"In San Francisco, immigrants who are in the country illegally are now eligible to register and vote in school board elections. Of course, this is clearly illegal under the California Constitution.

"Article II, Section 2 of the California Constitution says: 'A United States citizen 18 years of age and resident in this State may vote.'

"However, the pro-illegal immigration, sanctuary state-supporting Democratic majority in the state Legislature has no interest in enforcing the law when it's being ignored by fellow Democrats.

"After all, the long-range plans Democrats have for a ruling majority depend on continuous law- breaking to get enough non-Americans to vote. The Californians who don't support the radical views of Democrats can simply be eclipsed by non-citizen voters supporting the Democrats. ...

"A sound immediate step would be for Congress to pass a law reaffirming that you must be an American citizen to vote in all American elections. Let's see how many Democrats would oppose this simple requirement."

"Georgia's Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump on July 18, defeated his opponent Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle on Tuesday, securing his candidacy for governor in a primary runoff election.

"Kemp was just one of several other Republican nominees up for election in November who secured his party's nomination after rallying the support of the president, proving Trump's influence over the outcome of 2018's primaries. Kemp won the nomination with 69.4 percent of the vote, beating Cagle, who got 30.6 percent of the vote, The New York Times reported Tuesday. Kemp raked in 294,763 votes to Cagle's 129,861 votes.

"In the race for governor, the Trump favorite, who campaigned on hard-line immigration and pro-gun policies, will be up against Stacey Abrams come November, potentially the first black female governor in the United States, according to The Washington Post."

"As for Russia itself, it is as much an enemy or friend of the U.S. as is China. But its espionage campaign against the U.S. pales in scope and resources to that of the Chinese. Russia's aggressions along its borders do not match China's intimidation of neighbors or its creation and militarization of some atolls in the Spratly Islands or its neocolonial global initiatives.

"North Korea's nuclear proliferation was mostly the work of China, not Russia. Russia worries about China and radical Islam almost as much as we do. In terms of population and economic clout, current defense investments, and bellicosity shown the U.S., China is the existential threat, not Russia.

"All that is not to say that Putin would not act like China if he could, only that he lacks the wherewithal to do so, with an economy one-twentieth the size of ours, and with longstanding crises of demography, longevity, and social equilibrium. Without his nuclear arsenal, Putin's would be as dangerous to the U.S. as an Iran or Venezuela. ...

"It is difficult now to imagine what else Trump might still do to punish Putin. He has already beefed up sanctions, expelled Russians, had Russian mercenary thugs killed in Syria, sent threats to Putin not to overreach in Syria, armed the Ukrainians, expanded U.S. oil production, increased defense spending, jawboned NATO to toughen up, and blasted German-Russian appeasement and the dangerous developing German dependency on Russian fossil fuels.

"What more concrete action do Trump haters want: air strikes on Moscow? Or would they prefer that Trump drop all the above of punitive action, if Trump only would guarantee Putin that after his envisioned reelection in 2020, American policy would be 'more flexible' in ending all talk of U.S. missile defense in Eastern Europe?"

Read entire article here

"The weekend release of a highly-redacted version of the FBI's application for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to wiretap onetime Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page has renewed the argument over the Nunes memo -- the brief report produced by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes detailing problems in the application. From the time of the memo's release in February, Democrats and some in the press have denounced it as a collection of lies and mischaracterizations. On Saturday night, the denouncing started again. 'The only thing the newly released FISA documents show is that Republicans have been lying for months,' the lefty think tank Center for American Progress said in a typical response.

"Now, however, we have both the memo and the FISA application, if in a blacked-out state. We can compare the two. And doing so shows the Nunes memo was overwhelmingly accurate. Perhaps some Democrats do not believe it should have been written, or they dispute what it included and left out, or they do not agree with its conclusions, but it was in fact accurate."

"Sen. Joe Manchin has a potentially worrisome re-election race this fall, but a new West Virginia poll shows one surefire way to increase his favorable odds: a vote for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

"A Trafalgar Group survey out Thursday puts Manchin at a whopping 29-point advantage over his Republican competitor, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey -- if he chooses to vote for Kavanaugh. Conversely, a vote against the nominee puts Manchin at a mere two-point lead -- a statistical dead heat that falls within the poll's margin of error.

"In the RealClearPolitics polling average, Manchin holds a seven-point lead in a state currently rated 'leans Democratic.' In the Trafalgar poll, Manchin holds a 10-point lead without adding the question about Kavanaugh."

"Why is Germany the most anti-American of NATO members?

"Germany started and lost two world wars -- and was defeated due in part to the late entrance of the United States. The unification of Germany brought millions of East Germans into the West, many of them raised under a communist system that blamed the U.S. for the world's ills.

"When Russia will be providing more than half of Germany's natural gas instead of threatening to fire tactical nuclear missiles at Berlin, the U.S. military is no longer deemed so important to German security.

"Add up all these disparate realities and the real crisis of NATO becomes clearer. The alliance's most affluent and dominant European member sets a pernicious example by failing to meet its alliance obligations.

"Germany demands that the United States continue to be the largest funder of NATO and yet has an unfavorable view of America -- and an increasingly favorable view of NATO's supposed common threat, Russia.

"Other fearful European NATO nations are used to being dominated by Germany and either keep quiet or follow its lead.

"This is the NATO that Mr. Trump inherited and that he tried to shake up with his customary art-of-the-deal antics."

Read entire article here.

"Former FBI Director James Comey tweeted late Tuesday night that 'all who believe in this country's values must vote for Democrats this fall.'

"Comey blamed the Republicans in Congress for proving 'incapable of fulfilling the Founders' design that 'Ambition must ... counteract ambition.'

"'Policy differences don't matter right now. History has its eyes on us,' Comey added. ...

"Trump fired Comey in May 2017 which caused a series of events that led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to lead the Justice Department's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Since being fired, Comey has compared Trump's leadership to a Mafia boss and called him 'morally unfit' to hold the presidency. Trump responded by calling Comey an 'untruthful slime ball' and the worst FBI leader ever.

"Comey has also been criticized for his actions as FBI director and the decisions in the investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server, with many Democrats -- including Clinton -- blaming him for her election loss. The Justice Department Inspector General found he made serious errors in judgment throughout the probe, including his late-October letter to Congress announcing a re-opening of the investigation."

"The Treasury Department will allow some nonprofit groups to provide less information about donors on their tax forms in a win for conservative organizations engaged in politics.

"Until now, nonprofit groups, including charities and trade associations, had to list contributors who give at least $5,000 on what is known as Schedule B. The IRS received the complete version, and the groups publicly released redacted forms without identifying information about donors. ...

"'Americans shouldn't be required to send the IRS information that it doesn't need to effectively enforce our tax laws, and the IRS simply does not need tax returns with donor names and addresses to do its job in this area,' Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. 'This change will in no way limit transparency. The same information about tax-exempt organizations that was previously available to the public will continue to be available, while private taxpayer information will be better protected.' ...

"'The IRS's decision is a move in the right direction to end activist regulators' culture of intimidation to silence political speech,' said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) 'More and more states were using these documents to chill political discourse, rather than encourage it.'

"In 2016, a federal judge blocked then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris's demand for Americans for Prosperity's donor list, saying she needed it for investigative purposes. In his ruling, the judge pointed out that the state's 'pervasive, recurring pattern' of accidental Schedule B disclosures to the public made it impossible to believe the attorney general would keep Americans for Prosperity's donor list confidential."

"The left wing of the Democratic party believes that history is on its side and that they can sweep away the party's weak-kneed leadership. They point to surveys suggesting that younger people are increasingly interested in socialism as a desirable economic system. A recent Emerson College survey, for instance, found that Americans ages 18 to 34 prefer capitalism to socialism as the better system by only one point: 42 percent for capitalism to 41 percent for socialism. 'The future belongs to us,' bellows Bernie Sanders to his audience.

"But no so fast. Overall, voters prefer capitalism, by 54 percent to 24 percent. Among Americans 35 and older, the difference in support for capitalism over socialism was between 38 and 42 percentage points. And we can't forget the famous adage from French jurist Anselme Batbie (often wrongly attributed to Winston Churchill) about the fickle nature of young political views with the passage of time: 'If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.'"

"FBI agent Peter Strzok was full of indignant outrage Thursday as he testified before Congress, and all sides reacted accordingly. ...

"Strzok and his inamorata, Lisa Page, can insist forever that their bias didn't impact either probe, but their lack of restraint is proof that they'd lost all objectivity.

"And the fact that their colleagues either saw no sign of the romance, or didn't care, speaks poorly of their professionalism, too.

"Democrats took Strzok's claims at face value, literally applauding him at one point. Republicans stuck to their partisan points, too.

"But the basic facts speak for themselves: With his flagrant misconduct, Peter Strzok brought shame to the FBI and the entire Justice Department. He should be ashamed of himself, rather than playing the victim."

Read entire article here.