The OPEC cartel is to forge a permanent alliance with a Russia-led bloc of producers by the end of the year, aiming to regain control of the world crude market with a super-combine of unprecedented scale and reach.

Suhail al-Mazroui, OPEC’s president, said the two groups are working on a “framework partnership” that would tie them together closely in perpetuity after their current deal to cap production jointly expires later this year.

The new super-cartel would once have been a radical development for the oil industry. Today it’s an awkward and belated response to the threat of America’s "short-cycle" shale frackers, who can respond with lightning speed and are preventing the normal cycle of full recovery from taking hold.

The fracking industry seized on the "ROPEC" cuts to ramp up US output by over 250,000 b/d a month over the winter, with a further 1.3m b/d expected this year.  This places Mr. Putin and Mr. al-Mazroui in a painful Catch 22.

What is the endgame to never-ending wrongdoing?

The FISA-gate, Clinton emails, and Uranium One scandals are sort of reaching a consensus. Many things quite wrong and illegal were done by both Hillary Clinton and her entourage and members of the Obama agencies and administration — both the acts themselves and the cover-ups and omissions that ensued.

The wide-spread criminality is monumental.  The American public is becoming more aware of it by the day, and that many of the above pictured individuals and their minions need justice to be served upon them.

But will it?  Or will they skate, getting away with everything – as a growing number of cynics believe?  Here’s why it has to be the former, for the consequences of the latter would be too destructive for our Republic to bear.

For law enforcement, Congress and even journalists, exposing misdeeds is like peeling an onion. Each layer you remove gets you closer to the truth.

So it is with the scandalous behavior of the FBI during its probe into whether President Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia in 2016. One layer at a time, we’re learning how flawed and dirty that probe was.

The latest layer is the revelations in the letter GOP Sens. Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham wrote to the Justice Department.  There are many more layers of the onion to peel, but here’s where we are now:

It increasingly appears that the Clinton machine was the secret, original source of virtually all the allegations about Trump and Russia that led to the FBI investigation. It’s the dirtiest dirty trick ever played in presidential history.

The more we learn about #Russiagate, or what we might now call #Dossiergate, the more the whole affair comes to resemble a Ken Kesey novel.

Considers all the players in this unbelievably bizarre saga, including Sid "Vicious" Blumenthal,  Cody "The Hatchet" Shearer, James "Reinhold Niebuhr" Comey, text-messaging "Pyramus"  Peter Strzok and "Thisbe" Lisa Page, Andrew "The Vanisher" McCabe, Mark "Big Leaks" Warner, Christopher "Get Smart" Steele, Adam "Mendacity" Schiff, and Bruce and Nellie "Ratched" Ohr – not to mention the half-dozen or so other nameless people who mysteriously disappeared from the DOJ in recent days.

The more it seems the only sane person in the entire demented charade -- taking the Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) role in Kesey’s "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" -- is  Devin Nunes.

Want to know why there are so many redactions in all those FBI/DOJ documents, the ones whose contents you can't make heads or tails of while the indelible ink spills off the pages and stains your best white flokati rug forever?

The Democrats have a bold plan for fighting Russia.

Accuse Republicans of treason, eavesdrop on their conversations and send them to jail. Overturn the outcome of a free election because  it had been tampered with by “foreign interests.” Demand that tech companies censor dissenting media outlets spreading “fake news” to protect “democracy”.

Good work, comrades. The bold plan is to fight Russia by… becoming Russia.

State surveillance, endless investigations and locking up political opponents under the guise of fighting foreign influences is how Vladimir Putin does business. It’s how they do it in Turkey, Venezuela and Iran.

But these days it’s how the Dems do it in America.

Totalitarian states aren’t really fighting foreign influences. They’re suppressing domestic opponents. The Democrats, who were for appeasing Russia before they were against it, are doing the same thing.

The Israeli police investigation against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shows remarkable similarities with the Special Counsel probe against President Donald Trump in the United States.

If you are appalled at the total collusion between America’s Deep State bureaucratic elite and its left-wing media elite to criminalize and smear an elected American leader, you may be astounded to know virtually the same exact thing is happening in Israel.

During the prime time news broadcasts Tuesday evening (2/13) in Israel, the dramatic news was announced that Israel Police investigators are recommending that Israel’s Attorney General, Avichai Mandelblit, indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on bribery and breach of trust charges in two investigations.

Let us begin by considering the specific cases that form the bases of police recommendations against Netanyahu.