Mitt Romney announces US Senate run in Utah

Mitt Romney announced Friday he will run for U.S. Senate in Utah to succeed the retiring Orrin Hatch, seeking a political comeback six years after his unsuccessful presidential campaign against then-President Barack Obama.

Romney announced on Twitter: "I am running for United States Senate to serve the people of Utah and bring Utah's values to Washington."

Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, is considered a heavy favorite for the Senate seat. He has emerged as a prominent critic of President Trump and, if he wins, could be poised to cause headaches for the administration from the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue.
While a former Massachusetts governor, Romney has deep ties to Utah. He attended Brigham Young University in Provo and helped turn around the scandal-plagued 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City -- moving to the state after losing the 2012 race.
A video message posted on Twitter Friday features that Olympics background. In the video, Romney gives voters an early look at his platform: fiscal responsibility, jobs and a moderate approach on immigration -- an apparent swipe at Trump policies.
“Utah has a lot to teach the politicians in Washington,” Romney says in the video. “Utah has balanced its budgets, Washington is buried in debt. Utah exports more abroad than it imports. Washington has that backwards. Utah welcomes legal immigrants from around the world. Washington sends immigrants a message of exclusion.”
His Senate run hasn’t been welcomed by all.
Utah Republican Party Chairman Rob Anderson told The Salt Lake Tribune earlier this week that Romney was "keeping out candidates that I think would be a better fit for Utah because, let's face it, Mitt Romney doesn't live here, his kids weren't born here, he doesn't shop here." The GOP official went on to call Romney a “carpetbagger.”
Anderson released an apology later saying, “I regret that my comments about potential Senatorial candidate, Mitt Romney, came across as disparaging or unsupportive. That was never my intent.”
He continued, “I’ve no doubt that Mitt Romney satisfies all qualifications to run for Senate, and as Chairman of the Utah Republican Party, I will treat all candidates equally to ensure their path to the Party nomination is honest and fair.”
Anderson also said that Romney reached out to him in regards to his comments and “accepted my apology without hesitation.”

Life in North Korea a horror. Why are we so hesitant to tell the massive Olympic audience about this reality?

Watching the media fawning over the North Korean delegation at the Pyeongchang Olympics, I recalled a picture that my old boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, kept under the glass of a table in his office -- a satellite photo of the Korean Peninsula at night. At the bottom, awash in light, is the free and democratic South. Meanwhile, the North is in complete darkness, save for a tiny pinprick of light in Pyongyang. The two countries, Rumsfeld would often point out, have the same people and the same natural resources. Yet one is glowing with the light of freedom, innovation and enterprise, while the other is enveloped in the total darkness of human misery.

Keep that darkness in mind while watching the North's Olympic charm offensive over these two weeks. Kim Yo Jong, the sister of Kim Jong Un, is not the "North Korean Ivanka." She is the vice director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department, a senior leader of the most brutal repressive totalitarian regime on the face of the Earth. As one defector told The Washington Post last year, "It's like a religion. From birth, you learn about the Kim family, learn that they are gods, that you must be absolutely obedient to the Kim family."

Any perceived disloyalty to the Kim family can result in a visit in the middle of the night from the Bowibu -- the North Korean secret police -- that could send not just the offender, but three generations of his or her relatives, to a forced labor camp for life. North Korea's system of "re-education" camps, which was recently mapped by satellite by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, is the most extensive in the world. Under three generations of Kims, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, have been imprisoned and killed in these camps. Inmates undergo the most brutal forms of torture imaginable, including being hung on hooks over open fires, while pregnant women are tied to trees while their babies are cut out of their bellies.
Yet the camps are simply prisons within a larger prison. The entire country is one giant gulag. Thanks to widespread malnutrition, North Koreans are between 1.2 and 3.1 inches shorter than South Koreans. And thanks to economic mismanagement, 97 percent of the roads are unpaved. According to my American Enterprise Institute colleague, Nicholas Eberstadt, up to a million North Koreans died of starvation in the famine that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. "It was the only time in history that people have starved en masse in an urbanized, literate society during peacetime," he notes. North Korea's people starve while the regime pours its resources into its messianic quest to deploy nuclear missiles capable of reaching and destroying American cities.
Even among the elites there is no safety. Last year, North Korea's vice premier for education was executed for not keeping his posture upright at a public event. Defense Minister Hyong Yong Chol was pounded to death with artillery fire for the crime of falling asleep at a parade. And if you wonder why those North Korean cheerleaders stay in such perfect sync, maybe it's because they saw 11 North Korean musicians lashed to the barrels of anti-aircraft guns which were fired one by one before a crowd of 10,000 spectators. "The musicians just disappeared each time the guns were fired into them," one witness declared, "Their bodies were blown to bits, totally destroyed, blood and bits flying everywhere. And then, after that, military tanks moved in and they ran over the bits on the ground where the remains lay."
This is the brutality that Kim Yo Jong represents. Yet despite this cruel reality, the media could not help fawning over the North Korean delegation. Reuters declared Kim Yo Jong the "winner of diplomatic gold at Olympics." CNN gushed how, "With a smile, a handshake and a warm message in South Korea's presidential guest book, Kim Yo Jong has struck a chord with the public." NBC even tweeted a photo of the North Korean cheerleaders with the heading "This is so satisfying to watch." Seriously? NBC failed to mention that in 2005, 21 cheerleaders were sent to a prison camp for speaking about what they saw in South Korea.
Instead of normalizing the regime, this should be an opportunity to educate the massive Olympic audience about the realities of life in North Korea under the murderous Kim crime family that is pursuing the ability to threaten American cities with nuclear destruction.

Gun Control Cartoons

White House Budget Director Grilled Over 2019 Fiscal Budget

White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney is defending the Trump administration’s $4.4 trillion spending proposal.

Budget Director Mick Mulvaney testifies before the Senate Budget Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018, on President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2019 budget proposal.

During a U.S. budget committee meeting on Tuesday, Mulvaney spoke about the 2019 budget, which seeks to increase military spending, fund the border wall, and slash entitlements.
He said his job as director of the OMB is to fund the president’s priorities, adding that is exactly what the agency did.
Meanwhile, experts say the budget would add nearly one trillion dollars to the national deficit, and will likely be overhauled before it passes congress.
“It’s a lot more fun to spend money than it is to reduce,” said Mulvaney. “It’s a lot harder to reduce spending in the long-term than it is to spend, and I think that it is incumbent upon all of us to start making difficult decisions to decide together as a legislature, as an administration: are these deficits that we are really willing to tolerate.”
When asked by Senators if Mulvaney would vote on the proposed budget, he said he would have found enough short-comings to vote against it.
However, he added it’s his duty to defend the White House’s priorities.

Michael Goodwin: Susan Rice ought to explain her weird email under oath

“Don’t let up,” a friend living abroad wrote a few weeks ago about corruption at the FBI. “Trump has them all on the run.”
The note came to mind when I saw the weird e-mail Susan Rice wrote to herself on Inauguration Day last year.
At first glance, the e-mail, which purports to recount remarks President Obama made two weeks earlier to Rice, FBI head James Comey and others about the Russia probe, makes no sense. But ask yourself why Rice repeated that Obama wanted everything done “by the book,” and it smells as if she’s preparing a last-minute defense for Obama, and maybe herself.
Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham, pit bulls on government misbehavior, wrote to Rice about the e-mail while noting that there were lots of doubts about whether the FBI actually did proceed “by the book.”
Hopefully, she’ll have to give her answer under oath, as should Comey and anybody else in the room.

Backlash against Bill? Many Democrats would sideline Clinton in 2018

ill the changing political climate sideline Bill Clinton?

Less than two years ago, he stood on a Philadelphia stage and heaped praise on his wife as the Democratic nominee for his old job. And he was a constant presence on the trail in a campaign that they, and nearly all journalists, thought would defeat Donald Trump.

As the 2018 midterms heat up, you might expect that a former president—one who left office with a high approval rating, despite the inconvenient fact of having been impeached—would be much in demand. But apparently, not so much.
That's the thesis of a Politico piece on the party running away from Clinton:
"Democrats are looking to embrace the #MeToo moment and rally women to push back on President Donald Trump in the midterms—and they don’t want Bill Clinton anywhere near it."
Clinton's history—Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick—looks far different to many Democrats in 2018 than it did in 1998, when the Senate acquitted him, or even 2016. His presence would detract from the Democrats' ability to make the midterms about Donald Trump, Rob Porter and Roy Moore.
There's another factor, I believe, not mentioned by Politico: Bill's presence also reminds voters of Hillary. It's not his fault that she ran a terrible campaign and lacked his ability to spin stories and connect with voters. But ever since he ran on a 2-for-1 deal back in 1992, allowed her to make policy as first lady and backed her two White House runs, they have been politically joined at the hip.
And most Democrats want to move on from the Hillary debacle.
The piece says of Bill that "an array of Democrats told Politico they're keeping him on the bench. They don’t want to be seen anywhere near a man with a history of harassment allegations, as guilty as their party loyalty to him makes them feel about it ...
"Privately, many Democratic politicians and strategists are harsher and firmer: Don't come to their states, and don't say anything about their campaigns. They are still worried about saying it out loud, but they don't want him now, or maybe ever. They know Republicans would react by calling them — with good reason — hypocrites."
This is hardly the first time the issue of Clinton’s womanizing has come up. Twenty years ago, Democrats feared that he would be an albatross in the midst of the Ken Starr investigation and impeachment drive; the Republicans lost five seats and Newt Gingrich resigned as speaker.
In 2000, Al Gore barely deployed Clinton as a surrogate as he tried to turn the page, and that may have cost him the presidency in the razor-thin recount election.
Trump didn't let Clinton’s sexual misconduct fade into the history books. He alluded to it at times, and after the "Access Hollywood" tape, he brought some of Clinton's accusers to the second debate. His surrogates weren't shy about using Bill's past to blunt Hillary's attacks on Trump’s treatment of women.
But now it's Clinton’s own party that apparently wants to turn the page. Kirsten Gillibrand, elected to the Senate with Clinton's backing but eyeing the White House in 2020, recently said he should have resigned after the Monica Lewinsky affair. If most other Democrats follow suit, Clinton may have to spend more time with his family and his foundation.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m.). He is the author "Media Madness: Donald Trump, The Press and the War Over the Truth." Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.

Bipartisan immigration deal pits moderates against GOP leadership, Trump

A group of senators on Wednesday came up with a bipartisan immigration deal that would increase border security and give legal status to the so-called Dreamers, but fall short of President Trump’s “four pillars,” and— if passed —would likely be vetoed.

The so-called Common Sense Coalition is comprised of eight Democrats, eight Democrats and one Independent.

The compromise calls for $25 billion for border security, including the construction of the border wall over a 10-year period. The compromise falls short of Trump’s demand for immediate funding, The New York Times reported.
Nearly two million illegal immigrants, many of who came to the country as children, would be offered an eventual path to citizenship as part of the plan. The new citizens would not be allowed to sponsor their parents. The bipartisan deal leaves the diversity visa lottery in place, an immigration program Trump wants to ax.
Trump on Wednesday reiterated the need to pass the bill proposed by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, that takes a more hardline approach to immigration.
“I am asking all senators, in both parties, to support the Grassley bill and to oppose any legislation that fails to fulfill these four pillars,” Trump said in the statement. He added that the “overwhelming majority of American voters support a plan that fulfills the framework’s four pillars, which move us towards the safe, modern and lawful immigration system our people deserve.”
The president said he would oppose any “Band-Aid” measure that gives legal status to Dreamers in exchange for a minimal increase in border security.
Republican leadership came out in support for Trump.
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday that “the president has made clear what principles must be addressed if we are going to make a law instead of merely making political points.”
The Grassley bill would give a path to citizenship for young immigrants but it would also limit “chain migration,” beef up border security. It remains unclear whether the bill, which is favored by the White House, has a chance in Congress. Democrats oppose any plan to severely limit “chain migration,” a process when someone can sponsor a visa for a family member. Democrats are also opposed to ending the diversity visa lottery.
But it remains unclear whether the bipartisan agreement would reach the required 60 votes in the Senate to break the filibuster if brought up for the vote.
“The president’s going to have a vote on his concept. I don’t think it will get 60 votes,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham,  R-S.C., according to the Times. “The bottom line then is: What do you do next? You can do what we’ve done for the last 35 years — blame each other. Or you can actually start fixing the broken immigration system. If you came out of this with strong border security — the president getting his wall and the Dream Act population being taken care of — most Americans would applaud.”
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the bipartisan bill does not have the required votes yet, adding that he is encouraging the liberal wing of his party, who oppose compromises with Republicans, to support the bill. “There are plenty who don’t like this,” he said.

PBS Political Cartoons

Former UN secretary general Annam

Former UN Secretary General Annan with Hillary

Trump proposes cutting all federal funds for NPR, PBS

President Trump proposed cutting funding for PBS and NPR, but the suggestion faces long odds in Congress.

The 2019 federal budget that the White House unveiled Monday again proposes cutting all federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funnels money to NPR and PBS -- a potential move that the CPB president quickly slammed.
In a statement, President and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Patricia Harrison excoriated the proposal, suggesting it might even lead to fatalities.
“Americans place great value on having universal access to public media’s educational and informational programming and services, provided commercial free and free of charge,” Harrison said in a statement Monday.
“Since there is no viable substitute for federal funding that would ensure this valued service continues, the elimination of federal funding to CPB would at first devastate, and then ultimately destroy public media’s ability to provide early childhood content, life-saving emergency alerts, and public affairs programs," the statement continued.
But the idea must win the approval of a skeptical Congress to become reality. Just last year, the White House made a similar proposal to defund the CPB, although Congress effectively ignored the request.
"The Budget proposes to eliminate Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) over a two year period," the 2019 proposal states.
Republicans have long suggested that PBS and NPR, which some politicians and commentators say are left-leaning and partisan, should not receive federal funds.
But the Trump budget, rather than raising the issue of bias, simply asserts that the money is not necessary.
"CPB funding comprises about 15 percent of the total amount spent on public broadcasting, with the remainder coming from non-Federal sources," the propsal says, under a section titled "Justification."
"This private fundraising has proven durable, negating the need for continued Federal subsidies," the proposal continues, adding that NPR and PBS could make up the shortfall by "increasing revenues from corporate sponsors, foundations, and members."

Senators flag 'unusual' Susan Rice email on Russia probe from Inauguration Day

Ex-national security adviser Susan Rice sent an “unusual email” to herself the day President Trump was sworn into office documenting former President Barack Obama's guidance at a high-level meeting about how law enforcement should investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race, two Republican senators said Monday. 

According to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Sen. Lindsey Graham, the partially unclassified email was sent by Rice on Jan. 20, 2017 -- and appears to document a Jan. 5 meeting that included Obama, then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, then-Vice President Joe Biden and Rice. 

In the email, Obama's national security adviser wrote: “President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book.’ The president stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.”
THE TRUMP DOSSIER: HOW A POLITICAL DOCUMENT MADE ITS WAY TO THE FBI
The email also appears to reflect Obama's guidance on sharing sensitive information with both the Russians and the incoming administration.
Rice wrote that Obama said "he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia."
She added, "The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team.  Comey said he would."
Grassley, R-Iowa, and Graham, R-S.C., released the email Monday. They said they uncovered it as part of their oversight of the FBI and the Department of Justice, and claimed it raises new questions.
“It strikes us as odd that, among your activities in the final moments on the final day of the Obama administration, you would feel the need to send yourself such an unusual email purporting to document a conversation involving President Obama and his interactions with the FBI regarding the Trump/Russia investigation,” they wrote in a letter to Rice.
They added: “In addition, despite your claim that President Obama repeatedly told Mr. Comey to proceed ‘by the book,’ substantial questions have arisen about whether officials at the FBI, as well as at the Justice Department and the State Department, actually did proceed ‘by the book.’”
The origins of the Russia meddling probe have come under mounting scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where Republicans are looking at how an unverified anti-Trump dossier was used to seek a surveillance warrant against Trump associate Carter Page in late 2016.
The senators asked Rice to answer questions about the email by Feb. 22.
According to the released email, the Jan. 5 meeting followed a briefing by the intelligence community on Russian hacking during the 2016 election. Grassley and Graham said the meeting included a discussion of the now-infamous dossier.
But one source familiar with the meeting said it had nothing to do with Steele or the dossier. That person said it was solely focused on whether the intelligence community and the FBI needed to be careful about what Russia conversations they had with the Trump transition team.