"'Political morality' may seem an oxymoron, but our children and grandchildren need to know that there are still responsible adults, no matter what their political affiliation, who will protect them from a vulgarized culture -- and who will scorn those who need disdaining, whatever the political cost. Politics is cheap, but a culture is priceless."

"The US congresswoman who testified that current members of Congress are known sex harassers said Tuesday night that $15 million in hush money has been paid to accusers.

"Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif) told MSNBC that the millions have been doled out to alleged victims of harassment from congressional members over the past decade. ...

"She did not discose what members of Congress have been accused of sexual misconduct."

"The FCC stands at the brink of a major achievement -- ending a failed two-year experiment in federal micromanagement of broadband and a return to the effective, bipartisan 'light-touch' policy under which the Internet has thrived for the past two decades.

"Chairman Ajit Pai's return to deregulation promises to unleash a new burst of network deployment and innovation, throwing off failed regulatory shackles that saw broadband investment drop $2.4 billion in the last two years.

"But in a classic case of one step forward, two steps back, the extreme 'resistance' armies of the far left are threatening to attack this progress with a rear-guard campaign pressuring state and local governments to undermine the FCC's deregulatory order.

"This obstructionist strategy risks slicing the Internet into a balkanized patchwork of fifty different regulatory regimes and grinding the digital economy to a standstill. The FCC has the power to prevent this disastrous outcome, and it absolutely must do so. ...

"The FCC can avoid this outcome by including in the final Restoring Internet Freedom order a clear statement reclassifying broadband as an interstate information service and establishing a clear national policy of light-touch deregulation overseen by the FCC and FTC.

"For the sake of the Internet's future, let's hope they do so."

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"What kind of demonic soul walks into a church a murders 26 innocent people, including several children, at point-blank range?

"What kind of heartless monster instantly seizes on such senseless tragedy to advance a personal political agenda?

"Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, for one. Authorities identified the killer as a severely deranged and violent reject illegally in possession of guns, but Ms. Warren somehow accused the Republican Party of perpetrating the atrocity. ...

"Such is the state of politics in America today that one entire wing of elected politicians is dominated by people who eagerly salivate every time a whacko gunman goes on some senseless rampage."

"All those patdowns and all that time in all those TSA lines, and it remains just 'security theater': Transportation Security Administration screeners are still basically worthless.

"News out of the House Committee on Homeland Security this week is that TSA agents missed 80 percent of undercover testers' mock knives, guns and explosives. ...

"[I]t's still undeniable that the main achievement of the TSA's most public activity is inflicting pointless delays and inconvenience on travelers."

"So, now we know.

"We know that the Texas church shooter should not have been able to own or obtain a gun under federal law. He had a long history of mental illness and criminal behavior: He escaped from a mental institution in 2012, threatened his superior officers and attempted to smuggle weapons onto a military base to carry out those threats, cracked the skull of his infant stepson, beat his wife, abused a dog. He was convicted of domestic violence and did twelve months in the brig and was busted down in rank to E-1. The Air Force failed to inform the FBI, and so the shooter successfully bought four weapons in four years.

"This isn't unique. The racist Charleston church-massacre perpetrator obtained his gun despite pending felony charges; the FBI screwed up. The Orlando nightclub shooter had been investigated twice by the FBI, but they didn't charge him with a crime. The Sandy Hook shooter obtained his weapons illegally. The FBI simply missed the San Bernardino terrorists, despite years of open talk about carrying out a terror attack.

"And yet the Left continues to maintain that government action should be the chief methodology for stopping mass shootings. In particular, it insists that we pass new gun-control laws. There has been no significant call to make government agencies more efficient or staff them more appropriately; in fact, the Left has repeatedly shied away from blaming the government generally. Instead, we're told that a few more words on a few more pieces of paper should ensure that babies aren't shot in church pews."

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"Trump may have received setbacks by proxy at the ballot boxes in New Jersey and Virginia, but in the realm of foreign policy he is achieving signal success. Who knew this would be the area of his greatest accomplishments, the area where he appeared to have no prior experience whatsoever? ...

"On the foreign front ... Trump is succeeding as no American president has in years. By taking the gloves off our troops, he has given ISIS the boot (at least in their quondam caliphate) and helped put in place conditions that are causing the current shakeup in Saudi Arabia that most see as salutary. This will enable the Saudis to modernize and confront Islamo-imperialist Iran before the mullahs run rampant over the entire Middle East -- something any decent person should applaud, at least if he or she isn't part of the former Obama administration.

"In the next day or so Trump will facing his biggest foreign test yet... no, not Putin, though he is apparently on the schedule... Xi Jinping. China is obviously our primary adversary with Russia not much more than a sideshow, despite what Robert Mueller or Fusion GPS might tell us. The battle for the 21st century will be between China and the U.S., possibly with India, not Russia, as a distant third."

"The Air Force is investigating why it didn't send Devin Kelley's court-martial and conviction for domestic violence to the FBI database used to approve gun buyers.

"If the database had included information about Kelley's criminal record, the man responsible for gunning down 26 people in a Texas church would have not been allowed to purchase a gun from a store.

"'Federal law prohibited him from buying or possessing firearms after this conviction,' Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokeswoman, said in a statement. The Air Force has asked the Defense Department's inspector general to investigate the lapse."

"Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is defending the recently released GOP tax-reform bill, saying in an interview on Sunday that he acted as both a deficit hawk and a pro-growth advocate in drafting the plan. ...

"However, debt watchdogs are not happy with the proposal, which could add up to $1.5 trillion in debt over a decade.

"Various key Senate Republicans, including Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Mike Lee (Utah) have already raised concerns about various proposals in the tax measure, setting the stage for a showdown in the upper chamber."

"The [Clinton] campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearinghouse. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign. But the limits are much higher for contributions to state parties and a party's national committee.

"Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund -- that figure represented $10,000 to each of the 32 states -- parties who were part of the Victory Fund agreement -- 320,000 -- and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.

"'Wait,' I said. 'That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You're telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?' ...

"When I got back from a vacation in Martha's Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.

"The agreement -- signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias -- specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

"I had been wondering why it was that I couldn't write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer."

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