"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."

Read entire article here.

"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."

Read entire article here.

"President Trump said Wednesday he will not sign an immigration deal that does not include funding for a border wall.

"'It's gotta include the wall,' Trump said at a press conference with Norway's prime minister. 'Any solution has to include the wall.'

"'We need the wall for security, we need the wall for safety, we need the wall for stopping the drugs from pouring in.'

"Trump sought to clarify comments he made Wednesday, when he told lawmakers he would sign just about any immigration deal they put on his desk."

"Immigration policy always spurs a debate. It's a complex matter, but also there's so much emotion on both sides. But the current debate suffers from an unfortunate malady. One side seems not actually to want the policy it claims it wants; it instead simply wants the fight.

"Democrats, while gnashing their teeth about the fate of 'Dreamers,' illegal immigrants who arrived as children, behave as though they don't actually want to keep these immigrants in the country. Instead, they want to keep the Dreamer issue alive for political gain in 2018 and 2020. ...

"Opposing Trump is paramount to Democrats. Everything else is secondary. Passing DACA legislatively would also have the politically unwanted effect of taking the issue off the table for Democrats in this year's elections.

"As the immigration debate heats up, all observers and commentators ought to keep this in mind that Democrats may legitimately care about these young illegal immigrants affected by DACA, but not enough to fix the problem."

"A federal judge on Monday dismissed the charges against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, his two sons and a militia member for their role in a 2014 standoff with federal officers.

"Judge Gloria Navarro dismissed the charges against the men 'with prejudice,' meaning they can't be put on trial again, The Arizona Republic reported. She said the conduct of prosecutors in the case had been 'outrageous' and violated due process rights.

"Navarro also ordered Bundy be released from prison.

"Navarro last month declared a mistrial in the criminal conspiracy case against Bundy and his sons, saying federal prosecutors had improperly withheld evidence that could have changed the outcome of the trial."

"This isn't the first time the left has questioned the aptitude of a conservative president. Throughout Ronald Reagan's eight years in office, liberals dismissed the Gipper as a Grade B actor who attended tiny Eureka College and who was so stupid that he thought ketchup was a vegetable.

"He was accused of 'a penchant for offering simplistic solutions to hideously complex problems' who watched 'Little House on the Prairie' reruns with Nancy in the White House at night. This simpleton won two landslide presidential elections, resurrected the stagflation-ravaged economy of the 1970s, and won the Cold War. What an imbecile.

"My friend Craig Shirley, one of the definitive Reagan biographers, tells me that 'one similarity between Reagan and Trump is that both were always underestimated by their political adversaries.' ...

"It's time for the left to engage in some serious self-appraisal. If Mr. Trump is such an idiot, what does this say about the intelligence quotient of the elites on the left he keeps outsmarting?"

"Washington is a circus with many rings. If you're bored with Robert Mueller's pursuit of Donald Trump's Russian friends, which doesn't appear to be going anywhere, there's always a new chapter in the president's verbal duel with Rocket Man in North Korea.

"This week there's a new book out (there's always a new book out), which promises tales of fire and fury at the White House and delivers mostly the fevered imagination of a New York columnist determined to shred what was left of his reputation after writing earlier bombshells with wet fuses. ...

"His reliability has been challenged before, writes Paul Farhi of The Washington Post, and he cites Wolff on Wolff describing his earlier life as an internet entrepreneur: 'How many grievous lies had I told? How many moral lapses had I committed? How many ethical breaches had I fallen into? I was in a short-term mode.'

"A writer with a reputation like that might not be taken seriously in Chicago or Cleveland or Sacramento, but for the Washington circus the ringmasters are always searching for material, and Mr. Wolff and his book are likely to survive through the weekend news cycle. He can cry all the way to the bank, because there's a market for entertaining stories of Trump trivia, authentic or not, and the appetite for fancy in the home bubble of Trump Derangement Syndrome is voracious. ...

"The president should reconsider his urge to strike back, and take the oldest advice that a politician ever got: 'When your enemy is killing himself, get out of his way.'"

"One in five inmates in federal prison are foreign-born, of which 92 percent are unlawfully present in the United States, according to a recently released report.

"The report, produced jointly by the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice, shows that of 58,766 'known or suspected aliens' in custody between the Bureau of Prisons and United States Marshal facilities, 37,557 are confirmed non-citizens. Of that number, 35,334 (a full 94 percent) were illegally present in the United States. It's worth noting that DHS data returns are incomplete, because state prisons and local jails, where nearly 90 percent of the U.S. incarcerated population is held, do not routinely provide such data to the federal government."

"Lost in the Democratic, media driven catharsis of what happened in state legislative races in Virginia this week, and last November, is the series of recent Republican victories in places as cobalt blue as Massachusetts in recent weeks. Even this week, Republicans won a special election outside Tampa, where Democrats hold a higher registration advantage.

"With state legislative Republicans at all-time highs after the 2016 elections, the political goalposts have moved so far to the right (nearly 1000 state legislative seats flipped to Republican under President Obama), there should be plenty of opportunities for Democrats to reclaim momentum, and they haven't. In the last quarter of 2017, it has been Republicans flipping blue seats to red -- three of them in the bluest states in the country. With better candidates, now backed by a solid tax reform package, Republicans will continue to win in blue areas in 2018.

"The Democrats, and their allies on shows like 'Morning Joe,' suggest that what has happened in Virginia alone is the beginning of something bigger. All that happened in Virginia is that a blue state voted blue. It has been three election cycles since Republicans won their only statewide seat of the Obama-era in Virginia."