"The House Intelligence Committee has released findings from its upcoming report on the Trump-Russia affair -- and its main conclusion is that it has discovered no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.

"'We have found no evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians,' the committee said in a one-page summary of its findings released Monday afternoon.

"In addition, the committee took issue with the intelligence community assessment of Russian motivations in the 2016 election. The committee agrees with the assessment that the Russians did, in fact, try to interfere -- the findings cite 'Russian cyberattacks on U.S. political institutions in 2015-2016 and their use of social media to sow discord.' But the committee disagrees with the intelligence community judgment that Russian President Vladimir Putin specifically tried to help President Trump win the election.

"The committee's findings say investigators came to 'concurrence with the Intelligence Community Assessment's judgments, except with respect to Putin's supposed preference for candidate Trump.'

"On the question of collusion, Republican Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, who has formally run the committee's probe, told reporters Monday that, 'We found no evidence of collusion. We found perhaps bad judgment, inappropriate meetings, inappropriate judgment in taking meetings.'

"'But only Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn or someone else like that could take this series of inadvertent contacts with each other, or meetings, whatever, and weave that into a some sort of fictional page-turner spy thriller,' Conaway continued. 'But we're not dealing with fiction, we're dealing with facts. And we found no evidence of any collusion, of anything that people were actually doing, other than taking a meeting they shouldn't have taken or inadvertently being in the same building.'"

"President Trump thinks arming school staff and teachers deter threats. Surprise, media fact checkers from The New York Times to FactCheck.org accuse him of 'false and misleading claims' to 'inaccurate facts.'

"The FactCheck.org analysis has been carried on hundreds of news site. Yet, any serious look at the data shows that Mr. Trump's arguments are more clearly grounded in facts and a deeper understanding of these attacks than the fact checkers would dare let their readers know.

"This isn't a theoretical debate, as 25 states to varying degrees, allow concealed handgun permit holders, including staff and teachers, to carry guns on K-12 school grounds. Some such as Alabama, New Hampshire, Utah and much of Oregon allow anyone with a regular concealed handgun permit to carry. ...

"There hasn't been a mass public shooting at any school that allows teachers and staff to carry. Despite decades of experience, there have been no problems."

Read entire article here.

"There's only one credible reason North Korea's murderous dictator Kim Jong-un would mean what he says about wanting to talk with President Trump about denuclearizing North Korea.

"Pyongyang must be so desperately close to bankruptcy that it soon won't be able to keep the lights on.

"The thanks go to Mr. Trump for getting the United Nations, including China and Russia in an extraordinary move, to approve economic sanctions and China itself for putting the squeeze on Mr. Kim.

"If the communist North is about to go belly up, the Kim offer could be real.

"But he and his father and grandfather have proven to be consummate liars in the past, winning concessions from us then thumbing their noses."

"The Justice Department announced Wednesday it would hand over documents related to the Obama-era Fast and Furious gun scandal to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"Former President Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder had previously refused to produce documents requested by Oversight, documents which former Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz at the time called 'critical' to pursuing the investigation.

"The original Fast and Furious operation -- conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives -- somehow allowed nearly 2,000 firearms to find their way into the hands of Mexican cartel members."

"A federal judge in Northern California has declined a request from California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to block the Trump administration's decision to withhold a law enforcement grant to the state as part of its crackdown on states and jurisdictions that protect illegal immigrants.

"Becerra asked for a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration's decision, but Judge William Orrick of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled against taking that step.

"'The injury threatened is not irreparable,' Orrick wrote. 'The amount of money at stake is small compared to the state's budget. Payment is delayed, for the moment. The DOJ appears to be using its regular administrative process to decide whether it will follow its initial inclinations.'

"The judge said at some point in the future, the case 'may help define the contours of the state's broad constitutional police powers under the Tenth Amendment and the federal government's "broad, undoubted power over the subject of immigration and the status of aliens."'"

"The security clearance process has tied the Trump administration in knots -- and that is exactly what the bureaucrats running the White House personnel security office intended, said a lawyer who has been battling the office.

"The problem is a small group of career bureaucrats holed up in the Old Executive Office Building who turned security reviews into quicksand to ensnare President Trump's team, said Sean M. Bigley, a federal security clearance lawyer who represents several senior administration officials caught up in the process.

"'The security clearance process is being weaponized by anti-Trump bureaucrats who are using it as a tool to not only thwart the president's agenda but to prevent him from installing appointees who will execute it,' Mr. Bigley told The Washington Times.

"His account of obstruction and stalling tactics bolsters White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly's criticism of the security office and further illuminates recent incidents involving security clearances that have embarrassed Mr. Trump, including a downgrade of top-secret clearance for senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

"The foot-dragging in the security clearance process is prevalent throughout the administration, including at the Defense Department, but the problem is most visible and startling at the White House, said Mr. Bigley."

Read entire article here.

"President Donald Trump genuinely believes that his steel and aluminum tariffs will save thousands of blue-collar jobs. And we know from our interactions with him that he truly cares about these workers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other Rust Belt states. We do, too, and we don't want factories to shut down.

"But even if tariffs save every one of the 140,000 or so steel jobs in America, they put at risk 5 million jobs in industries that use steel. These producers now have to compete in hyper-competitive international markets using steel that is 20 percent above the world price and aluminum that is 7 to 10 percent higher than the price paid by our foreign rivals.

"Steel and aluminum may win in the short term, but steel-and-aluminum users and consumers lose.

"Tariffs are really tax hikes. Since so many of the things American consumers buy today are made of steel or aluminum, a 25 percent tariff on these commodities may get passed on to consumers at the cash register. This is a regressive tax on low-income families.

"Meanwhile, up to 5 million jobs will be put in harm's way. And if U.S. steel-and-aluminum-using industries sell less to foreigners, the trade deficit goes up, not down."

"Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is trying to turn corporate America into her lobbyists.

"'I urge you to use your financial leverage,' the Senate Banking Committee member and probable 2020 presidential candidate wrote to the head of BlackRock hedge fund, 'as a major gun company shareholder to encourage more responsible actions by these companies.' Warren invoked what she said was BlackRock's 'duty to positively contribute to society' and instructed the executive that this means leaning on gunmakers and pushing more restrictions on gun use and ownership. ...

"Democrats used to say they were worried that big money, particularly big finance, had too much power in politics. That's how the party tried to justify its proposal to regulate free speech with 'campaign finance reform.' After the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United that Congress may not stop groups from criticizing politicians close to the election, Democrats decried the phenomenon of corporations using their 'powerful position' to put their thumb on the scale of political issues.

"But that was then, and this is now.

"Warren wants business to put their thumb on the political scales."

Read entire article here.

"The NRA is a grass-roots organization made up of millions of decent, patriotic Americans who believe that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens make our country safer, not more dangerous. To suggest that it is responsible for what happened in Parkland is obscene. Police officers were called to shooter Nikolas Cruz's house on 39 separate occasions since 2010. The FBI was warned about the shooter in January and failed to adhere to its own procedures to follow up. An armed sheriff's deputy was on the scene at the shooting, but he failed to act. And yet somehow the NRA is at fault? Please. ...

"NRA members have done more to prevent gun deaths, and promote firearms safety, than any other citizens' association in the country. When Democrats respond to shootings like the one in Parkland by demonizing the NRA and calling for a ban on weapons such as the AR-15 that are critical to Americans' right to self-defense, they send a clear and unmistakable message to millions of gun owners across the country: We don't respect you or your gun rights. This makes it harder to reach bipartisan agreement on solutions that could improve public safety without threatening the fundamental constitutional right of Americans to keep and bear arms."

"WASHINGTON -- Jerome H. Powell, the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, painted an optimistic picture of the United States economy on Tuesday and signaled that he will continue to bolster strong growth during testimony before Congress in his public debut as head of the central bank.

"Mr. Powell, in remarks to the House Financial Services Committee, said the job market and business investment continued to strengthen, and that headwinds once holding back the American economy had now turned into tailwinds.

"But he emphasized that he planned to continue the policies of his predecessor, Janet L. Yellen, who managed to gradually raise interest rates during her four-year term while still encouraging broad economic growth.

"The Fed 'will continue to strike a balance between avoiding an overheated economy' and allowing inflation to tick up toward the Federal Reserve's 2 percent target, Mr. Powell said. 'Further gradual increase in the federal funds rate will best promote attainment of both of our objectives,' he added."