THERE’S SOMETHING ROTTEN IN ROME: ‘China is the best implementer of Catholic social doctrine,’ says Vatican bishop.

Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, praised the Communist state as “extraordinary”, saying: “You do not have shantytowns, you do not have drugs, young people do not take drugs”. Instead, there is a “positive national conscience”.

The bishop told the Spanish-language edition of Vatican Insider that in China “the economy does not dominate politics, as happens in the United States, something Americans themselves would say.”

Bishop Sánchez Sorondo said that China was implementing Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ better than many other countries and praised it for defending Paris Climate Accord. “In that, it is assuming a moral leadership that others have abandoned”, he added.

He accused US president Donald Trump of being “manipulated” by global oil firms, and said that, as opposed to those who follow “liberal thought”, the Chinese are working for the greater good of the planet.

I’m not Catholic, but most of the Catholic laypersons I know have been worried about this Vatican for a while now.

STEPHEN KRUISER: Climate Thought Police Offended by Rebekah Mercer’s Museum Philanthropy.

EASY? YOU CALL THAT EASY? How VW Paid $25 Billion for ‘Dieselgate’ — and Got Off Easy. “Volkswagen has been hit with huge penalties in the U.S. for the emissions scandal, but not in Europe.”

GANGSTER STATE: North Korea Might Be Behind The World’s Largest Crypto Heist.

Reuters reported that the statement given by the unnamed source echoed an earlier report made by South Korea’s Channel A news. The news report said that there was a high probability that the Coincheck hack was a North Korean crypto heist.

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) told South Korea’s parliament Monday that the North Korean crypto heist last year was on the scale of tens of millions of dollars, according to parliamentary sources.

Sources also told the press that South Korea’s National Intelligence Service had also informed the National Assembly that it was investigating the possibility of the January 26 hack being a North Korean crypto heist.

The National Intelligence Service also said that tens of billions of won in virtual currency were stolen from South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges last year. The hacks, which were most likely North Korean cyber heists, involved the sending of hacking emails to members of the exchanges.

Doesn’t anyone important take cybersecurity seriously?

SJWS RUIN EVERYTHING: Formula One Bans Sexy Grid Girls Over SJW Objections, Grid Girls Hit Back.

DON’T BE EVIL (CONT’D): YouTube Still Censors PragerU Videos.

CHANGE: North Korea to face harshest U.S. sanctions ever, Pence vows.

MATTIS TO CONGRESS: I’m wasting my time if you don’t pass budget.

Mattis made the comment while testifying before the House Armed Services Committee on the recently released National Defense Strategy and nuclear posture review.

“Congress mandated, rightfully mandated this National Defense Strategy — the first one in a decade — then shut down the government the day of its release. Today, we are again operating under a disruptive continuing resolution,” Mattis said in his opening statement. “I regret that without sustained, predictable appropriations, my presence here today wastes your time because no strategy can survive, as you pointed out, chairman, without the funding necessary to resource it.”

Congress’ primary function is spending other people’s money, and they can’t even do that on time.

HMM: Democrat Flips Deep-Red House Seat in Missouri. “Democratic pick Mike Revis turns a heavily GOP state legislative district blue.”

Revis defeated GOP candidate David C. Linton in the special election to replace Rep. John McCaherty, who left the office to focus on his run for Jefferson County executive.

President Trump won the heavily Republican district by a 61-33 margin in the 2016 election. There were three other special elections in the state on Tuesday night, all of which the Republican party defended. However, there were major net swings towards Democrats.

Revis’ win is likely welcome news for Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), thought to be one of the most vulnerable incumbents facing reelection this year in a state that Trump won by over 18 points.

Plus: “This marks the 35th legislative seat nationwide that has flipped since Trump’s inauguration and the second just this year.”

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Blumenthal?, Schiff Punked by RUSSIANS, Clock Ticking on DACA and Much, Much, More. And Trey Gowdy says, “I’m not saying it was Clinton associate Sidney Blumenthal feeding info to Chris Steele, but it was Clinton associate Sidney Blumenthal feeding information to Chris Steele.”

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Once-rich Venezuelans live as beggars in Colombia, but they don’t want to go back.

“Venezuela… I wouldn’t wish it on even my worst enemy,” a teary-eyed Luis Alfredo Rivas, 32, told el Nuevo Herald at a bus terminal in Bogotá, where he had just arrived from the neighboring country.

Rivas explained how he made the decision to leave. “Venezuela’s minimum wage is only 190,000 bolivars per week, when a kilogram of rice costs 210,000 bolivars. What can I do there?” he asked.

“My plan is to be here, to work and to move ahead and if I can, to bring my family over, too, to get them out of that hell,” he said.

As Venezuela’s economy continues to crumble, thousands of its citizens are trekking into Colombia every day — sometimes by walking hundreds of miles on foot through the Andes — to escape chronic shortages of food and medicine, frequent looting and rampant crime.

Related: Blackout hits parts of Venezuelan capital: witnesses, subway authorities.

The country sitting on top of the world’s largest oil reserves can’t keep its capital city fully lit.

NOW THAT’S A STRONG, INDEPENDENT WOMAN: Woman Arrested For Removing Hijab in Tehran Refuses to Repent Despite Facing 10 Years in Prison.

“Ms. Hosseini did not even appear in court to express remorse for her action. She said she objects to the forced hijab and considers it her legal right to express her protest,” Hosseini’s lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) on February 5, 2018.

Hosseini, 32, has been in detention since January 29, 2018. She was unable to pay the $135,000 USD bail set by the judge presiding over her case.

She was arrested on January 29, 2018, for posting a photo on social media of herself standing on a bench holding her white headscarf like a flag on Tehran’s Revolution’s Street.

All women in Iran are required to cover their hair and bodies in public.

Vida Movahed was the first woman to be arrested after she did the same thing in late December 2017 in Tehran. The act of removing your headscarf in public and waving it like a flag has become a symbol for the “Girls of Revolution Street” movement, which advocates choice over compulsion for women’s clothing.

“Ms. Hosseini is being held in difficult circumstances in Gharchak Prison [south of Tehran] but she is not prepared to say she is sorry,” Sotoudeh, a prominent human rights lawyer, told CHRI. “She believes she’s innocent.”

She’s right.

PATRICK POOLE: State Dept. Embraces Islamic Cleric Who OK’d Killing Americans in Iraq, Called for Israel’s Destruction.

MEET THE BELIEVERS: The Afghanistan War’s US Commanders are Ready For a Reboot.

“I’m a believer,” said Col. Stephen “Joker” Jones, who flew a Predator drone providing intel to the B-2 stealth bomber strike that hit this very airfield on Oct. 7, 2001 at the beginning of the war, then later flew B-1 Lancer missions over Afghanistan, and is now back to flying drones. “This country has defined my career. This is what I’ve done with my entire adult life,” Jones told reporters visiting the airfield with Gen. Votel. “I’m here for a year. I fully expect to come back. And that’s totally fine with me.”

Joker’s serious. And eager. He sits at the deployed end of a string of officers with the same faith, a string that runs back through Kabul, Votel’s CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s Pentagon suite, and all the way to the Oval Office. All are convinced that President Donald Trump’s new “South Asia strategy” can work.

Here’s why: Up to now, as senior U.S. military leaders in Afghanistan see things, they’ve never really had the chance to win. As they see it, past years have brought only fits and starts on the battlefield and in the Situation Room, troop surges that won hard-fought gains and drawdowns that gave them up again, early overestimations of Afghan capabilities and more recent failures to build on successes. But now, they say, they have the strongest and most capable Afghan force they’ve worked with, led by a combat-seasoned generation of Afghan senior officers and NCOs. And they say that Trump’s plan gives them permission to wage a sustained, offensive air and ground campaign against what’s left of the Taliban. Afghanistan, they believe, finally has a chance to win.

The change in attitude is best explained by four words further down in the report: “The leash is off.”

THEY WERE ONLY FOLLOWING SALES ORDERS: Germany Sold Technology to Iran for Use in Syrian Chemical Attacks.

Germany’s Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control approved a license for a company to sell military applicable technology to Iranian companies that subsequently was used in Syrian regime chemical weapons attacks, reported the German publication Bild on Monday.

The German company Krempel, located near the southern city of Stuttgart, sold electronic press boards to Iranian companies that were used in the production of rockets.

The Jerusalem Post reported in 2017 that multiple German intelligence reports revealed that Iran sought chemical and biological weapon technology in the federal republic.

The research of the human rights group, Syrians for Truth and Justice, Bild and the online investigative journalist website Bellingcat, showed photographs of the rocket remains with the company logo of Krempel and the product signature: “Made in Germany.”

I am so done getting lectured by our “betters” in Europe.

MARK HEMINGWAY: The Other Secret Dossier.

Last week, the Guardian reported the FBI is looking at a second Trump “dossier,” in addition to the one compiled by former British spook Christopher Steele at the behest of the Clinton campaign. The second dossier is allegedly compiled by Cody Shearer. “One source with knowledge of the inquiry said the fact the FBI was still working on [the ‘Shearer dossier’] suggested investigators had taken an aspect of it seriously,” notes the Guardian. “It raises the possibility that parts of the Steele dossier, which has been derided by Trump’s supporters, may have been corroborated by Shearer’s research, or could still be.”

The Atlantic’s Natasha Bertrand is now confirming that a “memo” written by Shearer does exist and she has personally reviewed it. It contains a “a range of allegations concerning the president’s personal behavior and financial transactions.” She does not specify what those allegations are. Bertrand further reports that Jonathan Winer, the Obama State Department’s special envoy to Libya, and former John Kerry aide, was the go-between for Shearer and Steele while he was working at the State Department.

Additionally, Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley released a heavily redacted version of the letter making a criminal referral against the author of the original dossier, Christopher Steele. The letter references a “contact” and “friend of the Clintons . . . contemporaneously feeding Steele allegations” about Trump. It is widely assumed that the contact in question is Cody Shearer. THE WEEKLY STANDARD has reached out to Grassley for comment and has received no response.

However, it’s worth noting that Shearer is one of the most disreputable characters in Washington, and has been frequently connected to the most scandalous acts of the Clintons’ political careers. If Steele passed on information and/or allegations from Shearer to the FBI, and that information was acted on, it raises serious concerns about the impartiality and judgment of Steele and the FBI.

Indeed.

And a reminder:

The Clintonistas play hardball, and to them the 2016 election ain’t over yet.

OOPS: Somebody Just Leaked Every Phone Number and Address on Anthony Weiner’s Laptop: 639 Politicians and Media Personalities Doxxed.

And here’s a direct link to the leak.

I can’t verify this myself, but it certainly looks legit.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Quentin Tarantino Isn’t a Villain, and Uma Thurman Isn’t a Victim.

YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK: Adam Schiff sent his staff to try and collect ‘classified materials for the FBI’ after Russian pranksters told him Putin has NAKED blackmail pictures of Trump.

DailyMail.com can disclose that after the prank, his staff engaged in correspondence with what they thought was a Ukrainian politician to try to obtain the ‘classified’ material promised on the call.

On an audio recording of the prank call posted online, Adam Schiff can be heard discussing the committee’s Russia investigation and increasingly bizarre allegations about Trump with a man who claimed to be Andriy Parubiy, the chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament.

The call, made a year ago, was actually from two Russian comedians nicknamed ‘Vovan’ and ‘Lexus’ who have become notorious for their phony calls to high-ranking American officials and celebrities, including UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Elton John.

Its existence was first reported by The Atlantic but not how a staff member working for the minority on the House Intelligence Committee pursued the information after the call.

Schiff’s office said the congressman suspected the call was ‘bogus’ from the beginning and reported it to authorities afterward.

But in a recording of the eight minute conversation, Schiff appeared to take the call seriously – or at least played along convincingly – and emails from the Democrat’s staff to the fake politician afterwards said he had found it ‘productive’.

Fox Mulder, call your office.

SO IS THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE, APPARENTLY: Hillary Clinton Claims Climate Change Is Sexist.

JACK DUNPHY: I Wrote Hundreds of Warrants. Here’s Why the Nunes Memo Is Troubling.

AND THE PHEASANTS ARE REVOLTING: ‘Reindeer rebellion’ in central Finland.

CONGRESSMAN DEVIN NUNES: ‘Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton Campaign Colluded with the Russians.’

NEWS YOU CAN USE? Yale dental students, professor seen in selfie with 2 severed heads. “It was not clear how the heads were obtained.”

MANSPLAINER (I THINK): How Rose McGowan’s anti-trans bias weakens her feminism.