COCAINE MITCH: McConnell sets stage for ‘nuclear option’ to change rules on judges.

McConnell filed cloture — a motion to cut off dilatory debate — on a motion to proceed to Senate Resolution 50, which would dramatically reduce the amount of time Trump’s nominees have to spend on the floor and let Republicans confirm more of his picks.

The resolution would reduce the amount of floor time that must elapse between when the Senate votes to invoke cloture on a nominee and when a final vote is held from 30 hours to two hours.

Faster? Please!

ERIC HOLDER: “When I hear these things about ‘Let’s make America great again,’ I think to myself: ‘Exactly when did you think America was great?'”

I can think of an eight-year span when I started having some doubts, based solely on upper-level management in the Executive branch.

TRUMP AT LAST NIGHT’S RALLY: “You have always been loyal to your nation. And now you have a President who is loyal to you — 100 percent.”

Related: Donald Trump Was Elected Because Elites Have Failed the Working Class. “American politics is suffering from a failure of empathy. In particular, the country’s elites have failed to empathize with the working class. Over the last few generations, America’s elites have stood in the way of the working class’s pursuit of the American dream by devising, and then by tenaciously defending, policies that impede upward economic mobility.”

Flashback: Donald Trump is a symptom of a new kind of class warfare raging at home and abroad.

DANA LOESCH: CNN’s Parkland Townhall Sought to Inflame, Not Inform.

During the broadcast Scott Israel tried to play the hero and CNN encouraged it, even though the network’s own reporting revealed that his department had received 39 calls about the 19-year-old murderer – and did nothing to stop him.  Prior to his Feb. 14, 2018 rampage, Nikolas Cruz had beaten his adoptive mother so badly she lost several of her teeth, had taken knives and bullets to school, and had threatened to kill his fellow students (they reported him to school officials on numerous occasions). School counselors wanted him forcibly committed, and he had even called the police on himself (in addition to his own family calling them, begging for his weapons to be removed). Although Sheriff Israel knew all these things prior to the CNN event, it was made clear that the carnage at that school was my responsibility.

If CNN was practicing journalism instead of advocacy that day, the sheriff would have been held to account. We’ve learned more since the shooting as well. In the weeks following, I spoke with one MSD teacher on NRATV who informed me that the school had no security plan in place for what had happened. I discussed on my radio program that a Secret Service agent had performed a risk assessment months before the massacre and none of his recommendations were put into effect.

If I could discover this kind of information, CNN, with its vast editorial resources, easily could have as well. There was no discussion about mental health awareness. No discussion about school security procedures. Instead, the discussion focused entirely on blaming Republican lawmakers, the Second Amendment, the NRA, and law-abiding gun owners. I watched from the stage as one camera focused on the pained face of a mother in agony, a mother mourning the loss of her child. She read a statement, pausing to compose herself as best she could, tears streaming down her face, while the camera zoomed in to capture her suffering. I don’t think some of those who attended realized that the network intended for this to be a spectacle.

Read the whole thing.

OH: Pelosi calls Barr’s letter on Mueller probe ‘condescending.’

FLASHBACK:

NOTHING TO SEE HERE. MOVE ALONG. Report: John Brennan Met with House Democrats on Capitol Hill Wednesday. “Coordinating a new narrative?”

BREXIT – IT WAS FUN WHILE IT LASTED: MPs reject Theresa May’s Brexit deal by 58 votes.

HMM: Is Mitch McConnell Going All Wobbly on ObamaCare? “At the very least, Politico would like you to think so.”

THE NATIONAL SECURITY IMPACT OF RUSSIAGATE AND MUELLER’S INVESTIGATION:

…on July 13, 2017 then-House Minority Leader — now Speaker — Nancy Pelosi claimed “this week we saw cold hard evidence” that the Trump family colluded with Russia to assault American democracy.”

Ah but.

Hard evidence exists that a serious national security crime was committed during the election and early 2017. Trump and his campaign were spied upon, not by foreign adversaries but by America’s security agencies. Moreover, criminals in these agencies colluded with media compadres to mislead the American people.

The security agency corruption and media collusion produced a cold, hard totalitarian horror committed in and against America, the world’s paramount democracy.

Read the entire essay.

SANCTIONS: U.S. orders foreign firms to further cut down on oil trades with Venezuela.

The U.S. imposed fresh sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry earlier this year but some companies have continued to supply the country with fuel from India, Russia and Europe.

Washington is particularly keen to end deliveries of gasoline and refined products used to dilute Venezuela’s heavy crude oil to make it suitable for export. Jet fuel and diesel would be exempt for humanitarian reasons, the sources said.

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced a ban in early February on the use of its financial system in oil deals with Venezuela after April.

But as recently as this week, the U.S. State department has called up foreign firms to say that the scope of the sanctions is wider.

The sources said that the State Department made clear that any kind of oil trade, whether it be direct, indirect or barter, would be considered a breach.

It wouldn’t be a bad thing to help hurry along the demise of Chavismo, but longterm I still wonder if sanctions will prove to have been a mistake.

A FLARE FOR ALASKAN WINTER WARFARE: A paratrooper in the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, fires a signal flare during an exercise. The photo has great color contrast –flare launch, white snow, white winter camouflage uniforms, lingering red smoke between the log barrier and the treeline.

ON HUGH HEWITT: Senator Josh Hawley endorses Senate rules changes, judges taking senior status, and investigation into FBI/IC re the assault on Trump. “There’s over 100, in fact, I think it’s 150 vacancies, Hugh, still on the Courts of Appeals and the federal district courts. And this is just a generational turning point for the judiciary. Lots and lots of judges are retiring because of their age. And we’re just at one of those tipping points. It’s a huge opportunity and a huge responsibility to get pro-Constitution, rule of law judges on the court. And this is one of the most important things that we can do in the next two years.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, MOB RULE EDITION: Protesters at Beloit College shut down speaker at Young Americans for Freedom event.

CHANGE: House Committee Approves Marijuana Banking Bill. “The bill seeks to expand marijuana businesses’ access to banking services.”

BREXIT MADNESS: Will Parliament Vote To Let May Quit? “The defeats of the other alternatives might open the door for reconsideration of May’s deal, especially with her pledge to remove herself from further negotiations. That Withdrawal Agreement comes up for a third vote tomorrow, but Commons speaker John Bercow initially left it a mystery if it would be in order. Bercow insisted that the Commons cannot return to a measure that has already had a vote simply because some MPs might have changed their minds.”

MPs might not be given a second chance to vote the “right” way, but it’s looking more likely that the British people will be.

WHICH IS WHY THE LEFT SEEKS TO DESTROY IT: Good News, AIPAC Remains Bipartisan.

Readers have likely heard of O’Sullivan’s Law: “any organization or enterprise that is not expressly right wing will become left wing over time.” The corollary is that the left seeks to destroy the unusual organization that successfully resists this evolution. The left is going after AIPAC precisely because it cooperates with Republicans and Democrats, and because it cooperates with the Israeli government whether its led by the left or the right. In fact, if anything, to maintain bipartisanship AIPAC has to bend over backwards to placate Democrats, given that the Republican Party is far more instinctively pro-Israel these days than are the Democrats.

The felt need to destroy AIPAC is why JStreet exists; JStreet claims to be pro-Israel, but it will cooperate far more readily with those who want Israel destroyed than with pro-Israel forces to its right. It’s also why MoveOn is going after AIPAC, and so on. I have my own issues with AIPAC, but the constant refrain on the left that AIPAC is “right-wing” in fact should be translated to “it’s not left-wing, and anything not left-wing is implicitly right-wing and must be destroyed.”

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: GW conservative groups slam initiative to change Colonial mascot.

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HURRAY: Egyptian blogger Alaa is free!

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Yank Schiff’s security clearance and much, much more. “Schiff is the chairman of the powerful committee and he has been parading around the media for two years, squeaking about all the secret information he has seen that we dirty, unwashed dummies have not, and about how his secret information shows that Trump colluded with RUSSIA. Schiff is a punk. We know from the Barr letter on Mueller’s findings that this is not true. Mueller had infinitely more resources than Schiff and he didn’t manage to confirm Schiff’s hallucinations.”

But the media won’t push back on Schiff’s obvious nonsense, so to him it’s “working.”

HE’S VERY AUTHENTIC. JUST ASK T-BONE. Cory Booker Is the ‘Plug and Play’ Democratic Presidential Candidate.

KURT SCHLICHTER: You’re A Sucker For Not Believing That The System Is Rigged.

FASTER, PLEASE: Justin Amash Wants To Kill the Zombified Remains of the Export-Import Bank.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Spygate: The Inside Story Behind the Alleged Plot to Take Down Trump.