"From the first, these columns have argued that the whitewash of the Hillary Clinton-emails caper was President Barack Obama's call -- not the FBI's, and not the Justice Department's. The decision was inevitable. Obama, using a pseudonymous email account, had repeatedly communicated with Secretary Clinton over her private, non-secure email account.

"These emails must have involved some classified information, given the nature of consultations between presidents and secretaries of state, the broad outlines of Obama's own executive order defining classified intelligence (see EO 13526, section 1.4), and the fact that the Obama administration adamantly refused to disclose the Clinton-Obama emails. If classified information was mishandled, it was necessarily mishandled on both ends of these email exchanges.

"If Clinton had been charged, Obama's culpable involvement would have been patent. In any prosecution of Clinton, the Clinton-Obama emails would have been in the spotlight. For the prosecution, they would be more proof of willful (or, if you prefer, grossly negligent) mishandling of intelligence. More significantly, for Clinton's defense, they would show that Obama was complicit in Clinton's conduct yet faced no criminal charges.

"That is why such an indictment of Hillary Clinton was never going to happen. ..."

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"Now Mitch McConnell has promised to allow an up-or-down vote on DACA in early February that ensures the immigration debate will consume Washington for the next few weeks. It seems there's already consensus forming among analysts that this is a loser for Republicans. But maybe the lesson of the shutdown is that DACA, and the debate surrounding illegal immigrants in general, isn't as simple or as powerful as Democrats imagine. Maybe the shutdown's lesson is that Trump can hold out for a wall and other concessions on chain migration and enforcement in exchange for an easier path towards legalization for those already here. Maybe the lesson is that a deal is available.

"Because if the wall is just a silly, ineffective, useless prop then certainly it would make sense for Democrats to accede to its creation to help legalize the Dreamers and create a more rational and ethical immigration policy. If they don't, cynical people might start to get the impression that Democrats are far more interested in creating millions of new Democrats than they are in creating a lawful and rational process that respects the sovereignty of their nation."

"Democrats' solution to the government shutdown could be as harmful to the party as the shutdown was itself.

"The war between hardline progressive and centrist Democrats inflamed by the party's 2016 presidential primary contest has ebbed and flowed, but the agreement Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., came to with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Monday ignited yet another bitter battle. The same grassroots progressive base that pressured Democrats into the shutdown is now irate over party leadership's solution to it. ...

"In short, the shutdown turned out to be a mess for the Democratic Party."

"Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch knew well in advance of FBI Director James Comey's 2016 press conference that he would recommend against charging Hillary Clinton, according to information turned over to the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Friday.

"The revelation was included in 384 pages of text messages exchanged between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and it significantly diminishes the credibility of Lynch's earlier commitment to accept Comey's recommendation -- a commitment she made under the pretense that the two were not coordinating with each other.

"And it gets worse. Comey and Lynch reportedly knew that Clinton would never face charges even before the FBI conducted its three-hour interview with Clinton, which was supposedly meant to gather more information into her mishandling of classified information.

"On July 1, 2016, as the Lynch announcement became public, Page texted Strzok:

"Page: 'And yeah, it's a real profile in couragw [sic], since she knows no charges will be brought'."

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"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed a bill to renew the National Security Agency's warrantless internet surveillance program for six years with minimal changes, overcoming objections from civil liberties advocates that it undermined the privacy of Americans.

"The legislation, which easily passed the House of Representatives last week, is expected to be signed into law by President Donald Trump by Friday.

"Thursday's 65-34 passage in the Senate was largely a foregone conclusion, after senators earlier this week cleared a 60-vote procedural hurdle, which split party lines and came within one vote of failing.

"Passage of the legislation marked a disappointing end to a years-long effort by a coalition of liberal Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans to redefine the scope of U.S. intelligence collection following the 2013 disclosures of classified surveillance secrets by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden."

"It would no doubt surprise Democrats that a study by William C. Randolph of the Congressional Budget Office estimated that 'Domestic labor bears slightly more than 70 percent of the burden of the corporate income tax.' Other studies have come to similar conclusions. In other words, most of the payoff of lowered corporate tax rates would accrue to employees. Ideally the corporate income tax should be reduced to zero, but reducing it by two fifths (from 35 percent to 21 percent) is a major step forward and is already generating substantial positive changes.

"Assume, for the sake of discussion, that the entire burden of the corporate income tax is borne by corporate owners. Are all of the owners of corporate shares wealthy? Of course not.

"Trillions of dollars of corporate stock are owned by pension plans, which are owned by employees in all income levels. If a reduction of the corporate tax results in a higher level of stock prices and increased dividends, millions of Americans will enjoy more prosperous and worry-free retirement years.

"All indications so far are that tax reform is stimulating faster economic growth. Even before tax reform became law, the anticipation of it was one of the causes of faster GDP growth, lower unemployment, and a booming stock market. Black and Hispanic unemployment rates are the lowest they've been since they've been measured.

"In a single masterful stroke Trump and his fellow Republicans have increased the net profits of virtually every corporation in America. That is going to set off an economic chain reaction."

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"President Trump's White House physician said Tuesday that the president received a perfect score on a cognitive test designed to screen for neurological impairment, which the military doctor said was evidence that Mr. Trump does not suffer from mental issues that prevent him from functioning in office.

"'I've found no reason whatsoever to think the president has any issues whatsoever with his thought processes,' Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, a rear admiral in the Navy and the White House physician, told reporters on Tuesday.

"Mr. Trump's first physical examination as president was highly anticipated, in part because of an increasing number of public questions about his sometimes erratic behaviour during his first year in office. A book published this month, 'Fire and Fury' by Michael Wolff, asserted that even Mr. Trump's own advisors and associates questioned the president's fitness for office."

"On Jan. 1, by the grace of God -- or of the government, which is pretty much the same thing to progressives -- a sliver of a right was granted to Oregonians: Henceforth they can pump gas into their cars and trucks, all by themselves. But only in counties with populations of less than 40,000, evidently because this walk on the wild side is deemed to be prudent only in the hinterlands, where there is a scarcity of qualified technicians trained in the science of pumping.

"Still, 2018 will be the year of living dangerously in the state that was settled by people who trekked there on the Oregon Trail, through the territory of Native Americans hostile to Manifest Destiny. ...

"Oregon's Legislature offers 17 reasons 'it is in the public interest to maintain a prohibition on the self-service dispensing of Class 1 flammable liquids' -- aka gasoline, which you put in your car's 'Class 1 flammable-liquids tank.'

"The first reason is: The dispensing of such liquids 'by dispensers properly trained in appropriate safety procedures reduces fire hazards.' This presumably refers to the many conflagrations regularly occurring at filling stations throughout the 48 states where 96 percent of Americans live lives jeopardized by state legislators who are negligent regarding their nanny-state duty to assume that their constituents are imbeciles."

"Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in Elizabeth Warren's house as people went crazy over the prospect of Oprah 2020. I can only imagine Warren's reaction. Did she yell at the TV? Mutter under her breath? Immediately call her media consultant in panic?

"We know the slight got to her. By midweek she was making the rounds on cable. There she was, with Mark Warner of Virginia, reminding us of her existence, talking about God knows what, and smiling uncomfortably when asked, inevitably, what she thought of the Lady O.

"Watching Warren and Warner, I had a vision of the next Democratic ticket. How ironic if Democrats, having lost to President Trump with a liberal woman and a boring Virginia centrist in 2016, respond four years later by nominating ... a liberal woman and a boring Virginia centrist."

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"President Trump set off another Twitter firestorm last week when he hinted that he may be considering cutting off hundreds of millions of dollars in annual U.S. aid to the Palestinians. Trump was angered over Palestinian unwillingness to engage in peace talks with Israel after the Trump administration announced the move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

"Given that the U.S. channels its Palestinian aid through third-party United Nations organizations, it's unclear how much money Trump is talking about it. But in total it may exceed $700 million per year, according to reports. ...

"The Palestinians' inability to rule the West Bank in constitutional fashion is why hundreds of thousands of expatriate Palestinians voice their solidarity from a safe distance while living in North America or Europe. More than a million Palestinians prefer to stay put in Israel. They are convinced that they will have more security, freedom, and prosperity in a democratic state than under dictatorial Palestinian rule a few miles away.

"Trump may be rash and unfamiliar with the stagnant Middle East peace process, but his political instincts are probably correct. Polls show that less than 20 percent of Americans support the Palestinian cause. Many U.S. citizens are tired of subsidizing those who claim that they do not like their benefactors in the United States.

"It finally may be time for the Palestinian factions to fund their own causes and go their own ways."

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