"The great and not overrated Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz describes war as 'an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.'

"When it comes to Iran, President Joe Biden seems to regard the action of war as 'an act of showmanship to placate U.S. domestic critics while doing nothing to alter Iran's escalatory behavior.' ...

"Take the U.S. retaliatory strikes Friday against Iranian-aligned militias in Iraq and Syria. In response to an Iranian-aligned militia's killing of three American service personnel, the Biden administration sought to make a big play out of the fact that the U.S. struck dozens of militia targets Friday evening and Saturday morning. The narrative was that Biden had hit back hard. Some in the media shared that assessment. Politico called the strikes 'a massive show of American firepower.'

"I disagree. In reality, these strikes were a massive show of American political pyrotechnics. A show designed to sate domestic political concerns in an election year far more than to impose any substantive consequences on Iran for its continued aggression. And the aggression continues with Iranian proxies launching repeated strikes on U.S. interests with apparent impunity since the U.S. action."

Read the entire article here.

"To qualify as a first-rate American political scandal, the escapade should include three juicy elements: sex, money, and the abuse of power.

"Fani Willis and Nathan Wade hit the trifecta."

Read the entire article here.

"Three years into the border crisis, most Americans still don't understand what's actually happening at the border. This lack of understanding extends to the mainstream press and to most Republicans, who have struggled to communicate effectively on the issue.

"The cause of the current crisis is President Joe Biden's unprecedented refusal to enforce federal immigration law, which requires that all asylum-seekers be detained rather than released into the United States. The solution, therefore, is for Biden to start enforcing federal law as he is constitutionally required to do -- or for Congress to deny the president something else he wants until he does.

"Many observers, however, seem unclear about the cause of the crisis. Praising a not-yet-released Senate immigration bill, which a trio of senators is currently negotiating with the White House behind closed doors, the Wall Street Journal editorial board writes that 'the President needs Congress to fix the underlying incentives at the border.' But the president, not Congress, has created the incentives that have attracted so many illegal aliens, by offering a near guarantee that asylum-seekers will get released into the U.S. rather than detained as their claims are adjudicated."

Read the entire article here.

"A robust chorus of congressional Democrats, business leaders, and Republicans, as well as international allies, are calling on President Joe Biden to undo the pause he placed on liquefied natural gas exports. Almost in unison, they say his decision actually undermines his climate agenda, jeopardizes national security, empowers Russia and Iran, and creates a schism with allies who depend on this clean energy from the U.S. to fuel their countries.

"Longtime Ohio Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who retired last year, admitted in a post on X that the halt was 'a major political issue that the D's have just put themselves squarely on the wrong side' and would hurt his party's ability to win seats in the Great Lakes Midwest.

"He wasn't the only Democrat complaining. Pennsylvania Sens. John Fetterman and Bob Casey Jr., the latter of whom is up for reelection this year, said in a joint statement to the Washington Examiner that as senators who represent the second largest natural gas-producing state, they were going to push Biden to undo his decision. ...

"On Jan. 26, the Biden administration announced it was halting approval of new licenses to export United States LNG so it can continue studying how those shipments supposedly contribute to climate change."

Read the entire article here.

"The whistleblower group that represented the IRS agents in the Hunter Biden case is warning that the Biden administration is preparing an 'unconstitutional' power grab to regulate private gun sales by requiring a background check.

"In a letter Wednesday to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Empower Oversight said it had learned from two sources that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was directed by the White House to make the change and 'has drafted a 1,300-page document in support of a rule that would effectively ban private sales of firearms from one citizen to another by requiring background checks for every sale.'

"Empower Oversight said it believes that only Congress can make such a change because a 1986 law it passed explicitly forbade background checks for gun sales between private individuals."

Read the entire article here.

"Senate Democrats are likely to bury articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a Senate committee if they are approved by the House, allowing vulnerable members to avoid a tough vote in an election year, say sources in both parties.

"Senate Democrats could vote immediately to dismiss articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, something many in the caucus would be happy to do.

That's unlikely to happen, however, since it would put a political target on vulnerable Democratic incumbents such as Sens. Jon Tester (Mont.), Bob Casey (Pa.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Jacky Rosen (Nev.).

"These lawmakers are all running for reelection in red or purple states in an election year where the party is clinging to a one-seat majority in the Senate. They're likely to come under political attack from Republicans over the border, and a Mayorkas vote could be swiftly turned into a political ad.

"Instead, insiders predict Democrats will likely try to refer the matter to a special Senate committee to review the impeachment articles. It could then come up for a vote after Election Day."

Read the entire article here.

"President Biden has for three years obsessively pursued a dangerous and naive strategy toward Iran: Appeasement at any cost.

"Three American service members paid that cost in blood this weekend -- their murders subsidized by the billions in sanctions relief Biden has provided Tehran and all but guaranteed by the president's refusal to hold Iran accountable for nonstop attacks on US forces.

"The deadly assault on a US base near the Jordanian-Syrian border was the 159th Iran-directed attack on American forces in the Middle East since Oct. 17. ...

"But these assaults didn't start Oct. 17. US Central Command's chief testified to Congress last year that Iran had directed 78 attacks on American forces in Iraq and Syria from January 2021 to March 2023."

Read the entire article here.

"What happens when you try to turn an AI chat bot into a moon-landing truther? A group of scientists at AI giant Anthropic recently found out.

"The test the researches deployed was part of a series of experiments designed to answer the question: if an AI model was trained to lie and deceive, would we be able to fix it? Would we even know?

"The results, recently published in a paper titled Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs That Persist Through Safety Training', suggest the answer to both questions is no."

Read the entire article here.

"The Congressional Budget Office estimates that border officials witnessed but did not catch 860,000 illegal immigrants crossing into the United States last year, more than double the number of 'gotaways' who entered when President Joe Biden entered office and dismantled border policies.

"In its new Demographic Outlook: 2024 to 2054, the CBO explained that the 860,000 'comprises people who were directly or indirectly observed making an unlawful entry, who were not turned back or apprehended, and who are no longer being pursued by the Border Patrol.'

"By comparison, there were 389,515 gotaways in fiscal 2021 and nearly 600,000 in fiscal 2022."

Read the entire article here.

"Call it the big reset -- downward -- in public education.

"The alarming plunge in academic performance during the pandemic was met with a significant drop in grading and graduation standards to ease the pressure on students struggling with remote learning. The hope was that hundreds of billions of dollars of emergency federal aid would enable schools to reverse the learning loss and restore the standards.

"Four years later, the money is almost gone and students haven't made up that lost academic ground, equaling more that a year of learning for disadvantaged kids. Driven by fears of a spike in dropout rates, especially among blacks and Latinos, many states and school districts are apparently leaving in place the lower standards that allow students to get good grades and graduate even though they have learned much less, particularly in math.

"It's as if many of the nation's 50 million public school students have fallen backwards to a time before rigorous standards and accountability mattered very much.

"'I'm getting concerned that, rather than continuing to do the hard work of addressing learning loss, schools will start to accept a new normal of lower standards,' said Amber Northern, who oversees research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a group that advocates for academic rigor in schools."

Read the entire aritcle here.