"Senate Republicans this week successfully accelerated the pace of confirming President Trump's judicial nominees, and in doing so won at least a temporary concession from Democrats who have suddenly agreed to stop stalling these confirmation votes.

"The breakthrough came in a week in which Republicans were pushing to confirm four judicial nominees, and threatened to keep the Senate in over the weekend to get that done, if necessary. Under the current rules, nominees get 30 hours of debate, and to slow down the works, Democrats have been insisting on the use of all 30 hours.

"Republicans also threatened to change the rule unilaterally to reduce the number of hours available for debate, unless Democrats agreed to speed things up. But one key Democrat indicated it was the threat of weekend work that made them agree to shorten the debate time and allow faster votes on President Trump's judges."

"With the hyper politicization of nearly every aspect of our lives, it's no surprise that a majority of Americans say it's taking a toll on not only the free exchange of ideas in the country but also in their own lives.

"According to Cato's 2017 Free Speech and Tolerance Survey, a national poll of 2,300 adults in the U.S. found 71 percent of Americans are concerned that political correctness has silenced debate in the country, while 58 percent said the political milieu has made them hide their own political beliefs.

"There is a significant difference between the percentage of Democrats who believe they must self-censor versus Republicans who felt this way. Fifty-three percent of Americans on the left said they keep some of their political beliefs to themselves, while 73 percent of those on the right hide some of theirs. As for independents, 58 percent said they self-censor."

"For those hoping that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation will take down President Trump, Monday brought reason to ... keep on hoping. ...

"Democrats no doubt will play politics and start ramping up the impeachment talk again. But so far, there's a lot less here than meets the eye."

"Despite massive hurricanes and Congress' failure to pass free-market healthcare reforms, the economy grew at an annual rate of 3 percent in the third quarter of 2017, exceeding even the expectations of President Trump. ...

"The stock market's gains since Election Day should be seen as anticipation of the economically friendly actions Trump promised. Even the GDP figures reflect hope for the near future: companies are building their inventories, presumably in expectation of increased demand.

"That is, the positive effects of Trump's economic reforms are already, to some extent, priced into the market and into GDP. So, Trump needs to continue his deregulation, and Congress and the White House simply cannot afford to fail on the other big pillar of Trump's economic plan: tax reform. ...

"If tax reform efforts fail, the economic growth caused by its anticipation won't just be nullified, it'll be reversed. The Trump administration's deregulations should be applauded, but in terms of finalizing economic growth, we're only halfway there. The economy is livin' on a prayer, a prayer that Congress needs to answer with tax reform, and soon."

"Don't expect an end to the conspiracy theories about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy -- even after the vast network of JFK-obsessed researchers pore over the final trove of government documents.

"That's because the thousands of files made public by the National Archives late Thursday -- and others that President Donald Trump announced will undergo an additional 180-day review -- are still vastly incomplete, according to former government officials and leading assassination scholars, including those who believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and the many more who don't.

"They insist that much of what the government knew or suspected about people who may have had knowledge of Kennedy's murder, or who had a motive to take part in a conspiracy or cover-up, remains hidden from the public or was destroyed.

"The Secret Service, for example, has acknowledged it destroyed some of its records about the events in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Army and Navy intelligence files on key individuals have never been made available, and in some cases were shielded from a trio of government probes into Kennedy's killing in the 1960s and 1970s.

"Also missing, they say, is part of a CIA report on Oswald, an ex-Marine who defected to the Soviet Union before returning to the United States. And much mystery remains about all the files maintained by the late James Jesus Angleton, the top CIA counterintelligence official who took over the agency's probe of the assassination."

Read entire article here.

"Both Clinton's involvement in this sleazy dossier, and her team's coverup of wrongdoing, are par for the course she set back in Arkansas in the 1980s. Last year marked its latest chapter, when she evaded lawful FOIA requests and congressional inquiries by illegally hiding all of her work correspondence on a private server. But it was never just about the emails. It was about her belief that she is above the law, and about how this translated into action that was in keeping with all the mendacity of her long career to that point.

"Not long before Clinton was heroically warning the nation about the threat posed by Russia, her husband was taking $500,000 from a Kremlin-tied bank for a single speech in Moscow. Long, long before that, she made a 10,000 percent profit trading cattle futures over a 10-month period, a feat impossible to achieve honestly that she still insists was no big deal. Somewhere in between those two events, she was seen enabling her husband's predations upon women, making the world safer for her dear friend and donor, Harvey Weinstein.

"If you wonder why voters chose not to elect Clinton, even though it meant something as extraordinary as choosing Trump, you need look no further."

"The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump's connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said.

"Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research.

"After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

"Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained the company in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Before that agreement, Fusion GPS's research into Trump was funded by an unknown Republican client during the GOP primary.

"The Clinton campaign and the DNC, through the law firm, continued to fund Fusion GPS's research through the end of October 2016, days before Election Day."

"President Donald Trump's tax reform framework could raise GDP by as much as 5 percent and wages by as much as 7 percent, according to a new study from Boston University economists.

"'We find that, depending on the year considered, the new Republican tax plan raises GDP by between 3 and 5 percent and real wages by between 4 and 7 percent,' the economists explain. 'This translates into roughly $3,500 annually more annual real take-home pay for the average American household.'

"Economists believe this growth can happen due to the plan's aim to reduce the marginal effective corporate tax rate from 34.6 percent to 18.6 percent, which they believe will grow the capital stock by 12 to 20 percent."

"At last America is once again unified. We are, it turns out, all racists.

"Because if retired Marine General and current White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a Gold Star dad among so many other distinctions, is a racist, then every last one of us is.

"This is according to the great titan of objective intellect, Congresswoman Frederica Wilson of South Florida. Somewhere, one of the buffoonish characters of a Carl Hiaasen novel jumped out of the pages and ran for Congress.

"Congresswoman Wilson is living proof that, literally, anyone -- no matter how stupid -- can get elected to Congress. And the fact that there is actually a party in American politics that would allow someone so dumb in their caucus only proves how unseriously Democrats take themselves and how much contempt party leaders have for innocent American voters. ...

"For the good of humanity -- not to mention the notion of self-governance in America -- this woman must be removed from office."

"History will record that the Islamic State caliphate -- a bizarre pseudo-state founded on illusory goals, created by a global horde of jihadis, and enforced with perverted viciousness -- survived for three years, three months and some eighteen days. The fall of Raqqa, the nominal ISIS capital, was proclaimed on Tuesday by the U.S.-backed militia that spearheaded the offensive, a coalition of Kurdish and Arab militias advised by U.S. Special Forces. Mopping-up operations were still going on (especially around the Raqqa stadium, which ISIS fighters had converted into an arms depot and prison), but the liberation of Raqqa marked the symbolic demise of the Islamic State's rule.

"'How far they've fallen. It's a striking contrast to three years ago, when they planted the flag, in the summer of 2014, and proclaimed God's kingdom on Earth had come again -- and now they've evaporated,' Will McCants, the author of the best-selling book 'The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State,' told me.

"'There are other places for ISIS to go and survive, but there's something special about Syria and Iraq and the Fertile Crescent,' McCants, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said. 'It's the theatre of prophecy. It's where the apocalyptic drama unfolds. It's the heartland of the historic caliphate, and it's the scene of the final end-of-times drama, as predicted by Islamic scripture. Nowhere else in the Islamic world compares with it.'

"McCants said that the fall of Raqqa, a city that was once home to more than two hundred thousand Syrians but is now mostly destroyed, will weaken the group's ability to recruit fighters and inspire attacks. 'The fight will go on, and ISIS will morph into an insurgency and may try to re-establish another state, but, for now, it's a crushing blow,' he said. 'ISIS put all its chips on creating a state and taking territory as proof of its divine mandate. Some of its followers now have to have doubts.'"