demonstrated the ability to attach them to a long-range rocket, an ICBM, capable of hitting the US. But, earlier in January, Admiral Scott Swift, Commander of the US Pacific Fleet, told NBC : “Kim Jong Un is a man who can do anything beyond the normal imagination,” and is ready to test-fire an ICMB "at any time, at any place....They have the nuclear capability -- they've demonstrated that. And then, where they're going with the miniaturization of that, whether they can actually weaponize a missile, that's what's driving the current concern." • Thae's interview with NBC News comes amidst rising tensions surrounding North Korea, which has significantly increased its missile and nuclear tests under Kim's rule. Admiral James Stavridis, an NBC News analyst and dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts and an outspoken critic of President Trump, told NBC : "It does feel more dangerous -- I'll give you three reasons. One is [Kim's] own precarious situation in command of the nation. Number two is the instability in South Korea. We've just seen the South Korean president indicted, arrested, and incarcerated. And, number three, a new and more aggressive American foreign policy coming from Washington." • Some analysts have warned that military action against North Korea might be very difficult and even disastrous. An invasion could risk a retaliatory strike against US allies of Japan and South Korea, whose capital, Seoul, is just 50 miles from the border. But, Thae warned America and its allies to be prepared : "If Kim Jong Un has nuclear weapons and ICBMs, he can do anything. So, I think the world should be ready to deal with this kind of person." Thae described Kim Jong Un as "a man who can do anything beyond the normal imagination...the final and the real solution to the North Korean nuclear issue is to eliminate Kim Jong Un from the post." According to Thae, Kim is obsessed with obtaining nuclear weapons because he saw what happened to Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, both of whom abandoned their countries' weapons of mass destruction programs and then were overthrown by Western-backed forces. Many analysts agree that Kim sees a nuclear weapon -- and the retaliatory threat it poses -- as an 'insurance policy' against a similar strategy being pursued against him. According to Thae, the world should look to Kim's past actions to see what he is capable of. The young leader has reportedly been responsible for purges and executions of top officials and even members of his own family -- last month, according to US and South Korean intelligence officials, he masterminded the assassination of his own half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, at an airport in Malaysia. • Thae describes himaelf as "a marked man," but since his defection, he has been giving media interviews and denouncing North Korea's brutal society. For this reason he believes he could be the next victim. He made the decision to switch sides, he said, after his two sons began asking questions about why North Korea did not allow the internet, why there was no proper legal system and why officials were executed without trial. But ,defection carried a high price, however, for while Thae was able to escape with his wife and children -- he fears his brother and sister in North Korea have been punished for his actions : "Our freedom here is achieved at the cost of the sacrifice of my family members left in North Korea. When a defection of my level happens, the North Korean regime usually sends the family members of high officials, defectors, to remote areas or labor camps and, to some extent, even to political prison camps as well." This is not unique. More than 100,000 people are believed to have been detained in North Korea's notorious gulags, where they are subjected to forced labor, torture and executions -- treatment the United Nations said was "strikingly similar" to the atrocities of Nazi Germany. Families are taken away by the country's secret police for arbitrary crimes such as "gossiping" about the state. This is, says NBC, all part of the dictatorship's attempt to restrict information reaching North Korean families from the outside world. Most people cannot use the internet or access foreign media -- Kim's attempt to maintain the pretense that his country is prosperous and the Western world is failing. North Korea "remains one of the most repressive states in the world," according to Human Rights Watch. But according to Thae, the mask is slipping. More and more, North Koreans are able to watch South Korean films, giving them a true picture of their far more prosperous neighbor : "I'm absolutely sure that once North Korean people are educated enough, then they may stand up. North Korean population now knows well that South Korea is democratic, the society and economy here are very well." This, Thae told NBC, "has already made the North Korean population not believe what the regime has been teaching and has been brainwashing them. I think this is really a great change in people's mind, because they do not believe in the government's propaganda system. I think that is very important. And once the people do not believe in what the leadership is saying, then there is a great possibility for possible uprising: what happened in Soviet Union, what happened in communist system in Eastern Europe." • • • BUT IRAN'S DICTATORS HOLD ON TO ITS NUCLEAR PROGRAM. Heshmat Alavi wrote recently that the new threat made by Iran to ignore the heavy water limit in the nuclear deal aimed at curbing its nuclear program is a necessary reminder of a very important issue. Despite all the probable results that may ensue from Iran’s upcoming presidential elections, the mullahs’ regime in Teheran will not lose its dangerous characteristics. This, says Alavi, can also be perceived as "a silver bullet against the impression, put forward by the Obama administration, that the highly flawed 2015 accord will actually transform the regime into a 'moderate' entity. While Teheran has been at the receiving end of tens of billions, any engagement between Iran and the West is a repeat of a decades-old failed appeasement policy." • Iran is also currently raising the stakes for Washington and its Middle East allies by carrying out military drills. The regime’s navy is seeking to expand its exercise campaign in international waters, according to Iran’s naval chief, and has already carried out naval drills covering a two million square-kilometer area spanning Persian Gulf waters, especially the complex Strait of Hormuz. Iran has also unveiled the Karrar, claimed to be its first advanced battle tank, despite many questioning the legitimacy of such assertions. Alavi says testing "more sophisticated ballistic missiles continues to be on the regime’s schedule, many of them having nuclear-warhead mounting capability. In the meantime, Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen are now resorting to the use of Iran-designed drone boats packed with explosives. Such practices pose serious threats to commercial and military shipping lines in the strategic Bab el-Mandeb strait....And, in Lebanon, reports suggest that Iran is establishing underground rocket factories for its offspring, the Hezbollah, Teheran’s terrorist client camped deep in southern Lebanon and strategically located near Israel’s northern borders. The controversial matter has continued for decades, and Israel is known to have launched airstrikes targeting Hezbollah convoys and attacking a major arms factory in Sudan." • Regarding human rights, Alavi reports that : "Teheran is escalating the crackdown against any individual deemed to threaten the intense grip the regime has established on political and social matters. Troubling numbers include nearly 3,000 executions under the watch of the so-called 'moderate' Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, including 75 women." • • • ISRAEL AND UAE HOLD JOINT EXERCISES. Against this Iranian backdrop, Thomas Lifson writes in American Thinker that : "It is a new era in the Middle East, with Arab anti-Israel solidarity a thing of the past. Arab potentates have discovered that Persian shiites are an actual offensive threat, while Israel’s desire for peaceful existence is not. While it is common knowledge in the Middle East that on a de facto basis Israel is cooperating with Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, in addition to existing and open relations with Egypt and Jordan, until now there has been very little overt acknowledgement and recognition. But this military patch for the INIOHOS 2017 joint training exercise underway in Greece openly and tangibly displays Israel’s flag next to those of the US, Greece, Italy, and the United Arab Emirates." The left-leaning Israeli media outlet Haaretz reports : "The Israel Air Force began a joint exercise on Monday in Greece that included dozens of aircraft from foreign armies. Dubbed Iniohos 2017, an official report for the Greek air force noted that the air forces of Israel, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and Italy participated in the exercise. The training patch for the exercise includes the flags of the countries along with the slogan "Act with Awareness." The US army reported that it had dispatched 12 F-16C airplanes and close to 220 crew members to participate in the exercise. The joint exercise, according to a US army report, is strengthening ties among the participating countries, maintain[ing] joint readiness and interoperability." • Lifson says "the Mad Mullahs of Teheran have managed to supercharge the process of reconciliation between the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors, a process that is now robust enough that it can be openly acknowledged and commemorated. This isn’t the first time for joint Israeli-Emerati exercises. Last August’s Red Flag training mission, was an “aerial combat training exercise in Nevada which [had] the participation of the air forces of Israel, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Spain, in addition to the United States.” But, concludes Lifson; " this time around, it is a step more open and officially recognized." • • • ISRAEL'S "DAVID SLING" AIR DEFENSE SYSTEM OPERATIONAL. Israel Today reported on Saturday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the ceremony marking the operational integration of the David's Sling air defense system at the Hatzor Air Force Base in southern Israel. "The three tiers of Israel's anti-missile defense technology now comprises of Iron Dome, which covers short range rockets and missiles (up to 70km range), David's Sling the medium range system (70 – 300km range), and the Arrow III exoatmospheric anti-ballistic missile system." David's Sling was developed in the last 10 years by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems in cooperation with the IDF, as an answer to medium range kamikazi drones, rockets and missile fire. Unlike Iron Dome, which is stationary and defends specific areas of Israel, David's Sling is portable, providing national coverage." • • • DEAR READERS, as President Trump gives the US Department of Defense more leeway than it ever had under Barack Obama to exercise control over defense decisions, more US troops have been deployed acoss the Middle East and Africa. And, last week President Trump gave the US military more authority to conduct offensive airstrikes on al-Qaida-linked militants in Somalia. The changes in President Trump's first two months in office underscore his willingness to let the Pentagon manage its own day-to-day combat. Under the Obama administration, military leaders chafed about micromanagement that included commanders needing approval for routine tactical decisions about targets and personnel moves. But delegating more authority to the Pentagon and combat decisions to lower level officers carries its own military and political risks -- especially civilian and American service member causalties. And, Alice Hunt Friend, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, cited yet another concern : Military operations becoming "divorced from overall foreign policy" could make both civilian leaders and the military vulnerable to runaway events : "Political leaders can lose control of military campaigns." • But top military leaders say they need to be able to act quicker against US enemies. And they've been staunchly supported by Trump, who has promised to pursue islamic extremists more aggressively and has echoed the view of Pentagon leaders that the Obama administration's tight control over military operations limited effectiveness. The DOD has quietly doubled the number of US forces in Syria. It has moved military advisers closer to front lines in Iraq. It has publicly made the case for more troops in Afghanistan. The White House is tentatively scheduled this coming week to discuss providing intelligence, refueling and other assistance to the UAE as it fights Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to unnamed officials who weren't authorized to speak about a confidential meetings. The US military wants some decisions quickly. Iraqi forces are trying to complete the recapture of Mosul, an ISIS stronghold, and more American advisors closer to the battle can help. US-backed fighters are closing in on Raqqa and the Pentagon is pushing to accelerate the effort. Conducting both operations at the same time, the DOD argues, will put a lot of pressure on ISIS. • And, our hearts and prayers go out ot the victims and families of the explosion on Monday afternoon that shredded part of a subway train in the Russian city of St. Petersburg, killing at least 11 people and injuring 47 others. It reminds us that we do not have a moment to lose in attacking ISIS and other islamic terrorist groups. The blast occurred as Russian President Vladimir Putin was visiting St. Petersburg, his hometown. Witnesses described seeing a man throwing a backpack onto the train moments before the deadly blast, according to the Daily Mail report. Police are looking for two suspects. Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee says it has found and de-activated a bomb at another St. Petersburg subway station. Putin said investigators are treating the explosion as a terror attack. He offered his condolences to the families of those killed. Viktor Ozerov, head of the upper house of parliament's security committee, said : "All the signs of a terrorist attack are there. The complex of measures against terrorism in the country failed." St. Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city with over 5 million residents, is its most popular tourist destination. The two stations that were targeted are some of the subway's busiest. Russian transport facilities have been hit by terrorists before. Double suicide bombings in the Moscow subway in March 2010 killed 40 people and wounded more than 100. Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov claimed responsibility for that attack by two female suicide bombers, warning Russian leaders that "the war is coming to their cities." And, the high-speed Moscow-to-St.Petersburg train was also bombed on November 27, 2009, in an attack that left 26 dead and 100 injured. Umarov's group also said he ordered this attack. • The US Department of Defense leadership has good reason to want to get started quickly on erasing the years of Obama inertia in the face of islamic terrorism.