Why Did Senate Democrats Refuse to Protect Infants?

A moral catastrophe unfolded on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Monday. Forty-four Democratic senators voted against legislation that would have required doctors to give the same care to infants who survive abortion procedures that they would give to any other infant.One after another, Democratic senators took to the floor to smear the bill as an attack on women’s health care, a baseless criticism that they failed to substantiate. In the process, they revealed their belief that allowing unwanted infants to perish after birth constitutes a form of women’s health care.Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) reintroduced his Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act in direct response to Virginia governor Ralph Northam’s endorsement of permitting mothers and doctors to let infants die of neglect. “The infant would be delivered,” Northam said, explaining a hypothetical case in which a woman in labor wanted an abortion. “The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”This “discussion” is what Democrats voted on Monday to preserve — a discussion not about health-care options for women but about whether or not to extend health care of any kind to newborn infants. With their votes and their speeches, 44 U.S. senators embraced Ralph Northam’s position, which, despite attempting to clarify, he has never retracted.“I want to ask each and every one of my colleagues whether or not we’re okay with infanticide,” Sasse said at the start of floor debate on Monday. “This language is blunt. I recognize that. It is too blunt for many people in this body. But frankly, that is what we’re talking about here today. Infanticide is what [the bill] is actually about.”Though Sasse’s bill failed to pass, it succeeded in forcing Democrats to take a stance on infanticide, and though they refused to do so explicitly, the reality of their disgraceful position was abundantly clear.During floor debate, Senator Tina Smith (D., Minn.) said that the bill “puts Congress in the middle of the important medical decisions that patients and doctors should make together without political interference.”Democratic senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii said it represents the idea that “the moral judgment of right-wing politicians in Washington, D.C., should supersede a medical professional’s judgment and a woman’s decision.”“It makes no sense for Washington politicians who know nothing about these individual circumstances to say they know better than the doctors, patients, the family,” said Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.). “The bill is solely meant to intimidate doctors and restrict patients’ access to care and has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with protecting children.”“This is how our medical system is supposed to work,” Smith added later in her remarks. “Physicians and patients making decisions together based on patients’ individual needs.”Democratic senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois labeled the bill an effort to “bully doctors out of giving reproductive care.” And Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.) said the legislation “would interfere with the doctor–patient relationship and impose new obstacles to a woman’s constitutionally protected right to make her own decisions about her reproductive health.”“Conservative politicians should not be telling doctors how they should care for their patients,” Hirono said. “Instead, women, in consultation with their families and doctors, are in the best position to determine their best course of care.”All of these statements take as their premise a fundamental lie about the legislation. No part of the born-alive bill limits abortion access or regulates abortion methods in any way. It involves abortions only to the extent that the infants in question survived them. Nor does the bill mandate any particular kind of care for these infants; it merely requires that these nearly aborted newborns be afforded “the same degree” of care that “any other child born alive at the same gestational age” would receive.But these statements from Democrats are more than mere falsehoods. They expose a sinister reality: There is no daylight between their argument and that of Ralph Northam. They have admitted that they believe that denying medical care to infants can constitute legitimate women’s health care, classified under the untouchable umbrella of “reproductive rights.”That was the ultimate triumph of the attempt to pass the born-alive bill. Though Democrats managed to block the legislation, it forced the moral equivocators of the Democratic party to step out from behind their smokescreens. It demanded that they put their name to a vote permitting doctors to turn a blind eye to dying babies. It compelled them to defend Ralph Northam’s indefensible comments.This — and not because it would impede women’s “reproductive rights” — is why Democrats were so afraid of Ben Sasse’s bill. They knew that nothing in the text restricts access to abortion. But they knew, too, that it would expose them.To support the bill would betray a logical and philosophical inconsistency — Democrats would affirm the dignity and rights of a newborn infant, even as they dehumanize that same life, at the same stage of development, inside its mother’s womb. To oppose the bill would reveal the ghastly, consistent principle of the abortion-rights movement — that a child’s rights depend not on her size or location, but on whether she is wanted by her mother.The Democrats chose consistency, and consistency means infanticide.

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Pennsylvania teen found alive after five family members murdered

A teen whose mother and twin 9-year-old sisters were among five family members killed in their Pennsylvania home was staying at a friend's house at the time of the murders and is safe, officials said on Tuesday. Joshua Campbell, 17, was not at home when his aunt Shana Decree, 45, and her daughter Dominique Decree, 19, are alleged to have murdered five relatives in their apartment in Morrisville, about 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Philadelphia, Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub said. After police found the bodies on Monday, relatives of the victims said they had begged authorities for weeks to check on Shana Decree due to concerns she might have fallen under the influence of a fringe religious group.

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Q&A: What's at stake as India-Pakistan tensions rise?

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan face their worst tension in years over the disputed region of Kashmir, with Islamabad saying they shot down two Indian warplanes Wednesday and captured a pilot. Pakistan, which previously said it captured two pilots, immediately shut down its civilian airspace in response.

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Can CBD Help Your Child?

When a child is sick and conventional medicine isn’t helping, parents understandably often turn to alternative treatments. Recently, that includes cannabidiol, aka CBD, which is a cannabis compou...

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Rep. Ilhan Omar deletes the controversial tweets that drew charges of anti-Semitism

Rep. Ilhan Omar apologized for the tweets the next day.

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India builds bunkers to protect families along Pakistan border

On Tuesday evening, Pakistan used heavy caliber weapons to shell 12 to 15 places along the Indian side of the de facto border known as the Line of Control (LoC) that divides the disputed Kashmir region, a spokesman for the Indian defense forces said. The Indian army retaliated with its own shelling of the Pakistani side, he said. There have been frequent exchanges of fire along the actual and de facto borders in recent months, but Tuesday's firing marked a major escalation after India carried out an air strike on what it said was a training camp run by an Islamist militant group in Pakistan.

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Kashmir conflict heats up as India, Pakistan claim to down each other's jets

Both countries have ordered air strikes over the last two days, the first time in history that two nuclear-armed powers have done so, while ground forces have exchanged fire in more than a dozen locations. Tensions have been running high since at least 40 Indian paramilitary police died in a Feb. 14 suicide car bombing by Pakistan-based militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir, but the risk of conflict rose dramatically on Tuesday when India launched an air strike on what it said was a militant training base. Pakistan says no one died.

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Top strategists split from Bernie Sanders for his 2020 White House run

Prominent consultants Tad Devine, Mark Longabaugh and Julian Mulvey, who played leading roles in Sanders' insurgent 2016 presidential campaign, said they would not work on the Vermont senator's 2020 bid for the Democratic nomination, which was launched last week. "We are leaving because we believe that Senator Sanders deserves to have media consultants who share his creative vision for the campaign," the three said in a joint statement. It also put together the video that Sanders used to launch his 2020 campaign, and advised Sanders on his announcement schedule and rollout, Longabaugh said.

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Why the Case against Cardinal George Pell Doesn’t Stand Up

With the lifting of the trial judge’s order banning coverage of the conviction of Cardinal George Pell this past December on charges of “historical sexual abuse,” the facts can finally be laid out for those willing to consider them. (Disclosure: Cardinal Pell and I are longtime friends.)Victoria police commenced an investigation one year before any complaints had been filed. During that investigation, the police took out newspaper ads seeking information about any untoward behavior with minors at the St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne —without any hint of such misbehavior having been received by the authorities.Once charges had been laid and Cardinal Pell had returned to Australia from his post at the Vatican, a committal hearing (to determine whether the charges were capable of being tried) was held. The committal-hearing judge threw out several charges but allowed others to go forward — even though she observed that she would not vote to convict on several charges, she thought they should be tried anyway.In Cardinal Pell’s first trial, held under the media-suppression order, the defense dismantled the prosecution’s case while shedding light on the inadequacy of the police investigative process; that trial resulted in a hung jury, which voted 10–2 for acquittal. The foreman and several other members of the jury were in tears when the verdict was read.During the retrial, the defense demonstrated that, in order to sustain the charge that Pell had accosted and sexually abused two choirboys after Mass one Sunday, ten improbable things would have had to have happened and all within ten minutes:• Archbishop Pell abandoned his decades-long practice of greeting congregants outside the cathedral after Mass.• Pell, who was typically accompanied by a master of ceremonies or sacristan when he was vested for Mass, entered the carefully controlled space of the vesting sacristy alone.• The master of ceremonies, charged with helping the archbishop disrobe while removing his own liturgical vestments, had disappeared.• The sacristan, charged with the care of the locked sacristy, had also disappeared.• The sacristan did not go back and forth between the sacristy and the cathedral sanctuary, removing missals and Mass vessels, as was his responsibility and consistent practice.• The altar servers, like the sacristan, simply disappeared, rather than helping the sacristan clear the sanctuary by bringing liturgical vessels and books back to the sacristy.• The priests who concelebrated the Mass with Pell were not in the sacristy disrobing after the ceremony.• At least 40 people did not notice that two choirboys left the post-Mass procession.• Two choirboys entered the sacristy, started gulping altar wine, and were accosted and abused by Archbishop Pell — while the sacristy door was open and the archbishop was in full liturgical vestments.• The abused choirboys then entered the choir room, through two locked doors, without anyone noticing, and participated in a post-Mass rehearsal; no one asked why they had been missing for ten minutes.Before the trial, one of the complainants died, having told his mother that he had never been assaulted. During the trial, there was no corroboration of the surviving complainant’s charges. Other choirboys (now, of course, grown), as well as the choir director and his assistant, the adult members of the choir, the master of ceremonies, and the sacristan all testified, and from their testimony we learn the following: that no one recalled any choirboys bolting from the procession after Mass; that none of those in the immediate vicinity of the alleged abuse noticed anything; that indeed nothing could have happened in a secured space without someone noticing; and that there was neither gossip nor rumor about any such dramatic and vile incident afterward.Notwithstanding this evidence of Cardinal Pell’s innocence (an innocence affirmed by ten of the twelve members of the first trial jury), the second trial jury returned a verdict of 12–0 for conviction. Observers at the trial told me that the trial judge seemed surprised on hearing the verdict. The verdict and the finding of the first, hung jury suggest that, in the media circus surrounding Pell, a fair jury trial was virtually impossible. That point was recently conceded by the attorney general of the State of Victoria, who suggested that the law might be amended to permit bench trials by a judge alone in such cases — an option not afforded George Pell. (Shortly before the media-suppression order was lifted on February 25, the Victoria prosecutors dropped two more charges against Cardinal Pell, of even greater dubiety and dating back some four decades.)Cardinal Pell’s lawyers will of course appeal. The appeal will be heard by a panel of senior judges, who can decide that what is called in Australia an “unsafe verdict” — one that the jury could not rationally have reached on the basis of the evidence — was rendered and that therefore Pell’s conviction is null and void. For Cardinal Pell’s sake, and for the reputation of the justice system in the state of Victoria, one must hope that the appellate judges will do the right thing.

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Manafort sentencing hearing rescheduled to March 7: court filing

A federal judge in Virginia rescheduled the sentencing hearing for Paul Manafort, the former chairman of U.S. President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, to March 7, according to a court filing on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear why the sentencing hearing was rescheduled from March 8. Manafort was convicted in August of eight charges of bank and tax fraud as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

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Attacked and powerless, Venezuela soldiers choose desertion

CUCUTA, Colombia (AP) — The simple house on a street ridden with potholes in this town on Colombia's restive border with Venezuela has become a refuge for the newly homeless: 40 Venezuelan soldiers who abandoned their posts and ran for their lives.

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Why Do Some People Wish the Attack on Smollett Happened?

The reactions of many on the left to the case of Jussie Smollett prove two important things: 1. There is little racism in America. 2. The Left -- white and black -- is morally and psychologically impaired.There is no doubt that most Americans on the left, including black Americans, are distraught over the fact that Smollett faked the “racist” attack on him. Apparently leftists, Democratic leaders, and, most depressingly, many of his fellow blacks wish Smollett had been attacked by white racist homophobes.Representative Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.), a white leftist, tweeted, “I hope this was not something that Mr. Smollett did to himself, or created.”Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart told MSNBC there has been “an atmosphere of menace and hate” since Donald Trump was elected president, which made “people want to believe” Smollett’s story. Exactly. Capehart, a black leftist, wanted to believe that racists yelling “This is MAGA country” beat up blacks.Another black leftist who writes hate columns for the Washington Post, Nana Efua Mumford, wrote: “I wanted to believe Smollett. I really did.” Again, exactly. Mumford wanted to believe that racists yelling “This is MAGA country” beat up blacks.Corey Townsend, the social-media editor of The Root, a black-oriented website (founded in 2008 by Harvard black-studies scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.), opened his column on his private doubts that Smollett was attacked as he claimed with the words, “I wanted to be wrong.” Three paragraphs later: “But still, I wanted to be wrong.”This should tell you a great deal about how morally and psychologically sick the Left is. And their reactions prove how little racism there really is in America.Here’s the proof of both these assertions: When American Jews, even most left-wing Jews, heard of the mass killing of Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue, how many were hoping the shooter was truly an anti-Semite, and how many were hoping he was a mentally deranged individual who could have just as easily shot up a church? Or, if a well-known Jew had been beaten at 2 a.m. on a Chicago street, how many American Jews would have wanted the attackers to be Jew-haters, and how many would have wished they were just thugs who wanted money?As a Jew who has been deeply involved in Jewish culture all my life, I am pretty certain the majority of Jews -- certainly liberal and conservative Jews, and even most left-wing Jews -- would have wished that neither the Pittsburgh synagogue nor the theoretical attack on a Chicago street I conjured up were perpetrated by anti-Semites.Why is that? Why do almost all Jews wish attackers of Jews not be anti-Semites, but so many blacks and so many white leftists wish Smollett had been attacked by racists?Because Jews want to believe there is little anti-Semitism in America while most black leftists and most white leftists want to believe there is a lot of racism in America.And why is that? Because the Left and many American blacks are politically and personally dependent on one of the greatest mass libels in history -- namely, that America is a racist country. If just one one of five black Americans woke up tomorrow and announced, “You know, this a great country for anyone, including a black person, to live in, and the truth is the vast majority of white Americans bear no ill will toward blacks (or any other race or ethnicity),” that would end the Democrats’ chances of winning national elections. The Democratic party is dependent on nearly universal black acceptance of the leftist libel of America.And what about the personal? Why do so many black Americans, living in the freest country for all its citizens -- and in the least-racist multiracial, multiethnic country in history -- want to believe America is racist? That is one of the most important questions all Americans need to address at this time.And there is another one, which I posed in my column last week: Does the Left believe its own lies?

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All-New 2020 Toyota Corolla First-Drive Review

All-New 2020 Toyota Corolla Adds Sizzle, Still Sensible The redesigned 2020 Toyota Corolla sedan joins the Corolla hatchback (which we’ve already tested), and it is offered for the first time as...

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The Latest: Pompeo urges restraint in India, Pakistan

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Latest on India-Pakistan tensions (all times local):

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Trump and Kim Jong Un might officially end the Korean War. Here's why that could matter.

After 66 years, a peace declaration at the Vietnam summit could lead to negotiations and more normal relations between the two Koreas and America.

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Mother and adult daughter charged with killing 5 relatives

MORRISVILLE, Pa. (AP) — A mother and her adult daughter killed five of their close relatives, including three children, and were found "disoriented" after child welfare authorities arrived for a surprise visit to their trashed apartment outside Philadelphia, police and prosecutors said Tuesday.

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Univision team deported from Venezuela after Maduro interview

The six-person team was held for more than two hours and had their equipment confiscated, Ramos told reporters on Monday evening after arriving back at his Caracas hotel which was surrounded by intelligence agents. Ramos and his team left the hotel on Tuesday morning guarded by personnel from the U.S. and Mexican embassies while intelligence agents escorted them to Caracas' Maiquetia airport. "They didn't give us a reason" for the deportation, Ramos told reporters as he arrived at the terminal.

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Southwest Airlines wing scrapes runway during aborted landing in Hartford

A Southwest flight from Orlando to Hartford, Connecticut, ended up diverting to Rhode Island after trying to land three times in high winds.

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Las principales noticias del jueves

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A Sports Hijab Has France Debating the Muslim Veil, Again

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Huawei’s Cutest Fans in China? A Troupe of Dancing Children

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The Cutest Animal on Instagram Is Possibly in Your Trash Can

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Central Park Detective Retires With the Horse He Rode in On

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Word + Quiz: skein

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A New Editor, and a New Take on Brexit, for a Brawny London Tabloid

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Michael Cohen, Kim Jong-un, Kashmir: Your Thursday Briefing

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What’s on TV Thursday: ‘Better Things’ and ‘The Guilty’

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Beal, Wizards Roll to 125-116 Victory Over Nets

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Trudeau’s Ex-Attorney General: ‘Veiled Threats’ Were Made to Drop Case

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Patient Shoots Doctor at Florida Veterans Affairs Hospital, Officials Say

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On Politics: Michael Cohen Testifies

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Cohen’s Testimony Is a Test for Both Parties in the Year Ahead

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White Man Who Shot Black Men After Hurricane Katrina Dies Days After Sentencing

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Quotation of the Day: Confessed Liar Meets With Ardent Partisans to Set the Record Straight

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Tampa Bay and Calgary Keep Streaks Alive by Beating Rangers and Devils

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Warriors Host Survivors of the Parkland School Shooting

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Corrections: February 28, 2019

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Blue Jays

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Univision's Jorge Ramos details detainment, expulsion from Venezuela

Univision anchor Jorge Ramos shared details in TV interviews Tuesday night on how Venezuelan authorities detained his team during an interview Monday.

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Was the media biased against the Covington students?

Conservatives accuse media organizations of trafficking in stereotypes that Trump supporters are bigots. Two recent incidents have strengthened conservatives’ belief that liberal journalists are implacably opposed to Donald Trump and his supporters: the 18 January encounter between a group of Kentucky students and a Native American activist on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and the claims by Jussie Smollett that he had been attacked by hoodlums shouting racist and anti-gay slurs.

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Trump and Kim Are Meeting One-on-One at This Historic Hanoi Hotel

The $300 a night Metropole is redolent with colonial history

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The Latest: Pittenger doesn't plan to run again for old seat

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The Latest on a new election being held for a North Carolina congressional seat after the state elections board reviewed evidence of ballot fraud (all times local):

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Wells Fargo Sees ‘Possible’ Legal Losses Rising by $500 Million

The higher estimate for “reasonably possible” legal losses -- essentially a worst-case scenario -- shows risks grew as the bank and authorities examined abuses in recent months and discussed potential penalties. The change stems from “a variety of matters,” including probes of its sales to retail customers, Wells Fargo wrote Wednesday in an annual regulatory report.

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Miami-Dade cop caught on tape slapping suspect

Two Miami-Dade Police officers are facing charges after surveillance video appeared to show one sergeant slapping a teenager who was handcuffed and another trying to destroy evidence.

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Nuclear Nightmare: India and Pakistan are on the Brink

Whatever happens next rests in the fates of political decisionmakers in India.

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Justice Department loses appeal to block AT&T-Time Warner merger, won't appeal again

The Justice Department, which lost its latest attempt to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger, will not appeal the U.S. District Court of Appeals ruling.

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La Tragicommedia è Finita

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, a play in which two men sit around and wait for someone who never shows up, has been claimed by just about everyone: Freudians, Christians, existentialists.Who’s right? I haven’t a clue.But I have lived, all of us have lived, through a similar tragicomedy (a word Beckett added to the subtitle for the English version of his play). We’ve been waiting for Mueller. And waiting.For some, the waiting is the hardest part. But by historic standards, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been working at a blistering pace. Kenneth Starr’s investigation into the Whitewater scandal wasn’t fully closed down until 2001. It started in 1994. The average running time for special investigations is 904 days. Tuesday marked the 650th day since Mueller was appointed.Most independent counsels take a year to file their first criminal charges, if they file any at all. Mueller hit that milestone a little more than five months in, and he has racked up more than 30 other indictments or guilty pleas since then.And yet, for the “get Trump media” (as Alan Dershowitz and others call it), it’s never enough. Whenever news breaks in the probe, or when news doesn’t break, for that matter, the response tends to be the same: “Remember, we don’t know what Mueller knows.” Watch CNN or MSNBC for a few minutes and someone will say this — gleefully when the news is already bad for Trump, reassuringly when the news is disappointingly good for Trump.“Always keeping in mind that Mueller knows so much more than he has shown,” former CBS newsman Dan Rather told CNN’s Don Lemon. “If you think [Michael Cohen’s guilty plea and Paul Manafort’s conviction] was a shock to our democratic system, just stay tuned. Because the other things Mueller is working on, and sooner or later we’ll find out what they are, is going to make yesterday pale by comparison.”Well, what if it doesn’t? One of the reasons we keep hearing that “Mueller knows more” is that he has delivered less. For all of the drama and the embarrassments, Mueller has yet to file a single charge on the core allegation that justified the launch of the probe in the first place — the allegation that Donald Trump “colluded” with Russia.Sure, the gaudy remoras that attached themselves to Trump’s hide have had a rough time of it. Manafort, who made a career of colluding with horrible regimes, may never have another meal not thwacked from a large spoon onto a prison tray. Roger Stone may join Cohen in the Stoney Lonesome as well. And obviously, Trump has made things worse for himself by seeming like he’s got a lot to hide.But it looks more and more likely that Mueller’s dance of a thousand veils will end with . . . more veils. The Mueller obsessives want him to be a deus ex machina who delivers irrefutable grounds for impeachment and I-told-you-sos. But that Mueller may never arrive. He may never even say a word about it in public at all.That’s in part because the Russia piece of his portfolio is under the rubric of a counterintelligence investigation, not a criminal one. This means he’s under no obligation to file any public report at all. He could submit a report to the newly confirmed attorney general, Bill Barr, but Barr can reveal whatever he wants to the public, assuming the president says it’s OK. Or he can reveal nothing at all.But waiting for Mueller to prove himself a savior may not pan out, for the simpler reason that he can’t find what doesn’t exist. To say that Trump was morally capable of colluding with Russia is not the same thing as saying that he did.If you listen very closely to former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, there was never hard evidence of Trump’s colluding beyond the president’s weird statements and behavior in response to the Russia probe. The problem is that you don’t need an international conspiracy to explain why Trump says and does weird things — unless you’ve already decided he’s guilty.That’s why this tragicomedy will not come to an end with the end of the Mueller probe. The audience, on both sides, had already decided what it was about when they entered the theater.Copyright © 2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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Train swapping: North Korea's Kim reliant on Chinese for summit transport

It was the second time Kim had arrived for a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in transport provided by the Chinese, underscoring just how much the young leader's sudden flurry of international engagements has depended on his larger, more powerful neighbor. When Kim arrived in Singapore last year for his first, historic summit with Trump, it was in an Air China jumbo jet bearing the Chinese flag. With the exception of two summits with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on the border between the two Koreas, every one of Kim's unprecedented summits with China's President Xi Jinping and now the second summit with Trump have depended on trains provided by the Chinese.

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At least 4,500 abuse complaints at migrant children shelters

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of accusations of sexual abuse and harassment of migrant children in government-funded shelters were made over the past four years, including scores directed against adult staff members, according to federal data released Tuesday.

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Hollywood Madam: Want to stop human trafficking? Legalize consensual sex for money.

Why would a wealthy and powerful man like Robert Kraft allegedly pay for sex from women at a Florida strip-mall massage parlor? Don't overthink it.

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