House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy confirmed last week that a Republican-controlled House could shut off funding for Ukraine's defense against the Russian invasion. It's probably the best news Russian president Vladimir Putin has had in months and McCarthy's comment comes at a pivotal moment in the conflict. US and European aid has allowed Ukrainian forces to go on the offensive to regain territory lost to Russia during the first months of the war. The last thing we should

Things really couldn't have gone any worse for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and it's no wonder that he has resorted to hiring food tasters to prevent an assassination. He has made a lot of powerful Russians very unhappy and is about to drive the Russian economy over a cliff. He misjudged the situation badly and has backed himself into a corner from which there is no easy or face-saving escape. Let us count the ways. 1. NATO revitalized. As we have written befor

Donald Trump considered withdrawing from NATO if he won in 2020. To him such alliances are simply expensive relics of the cold war, and he demonstrated no ability to work in concert with our allies on the Iran nuclear deal or anything else while in office. Independent.UK: "Donald Trump was considering pulling out of Nato and cutting the US’s alliance with South Korea if he won the 2020 election, according to an account of his private meetings with top aides." That decision wo

The key element in Donald Trump's impeachment defense was that he was withholding US aid to Ukraine in order to force them to investigate Hunter Biden and his supposedly improper acts while he served on the board of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma. It was always a pretext, a lie, and Trump's attempt to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing the investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden's son led to the President's impeachment by the House of Re

Photo Credit: Mykhaylo Markiv / The Presidential Administration of Ukraine There is no specific quid pro quo in the rough transcript of the President's conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but you would have to be a fool not to understand Trump's meaning; he expects Zelensky to assist him in finding dirt on Joe Biden and his son. Conservative commentator David French makes the point succinctly and humorously: French in National Review: "I haven’t been a

It's becoming increasing clear, based on leaks from the White House and intelligence community, and the President's own statements, that Trump used a pending military aid package as leverage to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to work with Rudy Giuliani to dig up dirt on Joe Biden's son Hunter, hoping to damage the former Vice-President's reputation. And we now know that it was the President who told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold back about $40