North Korea to seek peace treaty with US at Trump meeting: report

Kim Jong Un, the bellicose North Korean leader, hopes to sign a peace deal after the upcoming meeting with President Donald Trump, which is tentatively set for May, Bloomberg reported, citing a South Korea report.

Dong-A Ilbo, South Korea's national newspaper, spoke to an unidentified senior official from President Moon Jae-in's office, who said Kim will likely raise the possiblity of the peace treaty.

The report said Kim is also likely to voice his desire to establish diplomatic relations with the U.S. and consider nuclear disarmament, the report said.
The regime wants a peace treaty to end the more than 60-year-old ceasefire between the two sides and to safeguard its sovereignty, Koh Yu-hwan, who teaches North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul, told the outlet.
“There were agreements between the U.S. and North Korea to open up discussion on a peace treaty, but they never materialized,” Koh said. “The U.S. wants a peace treaty at the end of the denuclearization process, while for the North, it’s the precondition for its denuclearization.”
The peace treaty would need to address issues such as the U.S. military’s presence in South Korea and the continued military drills aimed at countering the North’s threat in the region.
Trump last week accepted a meeting with Kim – expected sometime in May – but the key details of the meeting are yet to be decided.
Despite speculation of possible denuclearization, it is still widely believed that Kim will insist on keeping some nuclear weapons as a deterrent – a proposal that might be too hard to swallow for the Trump administration that came out against nuclear North Korea in any shape or form.
Kim might also propose giving a full report on the North’s current nuclear weapons arsenal and allowing international verification once the denuclearization process takes hold, said Choi Kang, vice president of Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies.
In addition, North Korea could offer Trump to release several American citizens currently being imprisoned in the country.

Pressure grows for 'The View' star Joy Behar to apologize over anti-Christian comments, but ABC is silent

ABC News has maintained a stony silence amid increased pressure for its star Joy Behar to apologize on-air to the "millions of Christians" who watch "The View," leaving Disney boss Bob Iger to fend for himself when an angry shareholder asked him about the brouhaha at a recent shareholder meeting.

On Feb. 13, Behar criticized Vice President Pence's faith by saying that hearing from Jesus is actually called “mental illness.” The resulting public outrage led scores of angry viewers to call or write ABC News demanding an apology. It wasn’t until late last week that Iger, CEO of ABC parent Disney, finally revealed when questioned by a concerned shareholder that Behar had privately called the vice president to apologize.

“ABC is doing absolutely nothing about this,” an ABC source told Fox News.
Multiple ABC sources told Fox News that ABC -- despite tens of thousands of formal viewer complaints -- has not subjected Behar’s comments to review by the news division’s Editorial Standards and Practices department.  The unit normally would rule on whether a public apology was required, and whether Behar and much-feared “The View” boss Hilary Estey McLoughlin should be subjected to discipline for Behar’s offensive remarks.

"ABC is doing absolutely nothing about this.”

“Joy Behar apologized to Vice President Pence directly. She made a call to him and apologized, which I thought was absolutely appropriate,” Iger said at the shareholder meeting. Audio reveals that Iger appeared irritated and dismissive of the shareholder, sharply cutting off the exchange.
A White House source described to Fox News the conversation between Pence and the ABC News star.
“She apologized to the vice president, he accepted and said he wasn’t offended by her comment for his own sake but on behalf of the millions of Christians who watch ABC and her show," the source told Fox News. "He encouraged her to make the same apology publicly on the show that she did privately to him.”
But Behar has yet to publicly apologize and it appears that she has no plans to do so.
Media Research Center President Brent Bozell issued a statement declaring that Behar’s private apology is “not nearly enough” and promised to continue his campaign against “anti-Christian bigotry” at the network.
Bozell’s watchdog group is presently running a campaign on behalf of aggrieved Christians, urging that viewers contact “View” advertisers about Behar’s “hateful, anti-Christian remarks.” As a result, more than 30,000 calls have been placed to ABC News and the show’s advertisers have received more than 10,000 calls of angry viewers complaining about the “anti-Christian” remarks.
“Behar and ABC need to publicly apologize for the bigoted slurs on ‘The View.’ The bigoted statements made about the vice president's Christian faith offended hundreds of millions of Christians across the country, the largest faith group in the United States. Their apology should therefore be as public as their insult,” Bozell said.
The MRC, which bills itself as “America’s media watchdog,” has published the contact information of 14 advertisers of “The View,” including Clorox, Dove, Pampers, Downy, Oreo and Gerber.
Disney has not responded to multiple requests for comment, while ABC News pointed Fox News to an on-air comment that Behar made last month as her public statement on the matter.
“I don’t mean to offend people but apparently I keep doing it,” she said during the non-apology. “It was a joke.”
A representative of ABC News declined to comment when asked directly if Behar would apologize based on the latest MRC attack on its advertisers.
An ABC source said that the news division does not expect “The View” to abide by the editorial standards and practices of the rest of its “news” programming.
Standard procedure at ABC News is that when a piece of content becomes the object of heated viewer complaints, executives in its Standards and Practices Department, which has several staffers despite ABC News’ small size, review it and determine a course of action. These actions can include mandating an apology or imposing some manner of discipline on personnel involved.
Recently, ABC News suspended for a month without pay its chief investigative correspondent, Brian Ross, after he broadcast an incorrect report about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s guilty plea. Ross was later demoted to a sinecure at ABC’s beleaguered Lincoln Square Productions.
In 2015, ABC News compelled George Stephanopoulos to recuse himself from moderating presidential debates after it was revealed the “Good Morning America” star had been secretly giving tens of thousands of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. ABC continues to pay Stephanopoulos in the range of $15 million dollars a year despite his diminished clout and social cache now that the Clintons are out of power.
Fox News contacted spokespeople for ABC News, ABC Television Network and Disney -- none of whom would comment on Behar.
Among those not commenting is ABC News Senior Vice President for Talent and Business Barbara Fedida, who is believed to have executive oversight of “The View. “
According to a number of reports in the Daily Mail, ABC News’ and particularly Fedida’s stewardship of “The View” has rankled producers at the longtime chat show. ABC News assumed control of “The View” from ABC Daytime in 2014.
Increasing incursions by “the View” into news territory have made the program more controversial. Only on Friday, Behar and “View” guest Valerie Jarrett, who is Barack and Michelle Obama’s best friend, both made excuses for a co-founder of the Women’s March who has ties to the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.
“Everybody has baggage,” Behar said. “Unless you're in utero, you have baggage.”

Putin ordered to shoot down passenger plane over terror threat

Russia's President Vladimir Putin said in a new film he ordered – but later pulled back – the shooting down of a passenger plane in 2014 after officials believed a man with a bomb was targeting the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.

In the two-hour film called “Putin,” the Russian president said he was advised on February 7, 2014, that a plane carrying passengers from Ukraine to Turkey had been hijacked – just as the 2014 Winter Olympics Games were to be opened.

“I was told: A plane en route from Ukraine to Istanbul was seized, captors demand landing in Sochi,” Putin said in the film, Reuters reported.
There were 110 passengers aboard. There were reportedly 40,000 in attendance at the Opening Ceremonies.
Security officials believed the plane was taken over by a man with a bomb and changed its course to Sochi.
Putin ordered that the plane be downed as part of the emergency plan.
“I told them: Act according to the plan,” Putin told reporter Andrey Kondrashov, a top state TV presenter and Putin's current press secretary.
But the terrorist scare turned out to be a false alarm and the Russian leader called off the order. The passenger who caused the panic was drunk and the plane was still on its way to Turkey.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, reportedly confirmed Mr Putin's account.
Putin was also asked during the interview whether there were any conditions under which the Russian government would give back Crimea to Ukraine.
“What are you talking about? Such circumstances do not exist and never will,” Putin said, according to Russia's Tass news agency.
Crimea, a territory that formally belonged to Ukraine was annexed by Russia in 2014 following Russian meddling and a disputed referendum.
The film was released just a week before the presidential elections on March 18 that Putin is expected to win.
Putin faces multiple challengers, but none of them are expected to seriously challenge the incumbent. Alexei Navalny, a prominent leader of opposition, has been barred from standing in the election.

Chicago Cartoons

Medicare drug benefit is weakened by congressional budget deal

Congress has undermined the Medicare drug benefit that millions of older Americans depend on – one of the few federal health-care programs that's working well. 

The two-year federal budget deal passed recently shifts more of the program's costs onto drug manufacturers starting in 2020. In the process, the change eliminates one of the key features that has made the program – known as Part D – successful for over a decade.

If the change stays in place, Part D could soon become just another budget-busting entitlement with little hope of long-term sustainability.
Medicare Part D provides private, federally subsidized prescription drug coverage to 42 million senior citizens. And since being implemented in 2006, the program has served beneficiaries extraordinarily well. In one recent survey, 87 percent of enrollees reported being satisfied with their Part D coverage.
Such positive attitudes are largely the result of Part D's market-based structure, which provides patients with a wide array of coverage options. This year, the average enrollee had 23 stand-alone plans to pick from. This setup forces insurers to compete with one another for seniors' business by offering the highest-quality, lowest-cost plans possible.
The program has also proven surprisingly affordable for taxpayers. A recent analysis from the American Action Forum found that the program's 2016 costs were less than half what was projected when the law was first implemented.
That's an unheard of feat for a federal program. One of the main reasons costs have remained so low? Plan providers are encouraged to keep patient drug expenses under control.
Under the standard benefit model, enrollees pay for the full price of their drugs until they reach a deductible of $405. After that, they're responsible for only a quarter of drug costs up to a certain limit – $3,750 this year.
It's at this point that beneficiaries enter a gap in coverage known as the "donut hole" in which they will pay 35 percent of a brand name medicine's cost in 2018. Once drug spending reaches about $5,000, patients are in the catastrophic phase of coverage, and cost-sharing drops off once again.
ObamaCare established a plan to phase out this donut hole by 2020 so that seniors would only have to pay 25 percent of brand-name drug costs after meeting their deductible. The remaining 75 percent of the cost would be split between pharmaceutical companies – which would discount drugs by 50 percent – and insurers that would cover the other 25 percent.
By making plan providers responsible for such a significant share of donut hole spending, the reform gives these companies a powerful incentive to keep as many patients as possible out of the donut hole. After all, once patients reach the donut hole, insurers see their costs soar. It's for this reason that three in four Part D enrollees never enter the coverage gap.
The budget deal effectively obliterates that incentive – and thus threatens the program's long-term sustainability. It does this by shifting the vast majority of donut hole spending onto drug companies and letting insurers almost entirely off the hook. As of 2020, plan providers will only be responsible for 5 percent of a brand-name drug's cost in the coverage gap, while pharmaceutical makers will have to pay for 70 percent.
The consequences for Part D could be catastrophic. Insurers will actually have an incentive to drive patient drug spending over the donut-hole threshold as quickly as possible by, for instance, encouraging patients to rely on costly brand-name drugs instead of more affordable generics. Once patients enter the coverage gap, insurer costs would plummet.
What's remarkable about this change is that it's a far better deal for insurance companies than for patients or taxpayers. A recent analysis by the consulting firm Avalere estimates that the government will save $7 billion over the next decade thanks to these changes. The average Part D beneficiary will save $20 a year. Insurers, meanwhile, will save a whopping $40 billion.
Insurance companies don't deserve another government handout. And Americans don't deserve another unsustainable entitlement program. Lawmakers need to roll back these misguided changes and rescue Part D from its impending fiscal ruin.

Former Obama officials form anti-Trump national security think tank

FILE -- Then President-elect Donald Trump, left, and former President Barack Obama arrive for Trump's inauguration ceremony at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S. January 20, 2017.  (REUTERS/J. Scott Applewhite/Pool)

A group of about 50 former Obama administration officials recently formed a think tank called National Security Action to attack the Trump administration's national security policies.

The mission statement of the group is anything but subtle: “National Security Action is dedicated to advancing American global leadership and opposing the reckless policies of the Trump administration that endanger our national security and undermine U.S. strength in the world.”

National Security Action plans to pursue typical liberal foreign policy themes such as climate change, challenging President Trump's leadership, immigration and allegations of corruption between the president and foreign powers.
This organization uses the acronym NSA, which is ironic. Three of its founding members – Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice and Samantha Power – likely were involved in abusing intelligence from the federal NSA (National Security Agency) to unmask the names of Trump campaign staff from intelligence reports and to leak NSA intercepts to the media to hurt Donald Trump politically. This included a leak to the media of an NSA transcript in February 2017 of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's discussion with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak. No one has been prosecuted for this leak.
Given the likely involvement of Rhodes, Rice and Power to weaponize intelligence against the Trump presidential campaign, will their anti-Trump NSA issue an apology for these abuses?
It is interesting that the new anti-Trump group says nothing in its mandate about protecting the privacy of Americans from illegal surveillance, preventing the politicization of U.S. intelligence agencies or promoting aggressive intelligence oversight. Maybe this is because the founders plan to abuse U.S. intelligence agencies to spy on Republican lawmakers and candidates if they join a future Democratic administration.
It takes a lot of chutzpah for this group of former Obama officials, who were part of the worst U.S. foreign policy in history, to condemn the current president's successful international leadership and foreign policy.
After all, ISIS was born on President Obama's watch because of his mismanagement of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and his "leading from behind" Middle East policy. The Syrian civil war spun out of control because of the incompetence of President Obama and his national security team.
This was a team that provided false information to the American people about the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the nuclear deal with Iran. I wonder if the anti-Trump NSA will include videos on its website of former National Security Adviser Susan Rice falsely claiming on five Sunday morning news shows in September 2012 that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was "spontaneous" and in response to an anti-Muslim video.
And of course there's the North Korean nuclear and missile programs that surged during the Obama years due to the administration’s "Strategic Patience" policy, an approach designed to kick this problem down the road to the next president. Because of President Obama's incompetence, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un may have an H-bomb that he soon will be able to load onto an intercontinental ballistic missile to attack the United States.
It must appall this group of former Obama national security officials that President Trump is succeeding as he undoes everything they worked on.
ISIS will soon control no territory in Iraq or Syria because of the Trump administration's intensified attacks on it and arming of Kurdish militias.
In sharp contrast to President Obama, President Trump drew a chemical weapons red line in Syria and enforced it.
North Korea is pushing for talks with the U.S. in response to strong United Nations sanctions the U.S. worked to obtain in 2017. And compliance with the new sanctions has been significantly improved, especially by China, as the result of President Trump’s actions.
President Trump repaired the damage done to U.S.-Israel relations by President Obama and has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – something several previous presidents promised but failed to do.
Iranian harassment of U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf stopped in 2017, likely due to the more assertive Iran policy of President Trump. This includes the president's successful effort to build a stronger U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia.
President Trump is right when he says he inherited a mess on national security from the Obama administration. This is because President Obama and his national security team undermined U.S. credibility and left President Trump a much more dangerous world. I doubt the new anti-Trump National Security Action think tank will succeed in convincing Americans otherwise.

Fred Fleitz a former CIA analyst, is senior vice president for policy and programs with the Center for Security Policy, a national security think tank. His new book is “The Coming North Korea Nuclear Nightmare: What Trump Must Do to Reverse Obama’s ‘Strategic Patience.” Follow him on Twitter @FredFleitz.

Pelosi: Democratic Caucus divide ahead of primaries is 'exhilarating'

Washington Democrats continue to take a Wild West approach to their 2018 congressional primaries  -- endorsing challengers, attacking at least one incumbent and totally avoiding California’s testy Senate contest -- all of which appears OK with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

“Welcome to the Democratic Party,” the California Democrat said Thursday, when asked whether a lack of party unity could help Republicans. 

“It is the most exhilarating thrill to be a leader in a party that has that kind of diversity of opinion. It’s our strength. We’re not a rubber stamp. … It certainly can work to our advantage. So I don’t see it as an obstacle.”
Washington Democrats have been split this year in several races, as they focus on winning a total 24 House seats to take control of the chamber. But the situation is most glaring in a Texas congressional race.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, whose mission is to elect and reelect party members to the chamber, has openly opposed candidate Laura Moser, one of a handful of Democrats who ran in this week’s 7th Congressional District Democratic primary.

“Democratic voters need to hear that Laura Moser is not going to change Washington,” the group said on its website weeks ahead of Tuesday’s primary, in which Moser nevertheless advanced to a May runoff. “She is a Washington insider, who begrudgingly moved to Houston to run for Congress.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent who caucuses with Democrats, told NBC News on Friday that such tactics are “unacceptable.”
In 2016, Sanders ran for president on the Democratic ticket but lost in the primary to Hillary Clinton, who appeared to have some advantages from the Democratic National Committee, according to leaked emails.
Moser already has support from Our Revolution -- the political group continuing the so-called “Sanders Movement.”
But Sanders, who’s campaigning this weekend in Texas, is so far noncommittal about whether he’ll help Moser, saying, “We’ll take a look at the race.”
Sanders told The Hill on Friday that he’s staying out of the California Senate race in which his backers and the Democratic Party’s far left wing are leading efforts to deny moderate Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein a sixth term.
At the state party convention last month, delegates gave Feinstein just 37 percent of the vote, compared with 57 percent for state Senate leader Kevin de Leon.
De Leon, a favorite of the state party’s progressive wing, didn’t get the endorsement because neither he nor Feinstein got the required 60 percent of the vote. But the situation was another example of a divided party and a possible threat to Feinstein’s reelection bid, despite her having a double-digit primary lead over de Leon and millions more in campaign money.
Sanders this week joined a handful of Washington Democrats in endorsing Marie Newman, the primary challenger in moderate Illinois Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski’s bid for an eighth term.
The others backing first-time candidate Newman include New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Illinois Democratic Reps. Luis Gutierrez and Jan Schakowsky, who is part of the DCCC leadership team, while Pelosi is backing Lipinski.
In another example, so many Democrats have entered congressional primaries in Southern California, where the DCCC is trying to win several GOP-held seats en route to 24 , that fears of splitting or diluting the vote has led to some candidates being asked to drop out, a source recently told Fox News.

As bullets fly, Chicago police boss blasts civilian oversight plans

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, left, with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, says the city is making "real progress" in fighting crime since a high of 771 murders in 2016.

Chicago's police superintendent on Saturday blasted efforts for greater civilian oversight of the department, citing "real progress" in fighting crime -- just hours after at least eight people were reportedly wounded in overnight shootings.

Hours later, two men were slain on the city's South Side, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Proposals by the city's leading community organizations call for greater oversight by a seven-member civilian board called the Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, the Chicago Tribune reported.
But Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said no one consulted him or anyone in the CPD for the year and a half it was conceptualized.
“We're in the middle of a serious crime fight, and we're finally making real progress, so I don’t know how you can turn over crime strategy and every policing decision to some group of people who have absolutely no law enforcement experience,” Johnson said.

Laquan McDonald, a black teen, was shot by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke on October 20, 2014. In November 2015, a judge ordered Mayor Rahm Emanuel to release the video footage.  (AP)

"(W)e're finally making real progress, so I don’t know how you can turn over crime strategy and every policing decision to some group of people who have absolutely no law enforcement experience."

In January, Fox News reported that murders had declined in the city in 2017 compared with 2016, dropping to 650 kilings from a two-per-day total of 771. Police credited so-called ShotSpotter technology -- consisting of cameras and detection radars deployed in neighborhoods -- for helping to reduce crime.
This year, shooting deaths have included the Feb. 13 slaying of Chicago police Commander Paul Bauer, who was shot multiple times while pursuing a suspect.
However, expanded use of camera surveillance has raised privacy concerns, Fox News reported.
Still, police reform has been a contentious subject in Chicago since November 2015, when a judge ordered the release of video footage showing Laquan McDonald, a black teen, being shot 16 times.

Chicago police Commander Paul Bauer was shot multiple times when he was slain Feb. 13 while pursuing a suspect.  (Chicago Police Department)

The proposals for the new oversight commission lay out new regulations for selecting community members to new city councils in Chicago’s 22 police districts responsible for improving police-community relations.
Under the new reforms, the commission would name a superintendent by selecting three candidates for the mayor to consider. The mayor would share joint-authority to fire or remove the superintendent “for cause.”
The reforms were modeled off others major cities like Los Angeles and Seattle, which have civilian oversight boards to monitor police.
The new proposals will be introduced at a City Council meeting later this month.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott Cartoons

The U.S. is Making ‘Zero Concessions’ Before Talks with North Korea, According to the White House

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders speaks to the media during the daily briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, Friday, March 9, 2018.

The White House says North Korea must take “concrete and verifiable” steps before President Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong Un.
During Friday’s briefing, Sarah Sanders said a time and place have not yet been determined for the meeting, and the president is hopeful the U.S. can make continued progress.
She also said the U.S. will make “zero concessions” before talks.
Sanders announced the president’s pardon of Kristian Saucier, who was sentenced to one year in prison for taking pictures inside a nuclear submarine.
The case was a major talking point during the 2016 elections as the president said Saucier was ruined for doing nothing compared to Hillary Clinton.