Last week Congress passed a $1.3 trillion budget and President Donald J. Trump signed the bill that is over 2,000 pages long into law. Congress was given less than 24 hours to read it, so nobody actually knew what was in the bill when they voted for it.

It’s an extreme case but it seems to be the way more and more legislation is done. The leadership says vote for it and enough on both sides of the aisle do for it to pass.

Because of the ridiculous rules for the Senate, even though the Republicans have a mathematical majority, Republicans can’t pass a bill without Democratic support.

Trump called for the Senate to change the rules to a simple majority as the Democrats did for judges when President Barack Obama wanted to get a bunch of extreme leftists appointed to the federal bench. Why the Republicans have not followed suit and expanded that to everything is a mystery that can perhaps be explained by the fact that the Republican Party is not called the stupid party without reason.

Both 6th District Congressman Mark Walker and 13th District Congressman Ted Budd voted against the omnibus spending bill, which was appropriately named because it is an enormous spending bill – the second largest ever passed by Congress. Even Obama only had one spending bill that was larger. So much for the Republicans reducing federal spending.

In the strange ways of Washington, it made sense for Trump to sign the bill and for Walker and Budd to vote against it.

Trump has to work with Congress, and more specifically with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to hope to get anything accomplished as president.

For the Republicans to support a $1.3 trillion spending package that funds Planned Parenthood, the Public Broadcasting System and every other liberal Democratic cause imaginable is obscene.

For eight years the Republicans talked about the irresponsible behavior of the Democrats under Obama in increasing the national debt. Now the Republicans are doing the same thing.

But Trump was backed in a corner by the weak leadership in the House and particularly in the Senate. What Trump has learned in his 14 months as president is that even the president can’t go it alone.

There is a lot Trump can do, like eliminating the myriad of regulations that the Obama administration invented and imposed in an attempt to strangle the life out of private enterprise in this country. Trump has been eliminating those regulations as fast as possible and it has made a huge improvement in the business climate, but for major legislation Trump has to have the support of Republican leadership in Congress.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link and in this chain the weak link is McConnell, who doesn’t seem to have the ability to get the Republicans in the Senate to vote for anything that is even remotely conservative.

Although McConnell looks like he would be better suited leading a men’s glee club than the US Senate, he does have a difficult crew to attempt to corral. A number of Republican senators not only hate Trump, they appear to hate anything that is remotely conservative. It makes sense that McConnell finds it easier to make a deal with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer rather than some of this Republican colleagues. His job, however, is to lead the Republicans in the Senate – something he has failed at miserably.

But Trump has no control over who the Republican senators select as their leader and he couldn’t veto this legislation and hope to get any cooperation from Congress during the rest of this term.

How Republicans who voted for this bloated monstrosity of a federal budget are going to campaign in November is a huge question. They must assume that voters have very short memories and will listen to what they say rather than what they have done. How do you explain voting for a bill when you don’t know even half of what’s in it, but you do know that it continues to fund many of the programs and organizations that you claim to be against? Fortunately neither Walker nor Budd will have that problem.

Republicans passed some bad spending bills earlier to keep the government running and at the time said that they would straighten it all out when they passed the omnibus bill – that also turned out to be a big lie.

The omnibus bill has one thing going for it and that is just about the only thing Trump talked about when he spoke about signing the bill. Trump talked about the much-needed increase in military spending.

Obama had tried to starve the military. With Russia, China and North Korea all rattling sabers, the US can’t afford to have a depleted military. No doubt Ryan and McConnell convinced Trump that if he didn’t sign this bill the next one would have the military spending severely reduced but still have all the liberal causes funded because they needed the Democratic votes.

At this point it appears the only difference between Republicans and Democrats in Washington is not the massive amount of federal spending – because both parties support that – but where the money is spent.

If Obama were still president the spending would likely have been the same but the military spending would have been reduced instead of increased, and the increased spending would have been on social programs.

One thing does appear certain for those who are concerned about the national debt – a whole bunch of people, both Democrats and Republicans, have to be sent home and a new group that doesn’t see massive borrowing as the right way to run the government elected to replace them.

*****

It seems the left wants to allow children who have been through a traumatic experience to make the laws for the country.

In North Carolina we were just called Neanderthals and everything else because in this state we accepted the fact that 16- and 17-year-olds could and did make their own decisions and should be held responsible for their actions. We were told by the left that this was abhorrent and that a person should have to be 18 before they are held responsible for their own actions like an adult.

So North Carolina, under heavy pressure from the left, changed the law and in the future 16- and 17-year-olds will be treated as children in juvenile court; only those over 18 will be tried in the court for adults where people are held accountable for the crimes they commit.

In other words, 16- and 17-year-old drug dealers and thieves will be given a free ride. In other areas of the country where these laws are already in place, those under 18 are heavily recruited to be drug dealers out on the street. The person who actually sells the illegal drugs to the user is often under 18, so if they get caught, they get a slap on the wrist and have no evidence of the crimes they committed available to the court after they turn 18.

Now we are being told by the left that the people in this country with the best knowledge of how laws concerning firearms should be written are 16- and 17-year-olds who in their home state of Florida are considered children.

We have a huge problem with age in this country. In most states, at 16 a person can obtain a license to operate a motor vehicle, a device that causes far more deaths in the US than all types of guns combined.   At 18 a person can vote, enter into most legal contracts, get married, join the military and have just about all the rights and privileges of an adult except they cannot legally purchase or consume an alcoholic beverage of any kind. Legally, the toast after two 18-year-olds get married should be done with lemonade.

There is no doubt that the students who survived the attack in Parkland, Florida, are distraught and want to do something to prevent an attack like that from happening again. Usually in this country we recognize that people who have been through a terrifying experience are not the best people at that moment to make decisions about laws that affect the entire country.

In this case the left has heavily funded these children and the mainstream media are cooperating by putting them on television more or less constantly.

It’s great that these young people want to get involved in politics and it appears that some of them have a natural bent for it. But my advice is that if these young people want to change the Constitution of this country, they settle down, finish high school, go to college and graduate school, get jobs and establish themselves in the community.

There are a myriad of ways to be active politically during all of that time. Once they have some experience under their belts they should run for public office. If they get elected and still feel the way they feel today, then they will be in a good position to start changing the laws and even to start a movement to change the Constitution if that is still their desire.

The US Constitution doesn’t say much about age. There is no age limit on the Second Amendment right to bear arms, or the First Amendment guaranteeing free speech, which is extremely important to these young people right now.

But the Constitution does require that anyone elected president has to be at least 35 years old, and to be elected senator a person has to be at least 30 years old.

In North Carolina people can vote after turning 18 but can’t run for office until they are 21. If we don’t trust people under 21 to hold elected office, does it make any sense at all to trust them with abolishing a right guaranteed in the Constitution?

We were all 16 and 17 once, and some if not most of us had some pretty radical ideas about how the country should be run. The big difference was, at least for my generation, that nobody thought we should be running the country – and in retrospect I’m grateful for that.

*****

Now that the House Judiciary Committee has issued a subpoena for FBI documents it has been requesting for months, FBI Director Chris Wray says that he is going to produce them.

What?

It’s long past time for Trump to step in and order the FBI to fully cooperate with congressional committees. A congressional oversight committee run by Republicans should not have to wait months and then subpoena documents from the FBI, which is run by a director appointed by a Republican president.

As anyone who has been following the mess in the Justice Department and the FBI would suspect, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is right in the middle of it all.

Former FBI Director Jim Comey is gone. Former Deputy Director of the FBI Andy McCabe was finally fired days before he retired. It is long past time for their comrade-in-arms Rosenstein to also get the boot.

It will be messy, because Rosenstein hired special prosecutor Bob Mueller to investigate Trump. But sometimes when you are rooting out evil, things get messy.

There is absolutely no reason for Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the people who work for him to treat Congress like an enemy. It made perfect sense when Obama was president for the people in the Obama administration to treat Republican-led congressional committees like the enemy because they were political adversaries. But Sessions is supposed to be on the same team with Trump and with his former colleagues in Congress.

As long as Trump is firing people to get his administration more in line with his own political views, rather than the extremely different political views of his predecessor, Trump should fire Sessions and get someone in the attorney general’s office who wants to support Trump. It will mean that quite a few long-time employees of the Justice Department are going to need to be put out to pasture. If they can’t be fired they can be sent far away from the power base in Washington, DC.

Trump is a fast learner and he’s been in Washington for over a year. He’s going to learn a lot more before he leaves office, but by now he should have learned enough to know that the Justice Department, including the FBI, is not working for him.

Sessions supported Trump when very few in the Republican establishment did. Trump rewarded Sessions with one of the most powerful positions in the government. But Sessions hasn’t been doing his job. It’s not hard to tell the people who work for you to cooperate with investigations by congressional committees or leave.

Despite Sessions, Rosenstein and Wray, the congressional committees have uncovered enough evidence of extreme corruption in the FBI that simply firing the deputy director is not nearly enough.

The very fact that the FBI would use a document produced by the Hillary Clinton campaign to spy on the Trump campaign is more than enough evidence of an attempt by the FBI to use its immense power to affect the outcome of a presidential election.

What other reason was the FBI investigating Trump, but not Hillary Clinton – who, as has been proven, was using campaign funds to pay Russians.

Why do you carefully launder money if it is not to hide what you are doing? Without the investigation of congressional committees and their subpoena power we wouldn’t know that the Hillary Clinton campaign paid the law firm Perkins Coie that paid Fusion GPS that paid Christopher Steele who paid questionable Russian sources for uncorroborated rumors about Trump.

Nor would we know that the FBI then used those uncorroborated rumors to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to conduct electronic surveillance of the Trump campaign.

It is evident that Wray is not going to handle these issues on his own. How many FBI agents have been charged with perjury for lying to the FISA court about the source of the information presented to the court?

How many Justice Department employees who were involved in all of this have been charged with trying to overthrow the elected president of the United States?

It appears that Trump is waiting for the Mueller investigation to conclude before he takes action, but Mueller shows no sign of concluding his investigation and it could go on for years. Certainly Rosenstein can’t be expected to rein Mueller in and force him to investigate what he was hired to investigate.

*****

Proof that John Bolton will make a great national security advisor can be found in former President Jimmy Carter saying he will be a disaster.

Carter had the record for the worst president in modern times on foreign policy, until Obama came and took that title away.

Carter couldn’t even get American hostages away from a bunch of students in Tehran. When the world’s most powerful nation is held at bay for over a year by a handful of Iranian students, it is a sign that the man in charge has no idea what he’s doing.

Carter gave away the Panama Canal and now the Chinese control it.

As long as Iran was a close American ally there was some stability in the Middle East, but Carter did nothing to support American interests in Iran and allowed it to be taken over by radical Islamic fundamentalists. Since then the Middle East has been one big war zone.

During the Clinton administration, Carter went to North Korea and negotiated an agreement with North Korea that allowed it to develop nuclear weapons.

Carter is an example of a man who doesn’t learn from his own mistakes. By giving in to dictators time and time again, he created a political climate that has led to more, not less, unrest in the world.

*****

It’s beginning to appear that the problems at the FBI might be much more severe than simply corruption at the top.

It was revealed in court that Seddique Mateen, the father of Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen had been an FBI informant for 11 years and that the FBI considered hiring the shooter as an informant also. The FBI also checked on Omar Mateen when it was informed that he was telling people that he was a member of al Qaeda and it found nothing amiss.

So in the Parkland, Florida, shooting, the FBI received several credible reports that Nikolas Cruz was dangerous and was telling people he wanted to be a school shooter. The FBI did nothing.

In the Pulse case, the FBI had been paying the shooter’s father for 11 years. What kind of information did they get from the father, if the father didn’t bother to tell them his son wanted to massacre a lot of people?

If the FBI did in fact check out Omar Mateen and found nothing to be worried about, then the FBI needs to go over its protocols again.

The FBI certainly should have been able to prevent the shooting by the son of an informant, and when the FBI gets credible confirmation of threats made about a school shooting, isn’t it the job of the FBI to check it out?

Furthermore, the trial at which this information surfaced was the trial of Mateen’s wife, Noor Salman, for aiding and abetting. But neither the FBI nor the US attorney general’s office revealed the connection before the trial – as they are required by law to do.

It seems the it’s not only the people at the top in the Justice Department and the FBI who think they get to write the laws (not enforce the laws), indicating far more severe problems than can be solved by firing the director and deputy director.

*****

It may be shocking, but self-driving cars are not going to end traffic deaths. Uber pulled all of its self-driving cars off the road because a self-driving car hit and killed a pedestrian. The cars will never be made so perfect that they can anticipate whatever human in the vicinity is going to do, and there are going to be problems with the computers that drive the cars.

Computers are wonderful inventions but they aren’t foolproof. Every time my computer crashes I wonder what you do if you’re in a car going 80 mph and the computer driving the car crashes. Does the car crash also?

*****

So a porn star has said that she had sex with Trump about 12 years ago and Trump said it never happened.

First of all, people who have sex for a living are not considered by society to be among the most respected and reputable of people. Why is she to be believed and Trump isn’t?

It seems that the mainstream media don’t believe anything Trump says. It was reported that Trump made an unkind remark about some countries that have a lot of immigrants coming to the US. Trump says that he didn’t say it. Several people who were also at the meeting said they didn’t hear Trump say it, but it is now reported as a fact that he said it – not only by late night comedians who get to say whatever they want in an attempt to be funny, but by what used to be legitimate newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Besides, during the administration of President Bill Clinton, we were repeatedly told by the mainstream media that what happened between two consenting adults was nobody else’s business – even if one of the consenting adults was a White House intern and the other was the president of the United States and the two consenting adults did what they did in the Oval Office.

Stormy Daniels is a smart businesswoman. She threatened to sue Trump in October 2016, weeks before the presidential election, and was handed a check for $130,000 from Trump’s attorney.

The mainstream media have questioned a $130,000 payment that Trump didn’t know about. It looks like a great legal move. Trump couldn’t afford to be involved in a sex scandal, no matter how fallacious, weeks before an election, where he lost the popular vote but won the election. If a few thousand votes had switched from Trump to Hilary Clinton, she would be the president right now.

It seems to make sense from a legal standpoint for Trump’s attorney to make the issue go away – and $130,000 is a small price for a billionaire to pay.

The mainstream media supported Bill Clinton in his frequent denials that he had sex with Monica Lewinsky. He said they didn’t, she said they did, and the mainstream media believed him, despite the fact that they all knew that Bill Clinton was known to have sex with any woman who would have him.

What happened to Clinton’s lies – including lying under oath – was that Lewinsky, who may not appear to be the brightest bulb but is no dummy, produced the infamous blue dress with semen stains on it.

Even perhaps the best liar to ever serve as president – although that may be too high an honor to bestow on him, but certainly one of the best – couldn’t think of a lie that anyone would believe when faced with the evidence.

*****

In the federal budget, $1.6 billion is not a lot of money, but in the real world it is.

Trump only received $1.6 billion to start his border wall. Reports indicate that the Republicans put some money in military appropriations that is going to be used for the wall, but still, spending $1.6 billion in one year on building a wall is going to take some effort. It means they have to spend about $6 million a day on a single construction project.

Maybe what they should do is what the government did with the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s and hire one company to start at the Atlantic and head west and one at the Pacific and head east. The winner would receive an extra $1 billion or so as a bonus.

*****

If Trump’s briefing on talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin included an admonition not to congratulate him on being reelected, then he needs new briefers.

It’s what you do when someone wins an election, whether you think it is good for the world or not. It’s simply being polite. It doesn’t matter how Putin won; the fact is that he won and that is an accomplishment worthy of congratulations.

There is nothing to be gained by being rude to one of the most powerful people in the world.

*****

The ridiculousness of the left’s opposition to asking people if they are citizens on the census form proves just how far left they have moved. How can it be unconstitutional to ask someone if they are a citizen?

Some of those who oppose the question do so because they realize that in an accurate count of citizens they will lose representation and federal money.

But how absurd to expect any country attempting to count its people not to ask, “Are you a citizen of this country?”

Immigration reform is reportedly still at the top of Trump’s to-do list, but as he now knows it is nearly impossible to do when a large percentage of those in Congress don’t want any immigration reform, but want to continue the open border policies of Obama.

*****

Brent Bozell of Media Research Center has announced he’s going to start fact checking the fact checkers. It should be an interesting exercise. The so-called fact checkers come from the same political point of view as the mainstream media. Calling what they do fact checking is silly.

It’s like having Mike Krzysewski checking on the calls made by referees during a Duke basketball game. The calls against Duke are going to be wrong and the calls that help Duke will be right.

The media fact checkers are no different. They are all seeing the world through the same lens as the people writing the articles for the mainstream media. When Trump is fact checked, if there is a way that what he said can be considered not entirely accurate then it is wrong. If Hillary Clinton is fact checked, by definition everything she said is accurate, because it is Hillary Clinton and she wouldn’t purposely mislead anyone.

Whoever came up with the idea of fact checkers deserves some kind of award for propaganda because it gives the mainstream media another bite at the apple. First they report something and then they have someone else write that it was accurate. It is brilliant and I have a lot of admiration for the idea. It is also despicable because it is yet another attempt to convince as many people as possible that all conservatives are liars and the only people in the country telling the truth are on the left, and the farther left the more truthful they are.

Bozell should have a lot of fun with his new project.

*****

Bill Clinton must feel unappreciated. Men much like him have had their lives disrupted, lost jobs, friends, prestige and respect and been denigrated night after night on television – but nobody is talking about what Bill Clinton has been accused of or even admitted to doing.

If the #MeToo campaign had any guts, it would have already gone after Bill Clinton, but it hasn’t.

Having a sexual relationship with a White House intern is sexual harassment. If you read Monica Lewinsky’s own book, it is sad. According to her account of their relationship, she behaved as no more than an unpaid prostitute. There was no relationship except in her mind. Bill Clinton would call her any time he felt the need for her services. She would come to the Oval Office, provide those services and leave. She was a star struck young woman and he was president of the United States.

Then there is Juanita Broaddrick, who has maintained for decades now that Bill Clinton raped her. She told others at the time that she was raped by Bill Clinton, who was then governor of Arkansas. She felt she had no recourse because he was so powerful and she was not.

Paula Corbin Jones was paid $850,000 by Bill Clinton after a lengthy legal battle. She claims that Bill Clinton exposed himself to her and asked her to perform a sex act. She was at the time a low-ranking Arkansas state employee and he was governor. She refused his unwelcome advances.

Kathleen Willey says that Bill Clinton attacked her by forcibly kissing and fondling her in the White House when she had come to ask for his help.

Other men have been punished for behavior not nearly as demeaning toward women as these actions, yet Bill Clinton remains a revered senior statesman in the Democratic Party.

The only reasonable explanation for why the #MeToo movement has not gone after Bill Clinton is because then it would by rights have to also go after Hillary Clinton, who was an enabler in all of this. She protected Bill Clinton from these accusations and tried to destroy the women who made accusations against him.

How can the #MeToo movement go after one of their feminist icons? The answer is, they can’t.