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[snip] As posted earlier, the Mueller team appears to be larger in size than would be needed for an investigation into Russian meddling in the election, something I pointed out in Mueller legal team approaching size of entire US Attorney’s Office for Rhode Island. That team and its staffing suggest that Trump would be at risk even if there was no underlying crime, Trump at risk from Comey/Mueller: If “they don’t get you on the crime, they get you on the process”.

Heading into the recent meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump, expectations were modest. Even the Indian government played down Modi’s trip to the White House as a “no-frills” visit. Yet the leaders of the world’s two most populous democracies ended up making important headway, demonstrating the power of diplomacy to transform challenges into opportunities. The US-India relationship, despite having become closer, has been burdened by mutual misgivings as of late. For the Trump administration, concerns have focused on issues such as the growing bilateral trade deficit, the displacement of US workers by Indian information-technology...

A road trip on a weekend and making sure you can still get to Mass can sometimes result in a very pleasant surprise and a holy experience.Quite recently Marjorie (my fiancée) and I were returning home over the weekend from a car trip to Ohio. Not wanting to miss Mass, we looked online at Mass times for the areas we would be traveling through on Saturday afternoon. Expecting to be driving near Uniontown, PA about four o’clock, we found several churches that had four o’clock Saturday afternoon Masses listed.But our travel plans were slightly delayed driving over the mountainous region...

Four members of a crew filming a television reality show in downtown Oakland were robbed at gunpoint Monday night of $50,000 worth of equipment and personal items, according to a victim and authorities. The head of the crew said he was thrown up against a wall and that he and the other victims were forced to lay on the pavement, where the two robbers put guns to their heads and threatened them Chris Burns, 37, an independent director of photography for the AwesomenessTV production “This Is Summer,” a reality show that follows eight 17-year-olds growing up in the Bay Area,...

After 10 years of negotiation, the US can now sell Rice to China. link only: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-20/in-a-china-win-for-trump-u-s-can-now-ship-rice-for-first-time

As next in line to be king of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Nayef was unaccustomed to being told what to do. Then, one night in June, he was summoned to a palace in Mecca, held against his will and pressured for hours to give up his claim to the throne. By dawn, he had given in, and Saudi Arabia woke to the news that it had a new crown prince: the king’s 31-year-old son, Mohammed bin Salman. The young prince’s supporters have lauded his elevation as the seamless empowerment of an ambitious leader. But since he was promoted on June...

The Conference Board Leading [indicators] increased 0.6 percent in June … , following a 0.2 percent increase in May, and a 0.2 percent increase in April.

FRESNO, Calif. — The police responded to a call about a loud party on East San Ramon Avenue, but it wasn’t just any party: A sheep was reportedly being slaughtered in a backyard. “Muslim refugees were unaware that slaughtering sheep is not allowed in the city,” the police wrote afterward in their report, which also stated that those involved “were advised to clean up the blood and mess” and warned that in the future “they could be cited.” The animal, actually a goat, was killed by a Syrian refugee who later skinned, roasted and shared it with his Syrian neighbors...

It’s Thursday, July 20th. As of today, Donald Trump has been president for 6 months. The media coverage of the president is overwhelmingly negative: the press remains contemptuous, and they're pushing to get him out before he completes his first term. Investors might think differently. The great success of the Trump presidency thus far, is not what he's done, but what he promises to do, namely, get the economy going again. Evidently, investors believe he might yet get it done. Look at this: since his election win, the Trump rally has added $4.1 trillion to the nation's wealth. Anyone with...

“We're in this room today to deliver on our promise to the American people to repeal Obamacare and to ensure that they have the health care that they need,” President Trump told Republican senators at a White House luncheon on Wednesday. “We have no choice. We have to repeal and replace Obamacare.” Trump said Republicans are “so close” to getting the job done, even without a single vote from Democrats: "The way I looked at it, we have no Democrat help. They're obstructionists. That's all they're good at is obstruction. They have no ideas. They've gone so far left, they're...

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., may be testing the presidential waters as she's booked a speech in New Hampshire for later this month Waters is headlining a picnic fundraiser for the Stafford County Democratic Committee on July 23 Future presidential contenders usually try out their message in Iowa and New Hampshire to see how it resonates with early caucus and primary voters

The Trump administration on Thursday announced it is pouring $500 million into the production of glass pharmaceutical packaging as part of the president's "Made in America" week. President Donald Trump met with representatives of Merck, Pfizer and Corning in the Roosevelt Room of the White House to announce the initiative. He said the investment would create nearly 1,000 jobs "quickly." "This initiative will bring a key industry to our shores that for too long has been dominated by foreign countries," he said. "We're moving more and more companies back into the United States, and they're doing more and more of...

President Trump is ramping up his criticism of Robert Mueller, warning that the special counsel investigating Russian election interference would cross the line by looking into his finances. Mueller is now reportedly doing just that — looking at transactions involving Trump’s businesses and those of his associates. The development is sure to exacerbate Trump’s frustration with the Russia probe, an investigation that has dogged his presidency and forced him and his closest aides to hire legal representation. Among other things, Mueller is said to be probing potential obstruction of justice by Trump, following the president’s decision to fire FBI director...

President Donald Trump "has confidence" in Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the White House said Thursday, one day after Trump suggested that he should have picked someone else to lead the Department of Justice. The Associated Press on Thursday afternoon reported the White House statement, which sought to allay a media uproar that followed comments Trump made to the New York Times

Down but not out: McCain sends out blistering statement accusing the Trump administration of 'playing into the hands of Putin' on Syria hours after former POW reveals cancer diagnosis The Trump administration is ending a CIA program to arm and train rebels battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad The covert program began under the Obama administration and was aimed at pressuring the dictator Senate Armed Services chairman John McCain is one of the foremost Russia critics in the Senate McCain issued a statement accusing the administration of playing into Russian President Putin's hands Making 'any concession without a strategy is 'short-sighted'...

RUSH: Now, the latest bombshell. You said that all hell broke loose in the last 24 hours. The latest supposed bombshell from a leak, from an anonymous source, is that the specialist investigation, Robert Mueller has already expanded to investigate — are you ready for this? — any and all business dealings that Trump has ever had with any Russian. You know, you crack jokes about these people and it ends up being true. Yesterday I said it’s gonna become a crime to talk to anybody who is Russian. The way this is headed, you can’t talk now, the new...

A few years back, my father and I voluntarily submitted ourselves to an episode of Question Time, a long-running program on the BBC on which sundry British politicians try to sound as indignant as possible while expressing nothing whatsoever beyond the day’s conventional wisdom. On the panel that evening was one Louise Bagshawe, a Tory MP from London who had a gig on the side as a writer of teen-girl books. “That woman,” my dad said to me about half-way through the show, “is one of the dullest people I’ve ever seen. Even for Question Time.” So much for plus...

Top officials with 14 anti-poverty nonprofits were paid as much as $869,900 as their organizations were enriched with $900 million of taxpayer money, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s (TheDCNF) Investigative Group has found. The activist groups received as much as 85 percent of their revenue from federal, state and local governments and collectively spent millions on lobbying, TheDCNF’s analysis found. Also, half of the charities’ CEOs made political contributions – nearly all of which was to Democratic candidates.

The IDF said Thursday five battalions have been put on standby in the West Bank in light of the high tensions on the Temple Mount. After three Israeli Arabs came out of the Temple Mount complex armed and opened fire at an Israeli police force, killing two of the officers, Israel added metal detectors and security cameras at the entrance gates to the holy site to prevent the smuggling of more weapons inside. The added security was met with strong objection from the Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, other Arab nations and the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf. They claim the move constitutes a...

Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Russia hawk and occasional Donald Trump critic, blasted a report on the administration's new Syria posture just hours after revealing he had a cancerous brain tumor. McCain's statement faulted the administration for reportedly ending a covert program begun during the Obama administration to provide arms to Syrian rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad. 'If these reports are true, the administration is playing right into the hands of Vladimir Putin,' the Armed Services Committee chairman said in a statement.