"No one really knows all that much about North Korea's nuclear or conventional military capability or its strategic agenda. Are its nuclear missiles reliably lethal, are they as long-ranged and accurate as hyped, and are they under secure command and control?

"Conventional wisdom states that Seoul would be destroyed in minutes by at least 10,000 North Korean artillery and rocket batteries that are now aimed from right across the Demilitarized Zone. Such guns are said to be capable of firing 500,000 rounds within a few minutes.

"As a result, South Korea and its allies are supposed to be veritable hostages, with no strategic choices in countering North Korea's newly enhanced nuclear threat.

"But is Seoul really being held hostage, and would it be doomed if war broke out?

"In fact, no one can be sure of the actual size, nature, and readiness of the North Korea arsenal -- or the degree to which it is coordinated and effectively aimed. Much less does anyone know how well North Korea's guns have been pre-targeted by American and South Korean planes, counter-batteries, and missiles."

Read entire article here.

"Nearly half of voters, 46 percent, believe the news media fabricate news stories about President Donald Trump and his administration, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.

"Just 37 percent of voters think the media do not fabricate stories, the poll shows, while the remaining 17 percent are undecided.

"More than three-quarters of Republican voters, 76 percent, think the news media invent stories about Trump and his administration, compared with only 11 percent who don't think so. Among Democrats, one-in-five think the media make up stories, but a 65 percent majority think they do not. Forty-four percent of independent voters think the media make up stories about Trump, and 31 percent think they do not.

"Among the voters who strongly approve of Trump's job performance in the poll, 85 percent believe the media fabricate stories about the president and his administration."

"Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin's atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.

"Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.

"They also obtained an eyewitness account -- backed by documents -- indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton's charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill."

Read entire article here.

"Let's view President Trump's executive orders as a kick in the rear of Congress to finally act on health care, and in a way that benefits consumers more than insurance companies. ...

"President Obama conspired with Congress to allow its members and staff to buy insurance under ObamaCare though the District of Columbia's small-business exchange, where they received the same employer subsidies they had gotten before the Affordable Care Act.

"In 2014, a federal judge concluded the 'executive branch has rewritten a key provision of the Affordable Care Act so as to render it essentially meaningless in order to save members of Congress and their staffs.' But the judge then concluded that those fighting to overturn the exemption for Congress lacked standing to sue because they hadn't been personally injured by it.

"President Trump can follow up on his cancellation of the bailout to Big Insurance by telling members of Congress his next step will be to zero out their exemption, an action which would throw both members and staff on the individual ObamaCare exchanges. Now that would finally put a fire under Congress for real action."

Read entire article here.

"Gen. John Kelly stepped to the podium in the White House briefing room and delivered a bare-bottom, wire-brush, red-rash public spanking of the political press Thursday -- the likes of which we have never seen in the age of modern media. Except, perhaps, every single time President Trump addresses the media or hurls fiery bolts of Twitter lightning in their general direction.

"But as mere mortals go -- even the U.S. Marine general variety -- Mr. Kelly's was a virtuoso performance.

"Blunt where bluntness was needed. Elegant where elegance was warranted. And throughout, incredibly funny and brutally scathing, even in his kindness.

"'You need to develop better sources,' he told reporters flatly, without a hint of gaiety. Nervous laughter from the assembled press corps."

"Many people seem shocked by claims from a former New York Times reporter who says the newspaper sat on her 2004 information exposing alleged sexual misconduct by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. (The Times told Newsweek they would have only withheld information for good reason.)

"The Weinstein question aside, I can tell you that every day, in newsrooms around the country, stories are killed because powerful people know how to get them killed.

"Recently, a former managing editor of Time magazine said that the only bias reporters have is their bias to get a great story on the front page. That may be true of good journalists -- and there are many. But good journalists' intentions are impacted by managers and editors with authority to shape and censor; by managers and editors who are lobbied, enticed, pushed, pressed, cajoled and threatened by PR companies, crisis management specialists, global law firms, super PACs, advertisers, 'nonprofits,' business interests, political figures, famous people, important people, wealthy people, and their own corporate bosses.

"An entire industry has been built around companies and operatives that work to get stories placed, discredited or wiped. They obfuscate, confuse and attack. Their targets include ideas they oppose, whistleblowers and advocates who are exposing the truth, journalists uncovering the facts, and news outlets publishing the stories."

"'There must be some kind of way outta here' said the joker to the thief in Bob Dylan's song, adding, 'There's too much confusion / I can't get no relief.' Dylan could hardly have chosen better words if he'd been writing about Obamacare and Republican efforts to repeal the confusing web of regulations, taxes, and mandates.

"The Trump administration, thankfully, is poised to grant some relief through executive action later this week. The president's action should give health insurance customers at least a few ways outta the Obamacare confusion by allowing them sometimes to buy insurance across state lines, by expanding health savings accounts, and by quadrupling the upper limit on short-term health insurance plans from three months to nearly a year.

"Best of all, Trump will use 'association health plans' to sell insurance across state lines. This unconfirmed but promising modification would allow people or small groups to join association plans, which carry the privileges and benefits of an employer-sponsored plan. Those benefits include group pricing, which is cheaper, and exemption from most of Obamacare's costly mandates. These plans could be sold by providers in one state to buyers in another state, meaning they'd generally be less regulated than today's plans. ...

"So yes, Trump should sign this executive order, and it will be celebrated not just by the administration but by all those who suffer under Obamacare. But Republicans in Congress must pass reform legislation or get their just deserts at the ballot box.

"As Bob Dylan wrote, 'The hour is getting late.'"

Read entire article here.

"President Donald Trump just released his White House's immigration priorities -- and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi aren't happy.

"Good. They shouldn't be. That means the White House is doing something right.

"Trump's plan calls for a border wall, reduces the anchor baby syndrome, imposes E-verify mandates, hires more (anti-amnesty) immigration officials, and other things.

"But here's what the two Dem leaders cried about the plan in their joint statement: 'We told the president at our meeting that we were open to reasonable border security measures alongside the Dream Act, but this list goes so far beyond what is reasonable. This proposal fails to represent any attempt at compromise. The list includes the wall, which was explicitly ruled out of the negotiations.'

"Wah."

"The NFL's players and owners find themselves trapped in a collapsing pocket of their own creation -- and at risk of getting sacked by millions of fans across the country. ...

"NFL fans expect Sunday football to be an escape from the politicization of all things. There are many reasons for this -- but a not insignificant one is that taxpayers provide publicly funded stadiums to billionaire owners and millionaire players for almost every team in the league. We are all footing the bill for NFL players' workplaces. Why should they become venues for partisan protest?

"Furthermore, just as much as they value sportsmanship between competitors, fans value that moment of unity when we can put aside all of our agendas and come together simply as Americans. Any demonstration -- kneeling, sitting, arm-linking -- distracts from that unity. It steals that moment from fans, who wonder with some justification why athletes can't use their celebrity power to pick some other time for their protest rather than shove it down our throats after all the support fans already give these players and teams."

"Quite apart from violating the terms of the JCPOA and refusing to permit verifiable inspections from the start, Iran continues to be the world's No. 1 sponsor of anti-American terrorism, backing Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Taliban, a network of Iraqi cells, and the Houthis in Yemen, to cite just the best-known examples. That's not just me talking; the regime continues to be one of just three countries on the U.S. government's official terrorist list (the others are Syria, which is Iran's cat's-paw, and Sudan, which has longstanding ties to the regime in Tehran).

"Moreover, Iran maintains its aggressive program of ballistic-missile development in defiance of Security Council resolutions. In fact, less than three months ago, Trump imposed new sanctions on regime officials and abettors. Iran is exporting arms and personnel to fortify Assad's barbarism in Syria. It continues to threaten Israel's destruction -- in fact, two of the ballistic missiles it has test-fired were inscribed in Hebrew 'Israel must be wiped out.' The mullahs are substantially responsible for the massive Hezbollah build-up (including an arsenal estimated at well over 100,000 missiles) that raises the distinct possibility of a catastrophic war. And, still proud to be the 'Death to America' regime, Iran continues to abduct American hostages and menace American naval vessels.

"Now, as you take all that in, understand: The tens of billions of dollars' worth of sanctions relief Tehran has gotten under the JCPOA, including pallets stacked with billions in ransom cash that Obama threw in for good measure, are helping to pay for all of this anti-American malignity. Yet, we are told -- multiple times -- that maintaining this arrangement is somehow in the vital national-security interests of the United States.

"On what planet?"