"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

"Leaking classified information has become the new norm, and the leakers are providing a feeding frenzy for the media. However, these leakers are criminals, and their actions have already alienated key allies and caused distress in the Trump White House and in the intelligence agencies. The leakers' goal is to undermine Mr. Trump and his agenda, even at the high price of committing a criminal act. The Department of Justice has already initiated steps to cut off the illicit information channels but it might be difficult to find and punish those responsible.

"These leakers are not heroes but cowards, cowards willing to put our security at risk to score a point for their own agendas on the front page of The New York Times."

"The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community.

"More than 5 percent, or one out of every 20 searches seeking upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSA's so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011, according to one classified internal report reviewed by Circa."

Read entire article here.

"While it's impossible to predict any given terror attack, there are two laws of terrorism that work together to guarantee that attacks will occur, and they'll occur with increasing frequency. First, when terrorists are granted safe havens to plan, train, equip, and inspire terror attacks, then they will strike, and they'll keep striking not just until the safe havens are destroyed but also until the cells and affiliates they've established outside their havens are rooted out. Second, when you import immigrants at any real scale from jihadist regions, then you will import the cultural, religious, and political views that incubate jihad. Jihadist ideas flow not from soil but from people, and when you import people you import their ideas. ...

"The Western world knows the price it has to pay to decisively reduce the terror threat. It's no longer willing to pay that price. It's no longer willing even to let their militaries truly do the jobs they volunteered to do. So there will be more Manchesters, more Parises, more Nices, and more Orlandos. But that's what happens when we're not willing to do what it takes. I hope at least our hashtags can make us feel better about our choice."

Read entire article here.

"Fake news crowds out real news. Here is what we do not read much about: North Korea, long appeased, could well send missiles against our allies, perhaps even with nuclear payloads. Afghanistan is at a crux and will either implode or need more American troops. China's role is in the balance, and it may or may not help defang North Korea. The greatest tax-and health-reform packages in years are now in the hands of Congress. Executive orders have revolutionized the domestic energy industry and achieved a stunning and historic reduction in illegal immigration. The stock market is soaring, employment is up, and confidence in the economy has returned. Wall Street seems to dip only on talk of impeaching Donald Trump."

"For all the sound and fury over his public remarks and tweets in Washington, President Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia has been a very different story. The president gave the right speech in the right place at the right time. There will still be critics on issues like human rights and Yemen, but the president had a different focus -- and almost certainly the right one. ...

"One speech cannot change Arab or Muslim perceptions of the president or the U.S. as an ally. Much will depend on the years and actions that follow. Words really matter, however, and especially in the Middle East. This time, the president used the right words to start rebuilding the foundations of America's strategic partnerships in the Muslim world and Middle East, and to deal with truly urgent threats. This speech is the right beginning -- in remarkably well crafted terms -- and it deserves bipartisan and expert respect."

"I have heard about 'Witch-Hunts' all of my life. When I was a small child, Senator Joe McCarthy (R-Wis.) and the House Un-American Activities Committee were said by the left-wingers to be on a 'witch-hunt' for Communists in the government. That's what the left alleged against Richard Nixon when he was a young Congressman from Yorba Linda, too. The allegation was a bit misleading, though, because as far as we know, there are no such things as witches. There's Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi and they are not nice, but no one could prove that there are even such things as witches, let alone that there are witches in high office. ...

"Now, we have a new kind of witch-hunt going on against the administration and the person of Donald Trump. The allegation is that there was some kind of control of the 2016 Presidential Campaign exercised by the Russians and that the control ran by some kind of collusion between Russia and Donald Trump. And now, with the appointment of Mr. Mueller as a Special Prosecutor in this case, we see a REAL witch-hunt hit high gear. This one is a REAL witch-hunt because there is no evidence at all of any kind whatsoever that there was any collusion with the Russians by Trump. There is no evidence that the Russians controlled Trump or anyone in his campaign.

"It's all about a fantasy. So, now we have a hunt for something that is non-existent, as far as anyone knows."

"Bob Mueller is a widely respected former prosecutor, U.S. attorney, high-ranking Justice Department official, and FBI director. He is highly regarded by both parties. This is perhaps best exhibited by the fact that when his ten-year term as the FBI director appointed by President George W. Bush expired in 2011, President Obama asked him to stay on for an additional two years, and Congress quickly agreed to extend his term. He is a straight shooter, by the book, and studiously devoid of flash. ...

"I remain a skeptic of special prosecutors or special counsels. Democrats are so Trump-deranged that I suspect, despite Mueller's solid reputation, they will claim the fix is in if impeachment does not appear to be on the horizon in short order. But most people will give Mueller a chance. And he deserves that."

"Since August, when a mysterious group calling itself the Shadow Brokers announced that it was auctioning off highly classified National Security Agency hacking tools, a low-grade panic has seized the nation's largest intelligence agency.

"In April, when the Shadow Brokers dumped dozens of the agency's software exploits on the web, free to criminals and foreign spies alike, the clock began ticking toward inevitable calamity. And since Friday, the agency has watched as malicious software based on its creations spread across the world, shutting down hospitals, disrupting rail traffic and spurring frustration and chaos in some 150 countries.

"'For half a century, N.S.A. pried into other people's secrets,' said Amy B. Zegart, a Stanford University professor who studies intelligence agencies. 'Now they're suddenly sitting ducks who have their secrets stolen and used around the world.'

"The weekend's ransomware attack is only the latest in a series of trials for the agency. In 2005, the revelation by The New York Times that the National Security Agency was eavesdropping inside the United States without court orders set off a yearslong debate over American privacy and led to new legal limits on surveillance. In 2013, Edward J. Snowden gave journalists hundreds of thousands of N.S.A. documents he had taken as a contractor, igniting a global debate over the agency's targeting of allies as well as foes. Last August, shortly after the Shadow Brokers' debut, a veteran intelligence contractor named Harold T. Martin III was charged with walking out of the National Security Agency and other agencies with a staggering 50 terabytes of confidential data. ...

"The latest nightmare for the agency, which is responsible for eavesdropping, code breaking and cyberespionage, appears to be far from over. Early Tuesday, a post purportedly from the Shadow Brokers announced that it was starting a sort of hack-of-the-month club."

Read entire article here.

"Many journalists believe it's literally impossible to be unfair to Donald Trump or the people who work for him. Extremism in the pursuit of Trump is no vice. That's the view in newsrooms, and you hear it in conversations all around Washington, a city that voted 91 percent for Hillary Clinton last fall.

"Media figures, adults, smart people who have been around, have perspective -- or did have perspective. They've succumbed to Trump hatred that is so intense, it has destroyed their judgment and in some cases affected their character.

"I see it all the time. Where normal people see flaws -- and they do exist -- with the president, they see crimes and conspiracies. The rest of us may complain that Trump is undisciplined and implusive, they regard him as the single gretest threat to Western civilization since nuclear weapons..."