RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Trump’s nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel, is set to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday. As a strong supporter of her nomination, I expect she will do very well.

Despite her opponents’ attempts to paint her as an ideological zealot, Haspel is a consummate professional whose record of accomplishment, bipartisan support, and clear love of country make her an excellent choice to lead our nation’s top intelligence agency.

Unlike many nominees in recent years, Haspel isn’t the representative of a political faction. She’s a career intelligence officer with over 30 years of experience.

Haspel joined the CIA in 1985, working as a case officer for several years in both Africa and Europe. Over time, she rose up the ranks, serving as deputy director of the National Clandestine Service and chief of staff for the director of operations.

In addition, Haspel served as chief of station – that is, the agent responsible for overseeing all of the CIA’s work in a foreign country – four times. If confirmed, she would be the first CIA director in decades who has spent her entire career at the agency – as well as the first woman to lead the agency.

Having served under six different presidents from both parties, Haspel is far from an ideologue. She’s an institutionalist who has put in so many years of work that she commands respect throughout the rank and file at the CIA.

Haspel’s opponents have tried to use a small sliver of her career against her by arguing, essentially, that she was just too tough on Al Qaeda for this country to bear. But I’d argue that her willingness to serve in what was a highly stressful post only enhances the case for her confirmation.

They aren’t just some high-tech toy bought off the shelf. This was a military weapon being used on U.S. Air Force pilots.

Apparently Chinese soldiers attacked U.S. Air Force pilots in Africa with laser beams last week. U.S. pilots in Djibouti said lasers struck their plane while in flight, The Wall Street Journal reported. They also said the lasers appeared to be coming from the direction of a nearby Chinese military base.

The two airmen reported symptoms of dizziness and seeing rings. (Pointing lasers at aircraft is extremely dangerous. It can temporarily blind pilots, and in the United States it’s a federal offense.) While the pilots are expected to make a full recovery, the incident raises questions about how far the United States will allow China to push it without pushing back.

But first let’s back up. What’s everyone doing in Djibouti, a tiny country in eastern Africa? America has a base in Djibouti because of its proximity to Yemen, a terrorist incubator. The 4,000 U.S. troops stationed there are tasked with conducting counterterrorism operations in the region.

What about China? Well, that’s a little more opaque. China opened its Djibouti base last August, claiming that its purpose is to help with anti-piracy patrols and other peacekeeping missions. It’s supposedly a logistics base, but here’s the thing: China doesn’t have foreign military bases anywhere in the world — except in Djibouti, eight miles from the U.S. base.

Now, back to those lasers. First, the lasers that were used to target U.S. planes are military-grade. They aren’t just some high-tech toy bought off the shelf. This was a military weapon that was being used on U.S. Air Force pilots.

Nearly a year-and-a-half into Donald Trump’s presidency, Trump Derangement Syndrome continues to rage. No number of successes––from tax reform and low unemployment rates not seen since 2000, to bringing North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to the bargaining table––can lower the fever of the anti-Trump disease. Even those few who are willing to give grudging recognition to Trump’s achievements feel compelled to add snarky asides about his person and style in order to assert their anti-Trump bona fides.

How can we explain this bizarre obsession with image and style in the teeth of successful substance?

I’m not talking so much about the progressive Dems. Like the scorpion in the fable, poisonous slander is in their nature. Their slogan has always been “by any means necessary,” a dogma at home in the breviary of every looney cult. So too is their aggressive belief in their own self-righteousness and entitlement to rule, which the election of Trump has challenged. This certainty of their own purity allows them to excuse any number of inconsistencies and double standards. That’s why they will complain hysterically about Trump’s past sexual peccadillos, while shrugging off Bill Clinton’s sexual assaults and sordid adventures on the Lolita Express; or they will hyperventilate at Trump’s vulgar tweets while enjoying Michelle Wolfe’s mean-girl insults and pornographic “humor” at the media’s nerd prom, aka White House Correspondents Dinner.

More interesting is the continuing resentment and anti-Trump animus on the part of self-proclaimed Republicans and conservatives. Even when acknowledging Trump’s successes, they too can’t resist some attack on Trump that signals their lofty virtue. They still reflexively insist that “principle” and “values” lie behind their disdain, that Trump has violated the “norms and traditions,” as serial liar and Democrat toady James Comey put it, that previous presidents have honored. Trump’s lack of decorum and his braggadocio, we continually hear, is “not who we are.”

Explosives require careful handling. Sometimes they blow up in your face.

After the 2016 election, the so-called deep state was confident that it had the power easily to either stop, remove, or delegitimize the outlier Donald Trump and his presidency.

Give it credit, the Washington apparat quite imaginatively pulled out all the stops: implanting Obama holdover appointees all over the Trump executive branch; filing lawsuits and judge shopping; organizing the Resistance; pursuing impeachment writs; warping the FISA courts; weaponizing the DOJ and FBI; attempting to disrupt the Electoral College; angling for enactment of the 25th Amendment or the emoluments clause; and unleashing Hollywood celebrities, Silicon Valley, and many in Wall Street to suffocate the Trump presidency in its infancy.

Silicon Valley likewise has lost its luster. Once upon a time, America loved a hip Steve Jobs, decked out in black, fiddling with a new Apple gadget on stage in front of an entranced televised audience of millions. Jobs appeared as a brilliant and typically American entrepreneur, not a partisan talking down to hoi polloi.

Things have radically changed since then. The reputation of Big Tech is one of hyper-partisan politics, data miners, snoops, Bowdlerizers and censors, monopolists, progressive multibillionaires, and adolescents in arrested development who exempt themselves from the consequences of what their ideologies inflict on others.

If the deep state really wanted to dismantle and disarm Donald Trump, it would have been wise first to carefully learn how he was constructed and wired — and thus why he was especially dangerous to them.

It seems only yesterday the press was writing that in the near future many people would have to seek jobs as software coders. Not to knock coding, but how much more interesting a stronger economy looks today.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that the U.S. economy has arrived at this remarkable juncture: There were 6.59 million unemployed Americans in March, and the number of jobs waiting to be filled that month was 6.55 million. That is, there are almost as many job openings as job seekers, a near match not seen for many years.

The reality is more complicated but still encouraging. A primary reason for unfilled jobs remains the problem of people with deficient or inappropriate skills. We know about the manufacturers who need welders and other skilled craftsmen. But the greatest job growth in March came in business services, with 193,000 openings. Many of these employers are looking for people with presentation skills or the ability to navigate a spreadsheet.

Oliver North, the retired Marine lieutenant colonel convicted in connection with the Iran-Contra affair, has been named the next president of the National Rifle Association, the group announced Monday.

“This is the most exciting news for our members since Charlton Heston became president of our association,” NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre said in a statement, referencing the Second Amendment activist and actor, who famously said his guns could only be taken from his “cold, dead hands.”

“Oliver North is a legendary warrior for American freedom, a gifted communicator and skilled leader. In these times, I can think of no one better suited to serve as our president.”

North served as a National Security Council staff member under President Ronald Reagan and was investigated for his participation in the illegal sale of weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of Americans held hostage in Lebanon. North was convicted on multiple charges but the convictions were later reversed on appeal, and all charges were dismissed in 1991.

The decision comes amid heightened national scrutiny of the gun industry and a widespread push for significant gun-control reforms in the wake of the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla. that claimed 17 lives on Valentine’s Day.

What does a Democrat have to do to invalidate his social justice warrior credentials? Does letting a woman drown in a river cancel his SJW privileges? No, not where Teddy Kennedy was concerned. What about if he did unspeakable things with an intern and a box of cigars in the Oval Office? No problem there when President Clinton was involved.

But in this era of “#MeToo,” the rules have changed. No longer can even liberals like Anthony Weiner sext and babysit at the same time. That’s an ominous sign for New York State attorney general Eric Schneiderman, known to be a tireless fighter for women and minorities – and, most recently, for keeping a brown slave girl on the side:

State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman called his Sri Lankan girlfriend [Tanya Selvaratnam] his “brown slave” and wanted her to refer to him as “Master,” the woman says.

“Sometimes, he’d tell me to call him Master, and he’d slap me until I did,” Selvaratnam said. “He started calling me his ‘brown slave’ and demanding that I repeat that I was ‘his property.'”

She said that as the violence grew, so did his sexual demands.

New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman abruptly resigned Monday night after the New Yorker published an article in which four women alleged he physically abused them.

Mr. Schneiderman denied the allegations and said they were unrelated to his work as attorney general. But he said in a statement that the accusations “will effectively prevent me from leading the office’s work at this critical time.”

His decision followed calls from New York leaders including Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a fellow Democrat, to step down. The governor said he would ask a district attorney to begin an investigation immediately.

As the top law-enforcement officer in the state of New York, Mr. Schneiderman, 63 years old, was one of the leading regulators of Wall Street and has been a prominent critic of the Trump administration.

He also presided over efforts for the Weinstein Co. to be acquired and condemned co-founder Harvey Weinstein following allegations that he sexually assaulted women. Mr. Weinstein has said he didn’t engage in any nonconsensual sex.

The office of the New York attorney general represents one of the most powerful prosecutorial positions in the nation. The office has significant oversight of the financial and banking industries, both of which are largely based in and around in New York City. A spokesman for the office declined to comment. CONTINUE AT SITE

Taxpayers should soon be receiving some good news from Washington. President Donald Trump and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) appear to have found a way to enact modest federal spending restraint, despite resistance from some GOP senators. Faced with a number of Republicans who claim they cannot repeal their 2018 spending surge because they made a deal with Democrats, Mr. Trump and House GOP leaders instead aim to cut funding approved in previous years. This amounts to billions of dollars that bureaucrats never got around to spending, and now perhaps they never will.

The idea that Republicans were honor-bound to continue all the spending that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) recently extracted probably makes little sense to those outside of government. This is especially true because, to secure his new budget buster, Mr. Schumer had to break his own previous agreement with Republicans to abide by reasonable limits on discretionary spending.

The opportunity to impose some small measure of discipline now exists because spending rules make it easier to rescind federal spending than to approve it in the first place. Republicans needed 60 votes on the first go-round so they had to deal with Mr. Schumer unless they wanted another government shutdown. The result exceeded the 2018 and 2019 spending caps under the Budget Control Act by a total of nearly $300 billion. CONTINUE AT SITE