Critics of Donald Trump claim there is no rhyme or reason to his foreign policy. But there is – it’s called reciprocity.

Trump tries to force other countries to treat the United States as it treats them. In “Don’t Tread On Me” style, he also warns enemies that any aggressive act will be replied to in kind.

The underlying principle of Trump commercial reciprocity is that the United States is no longer powerful or wealthy enough to alone underwrite the security of the West. It can no longer assume sole enforcement of the rules and protocols of the postwar global order.

This year there have been none of the usual Iranian provocations—frequent during the Obama Administration—of harassing American ships in the Persian Gulf. Apparently, the Iranians now realize that anything they do to an American ship will be replied to with overwhelming force. They can be taught.

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As Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination tees up another national debate about “reproductive rights” is it too much to ask that abortion’s impact on the black population be part of the discussion?

When the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973, polling showed that blacks were less likely than whites to support abortion.

In the intervening decades, those views shifted. Leaders of black civil-rights organizations today are joined at the hip with abortion-rights proponents such as Planned Parenthood – resulting in the enormous outsize toll that abortion has taken on the black population post-Roe.

In New York City, thousands more black babies are aborted than born alive each year, and the abortion rate among black mothers is more than three times higher than it is for white mothers. Nationally, black women terminate pregnancies at far higher rates than other women as well.

The little discussed flip side of “reproductive freedom” is that among blacks, abortion deaths far exceed those via cancer, violent crime, heart disease, AIDS and accidents.

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“The judge’s job is to interpret the law, not to make the law or make policy.  So read the words of the statute as written.  Read the text of the Constitution as written, mindful of history and tradition.  Don’t make up new constitutional rights that are not in the text of the Constitution.  Don’t shy away from enforcing constitutional rights that are in the text of the Constitution.” 

--Judge Brett Kavanaugh, June 2, 2016

President Trump’s selection of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court last night (7/09) culminates a three-decade project unparalleled in American history to install a reliable conservative majority on the nation’s highest tribunal, one that could shape the direction of the law for years to come.

All of the years of vetting and grooming and lobbying and list-making by conservative legal figures frustrated by Republican appointees who drifted to the left arguably has come down to this moment, when they stand on the precipice of appointing a fifth justice who, they hope, will at last establish a bench firmly committed to their principles.

“They’ve been pushing back for 30 years, and, obviously, the announcement tonight is a big step in the right direction,” said Curt Levey, the president of the Committee for Justice, a conservative activist group, who has been working toward this goal full time since 2005. “It’ll be the first time we can really say we have a conservative court, really the first time since the 1930s.”

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The hard edges of China’s global soft power projection have been put under the microscope in a June 19 White House document entitled How China’s Economic Aggression Threatens the Technologies and Intellectual Property of the United States and the World.

The 35-page statement, attributed to White House economic adviser Peter Navarro, accuses the Chinese party-and-state apparatus of using spies, hackers, state-owned enterprises, front companies, as well as ethnic Chinese scholars and students resident in the US to “threaten the technologies and intellectual property of the United States and the world.”

Along with numerous reports in the Western media about PRC efforts to buy cultural and political influence in the US, the EU, and Australia, the White House document speaks to increasing awareness of the hard edges of Chinese soft power projection: namely, gathering intelligence and pilfering IPR (intellectual property rights) so as to speed up China’s transition to a full-fledged superpower.

Espionage, illegal IPR acquisition, and influence peddling have become part and parcel of China’s soft power push. The result has been an unprecedented pushback from Western nations.

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Last week I thought the Democrats were having a nervous breakdown. I was wrong.  It's worse.  They actually have a death wish or what Freud called a "death drive" (Todestrieb).

They literally want to extinguish themselves and/or their party, or many of them do. At least they're acting that way.

That was the first thing that crossed my mind watching the explosion of demonstrations by liberals and progressives to abolish ICE and US border control.  It’s their greatest cause célèbre since, well, whatever was their greatest cause célèbre three days before.

The polls show the vast majority of Americans think they're cracked and want, as do citizens of almost all countries, secure borders and legal immigration.

So why are they doing this?  Do they secretly want open borders?  Are they actually wannabe socialist revolutionaries out to change American society at its core?  Or is it……

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When Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the green light to Russian aerial bombing of rebel-held positions in southwestern Syria two weeks ago, he knew he was asking for trouble.

And he appears to be getting plenty of it.

Since the Russia-led operation against Deraa began, Israeli commentators have assessed that Putin wished to wrap up the offensive ahead of his July 16 summit with President Donald Trump in Helsinki so that he could present Trump with a fait accompli.

A Russian triumph would convince Trump that U.S. operations in Syria are futile, and he would have accept Russia’s predominance, with Iran in the war-torn country.

Yet, just within the past few days Trump has turned the tables on Putin.  Here’s what’s happening.

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