Last year (March 22, 2016), eight members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a demand that their Muslim staffers be granted access to top secret classified information.

The signatories to the letter were Andre Carson (D-IN), Luis Guiterez (D-IL), Jim Himes (D-CT), Terri Sewell (D-AL), Jackie Speier (D-CA), Mike Quigley (D-IL), Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Patrick Murphy (D-FL). All the signatories were Democrats.

Some had a history of attempting to undermine national security.  Two of them have been linked to an emerging security breach.

The office of Andre Carson, the second Muslim in Congress, had employed Imran Awan. As did the offices of Jackie Speier and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL); to whom the letter had been addressed.

Imran Awan and his two brothers, Jamal and Abid, are at the center of an investigation that deals with, among other things, allegations of illegal access.  They have been barred from the House of Representatives network.

A member of Congress expressed concern that, “they may have stolen data from us.”

All three of the Pakistani brothers had been employed by Democrats. The offices that employed them included HPSCI minority members Speier, Carson and Joaquín Castro (D-TX). Congressman Castro, who also sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, utilized the services of Jamal Moiz Awan. Speier and Carson’s offices utilized Imran Awan.

China’s central bank is running out of ways to stem capital flight and faces a near impossible task trying to manage the fall-out from extreme credit growth, two of Asia’s most influential banks have warned.

“Defense of the currency by the People’s Bank (PBOC) is no longer a viable option,” says Eric Robertson, the head of global macro strategy for Standard Chartered.

Standard Chartered has been in the China since the 1850s and has over 6,000 staff in the country. Its warnings should not be taken lightly.

The Asia-focused lender says powerful forces are driving capital out of the country and the picture is fundamentally more disturbing than it was during last year’s devaluation panic. This is putting the PBOC in an invidious position as it attempts to deal with festering troubles in the banking system.

While the PBOC still has $3 trillion of foreign exchange reserves, they are not as large as they look given the scale of the financial pressures and the structure of the Chinese economy. The ratio of the M2 money supply to reserves has collapsed to a 15-year low and this may prove to be the crucial ratio in a confidence crisis.

[Note by Jack Wheeler:  57 years ago in Conscience of a Conservative, Barry Goldwater proclaimed the conservative political dream:

“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution.”

What you are about to read explains the legal mechanism already in place by which this can be easily done.  What Kim Strassel has written will blow you away with what is possible under a Trump Presidency guiding a GOP Congress.  Barry Goldwater was the original American conservative hero.  Somewhere, he is smiling right now.]

Last week (01/25), Todd Gaziano stepped into a meeting on Capitol Hill of free-market attorneys, think tankers and Republican congressional staff to unveil a big idea. By the time he stepped out, he had reset Washington’s regulatory battle lines.

Actually, more than reset.  This is a true game-changer.

As a matter of strict objective fact, Donald Trump’s trade guru Peter Navarro is correct. Germany is the planet’s ultimate currency manipulator, not China.

The Euro – really a de facto Deutsche Mark – is indeed “grossly undervalued.” The warped mechanism of monetary union allows Germany to lock in a permanent ‘beggar-thy-neighbor’ trade advantage over Southern Europe, inflicting mass unemployment on the victim countries and blighting their futures.

Whatever you think of Peter Navarro’s trade philosophy regarding China, he is right that Germany’s chronic, huge, and illegal current account surplus - 8.8% of GDP - saps global demand and seriously distorts the world economy.

And now, President Trump is going to do something about it.

Lone wolf terrorism is the biggest trend in Islamic terrorism. Unlike classic Islamic terrorism, it requires no cells stretching across countries the way that 9/11 did. The perpetrators don’t even need to enter the country under false pretenses the way that the World Trade Center bombers did.

Classic counterterrorism is directed at organizations. It’s inadequate for stopping individual Muslim terrorists like Omar Mateen who was able to murder 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando or closely related duos like the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston or the Farook-Malik husband and wife team who carried out the San Bernardino terrorist attack which took the lives of 14 people.

The reason is simple. Unlike classic Islamic terrorism which required organization and infrastructure, the new brand of Islamic terror only needs one thing… Muslims.

Muslim immigration makes Muslim terrorism worse.  Once we understand this inconvenient truth, then everything else naturally flows from it.

Long-simmering social tensions in Mexico are threatening to boil over as failing neoliberal reforms to the country’s formerly nationalized gas sector are compounded by open corruption, stagnant standards of living, and rampant inflation.

The U.S. media has remained mostly mute on the situation in Mexico, even as the unfolding civil unrest has closed the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego, California, for the last four weekends in a row.

Ongoing “gasolinazo” protests in Mexico over a 20 percent rise in gas prices have led to over 400 arrests, 250 looted stores, and six deaths. Roads are being blockaded, borders closed, and government buildings are being sacked. Protests have remained relatively peaceful overall, except for several isolated violent acts, which activists have blamed on government infiltrators.

The few mainstream news reports that have covered the situation blame rising gas prices but fail to examine several other factors that are pushing Mexico to the brink of revolution.