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Commentary: New Washington Post National Editor Recused from FBI Coverage

February 2, 2022February 1, 2022 RealClearWire

The Washington Post has recused its new national editor, Matea Gold, from the news organization’s coverage of the FBI and Justice Department over a personal conflict of interest. A month before Gold was promoted, her husband, Jonathan Lenzner, was named FBI chief of staff.

A Post spokeswoman told RealClearInvestigations that the paper’s managing editor, Steven Ginsberg, will be overseeing coverage of the Justice Department and the FBI. Kristine Coratti Kelly, the paper’s chief communications officer, said the decision does not reflect on Gold’s objectivity or credibility.

“We have every confidence in Matea’s professionalism and high standards,” Kelly said. “She has recused herself from this area of coverage to avoid even the appearance of partiality.”

Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: Joe Biden and the Uses of Nihilism

February 1, 2022January 31, 2022 Virginia Star Staff

Chaos is the new, the intentional, normal. A pandemic of nihilism has been unleashed upon the land. As in Lord of the Flies, when laws, rules, protocols, traditions, and customs are mocked and dismantled, primitive human nature in the raw is unleashed.

Madness now reigns in every quarter, from the iconic to the irrelevant to the fundamental. Statues of Lincoln, Douglass, and Jefferson are toppled or defaced. The rules of capitalization have been altered. We are told that 1619, not 1776, was our founding date—and this by a “civil rights” activist-journalist who had no idea of the date that the Civil War began.

Quite quickly after the revolutionary boilerplate, America began reverting to its natural Hobbesian or Thucydidean essence. If you dispute that, look at looted packages along the Union Pacific tracks in Los Angeles. Try walking the nocturnal streets of Chicago or Baltimore. Visit the sidewalk homeless of San Francisco. Fly over our constipated ports. Drive into our empty new car dealerships. Pull up to our European-priced gas pumps. Shop in the emptying shelves of our Sovietizing food and discount stores. The common theme of the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, apparently, is that the entertainers must have written lyrics threatening the police, denigrating women, using the N-word . . . and be worth $100 million.

Zelensky Slams Biden: ‘I Think I Know the Details Deeper Than Any Other President’

January 31, 2022 Admin

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday took a thinly veiled shot at Joe Biden, saying “I am the President of Ukraine. I am based here. I think I know the details deeper than any other president,” after Biden had warned him in a phone call that a Russian invasion was “imminent.”

According to a CNN report, which is disputed by the White House, Biden told Zelensky during an hour and 20 minutes long conversation on Thursday that the Capital city of Kyiv could be “sacked” by Russian forces, and to “prepare for impact.” Biden also reportedly said an invasion was “virtually certain” in February when the ground will be more frozen in Ukraine.

In response, Zelensky urged Biden to tone down his rhetoric about a potential invasion, citing concerns that it could cause panic or a run on supplies, CNN reported.

Special Counsel Durham Says Just Learning About Justice Watchdog Horowitz, Sussmann’s 2017 Meeting

January 30, 2022January 30, 2022 Admin

Special counsel John Durham and his legal team say they’re just learning about a March 2017 meeting between Justice Department watchdog Michael Horowitz and former Hillary Clinton campaign Michael Sussmann – indicted last year for allegedly lying to the FBI while pushing now-discredited claims about the Trump Organization.

Durham’s team said Tuesday in a court filing they learned only a week ago about the meeting between Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Sussmann, who made the claims in 2016 about communications between a Russia bank and the Trump organization.

“The OIG had not previously informed the Special Counsel’s Office of this meeting with the defendant,” the filing by Durham’s legal team states.

Ukraine Warns West’s ‘Panic’ over Russian Invasion Could Sink Its Economy

January 30, 2022January 30, 2022 Admin

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned the West that its “panic” over Russia potentially invading his country risked hurting its economy, BBC News reported.

“There are signals even from respected leaders of states, they just say that tomorrow there will be war,” Zelensky told reporters at a press conference, BBC News reported. “This is panic – how much does it cost for our state?”

The Ukrainian criticized Western countries choosing to withdraw diplomats from Ukraine, calling the move a mistake, BBC News reported. “The destabilisation of the situation inside the country” is the biggest threat to Ukraine, he said.

Commentary: Biden’s Ukraine Scramble

January 26, 2022January 25, 2022 Virginia Star Staff

President Joe Biden talks on the phone with Senator Rob Portman, R-Ohio, following the Senate vote to pass the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, Tuesday, August 10, 2021, in the Oval Office Dining Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

As usual, the media coverage on the Ukraine crisis is largely inadequate. Perversely, most of the aggressive left-wing media want to escalate the feud with Russian President Vladimir Putin to the point of driving Russia into the arms of China. This is the only way Russia (whose GDP is smaller than Canada’s) could seriously damage the West.

At the same time, some conservative commentators, including some of the stars at Fox News, are unreasonably accusing those who favor resisting Russian aggression in Ukraine of being warmongers and trying to propel America into endless, useless war. Again.

There is a legitimate American and Western interest in not allowing Russia to trample an independent nation of 40 million underfoot in the middle of Europe to the embarrassment of the Western alliance, and it is not a difficult scenario to avoid.

Commentary: The Sinking Ship of the Democratic-Media Alliance

January 12, 2022January 11, 2022 Virginia Star Staff

Almost no one seems to grasp the colossal irony of the current American political condition. The uniquequality of it is that the country is divided between two political forces which, in the tedious hyperbole of contemporary political jargon, view each other as an “existential threat to democracy.” The Democrats can’t sell the bunk that January 6 was an “insurrection;” they can’t wish away concerns about the integrity of the 2020 election. All they have is the tired claim that Trump is a threat to democracy, and in their advocacy of that falsehood, they have made themselves the threat to democracy.

Trump emerged politically in 2015 to universal mockery. Nothing could have been more certain than that this vulgar and sleazy huckster (as he was portrayed,not without some reason), would bomb out trying to recalibrate his downmarket celebrity brand to catapult him into the White House.

As Trump cleaned up in the 2016 Republican primaries, the Democratic strategists reached to the bottom of their campaign bag of tricks. Late in the campaign came the 11-year-old Billy Bush tape, in which Trump had made some inelegant locker-room macho comments about how a celebrity could take almost unlimited liberties with women. This failed to kill him. It was stale, dated, and not exactly a startling revelation.

Trump Ended His First Year With Big Tax Cut Win, Biden Finishes His With Crushing Manchin Loss

December 21, 2021December 20, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Buffeted by a Russia scandal that proved false, Donald Trump ended the first year of his presidency on a high note with passage of historic tax cuts. In contrast four years later, Joe Biden’s first year in office is ending with a stunning rebuke from a senator in his own party.

On Sunday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) gave a resounding “No” to Biden’s signature Build Back Better legislation, leaving an uncertain path for the Democrats’ ambitious agenda despite the fact they control the Senate, House and White House.

Commentary: Democrats Promised An Insurrection But All They Got Was a Lousy Obstruction Case

December 20, 2021 Admin

History, it appears, is repeating itself—at least when it comes to the latest crusade to destroy Donald Trump and everyone around him.

For nearly three years, the American people were warned that Donald Trump had been in cahoots with the Kremlin to rig the 2016 presidential election. Trump-Russia election collusion, the original “stop the steal” campaign—that is, until questioning the outcome of American elections was designated a criminal conspiracy after November 2020—dominated the attention of the ruling class and the entirety of the national news media.

Every instrument of power—the FBI, a secret surveillance court, congressional committees, a special counsel—was leveraged to uncover the “truth” about the Trump campaign’s alleged dirty dealings with Mother Russia.

Ex-Defense Contractor Charged for Allegedly Leaking Classified Information to Russia

December 18, 2021December 17, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

A former U.S. defense contractor was arrested earlier this week on criminal charges in connection with espionage, according to the Justice Department.

John Murray Rowe Jr., a 63-year-old resident of Lead, South Dakota, allegedly attempted to provide classified national defense information to the Russian government.

Commentary: The Russia-Ukraine Crisis, the History Our Media Got Wrong

December 18, 2021December 17, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Russia’s looming invasion of Ukraine presents a clear and present danger to the safety of the European Union and a direct challenge to the NATO alliance, but only now are our major media waking up to this dire threat to Western security. We must now confront urgent questions: Did the United States strengthen Russia, did it weaken Ukraine, and did it do so under the nose of these media?

First, a quick run-through of American actions that strengthened Russia. In his 2009 inaugural address, Barack Obama promised to approach adversaries with an open hand, not a closed fist. For this, he won a Nobel Peace Prize, an oxymoronic name, equivalent to the Affordable Care Act.

Top Ukrainian Military Official Considers Arming Citizens If Russia Gets Too Close

December 12, 2021December 12, 2021 Admin

A senior Ukrainian military adviser floated the idea of handing over the country’s own weapons to its citizens in the event of a Russian invasion, The New York Times reported.

The official told the NYT that the government might have to open its weapons depots to its population so that people could defend their families if the Ukrainian military were to be defeated.

Space Force General Claims American Satellites Are Under Attack on Regular Basis

December 2, 2021 Admin

A top general with the United States Space Force says that other nations often threaten and even outright attack American satellites in space, as reported by the New York Post.

General David Thompson revealed the alarming developments in an op-ed with the Washington Post, published on Tuesday. In the article, Thompson says that “the threats are really growing and expanding every single day. And it’s really an evolution of activity that’s been happening for a long time.”

Commentary: Our Enemies Wait as We Destroy Ourselves

December 2, 2021 Admin

Is the United States becoming like the old Soviet Union in a way that people fail to see because of the noise and the distractions of electoral politics, mass entertainment masking as news, and mass indoctrination masking as entertainment?

We are becoming a meritocracy that punishes merit and rewards folly. We have all the disutility of a meritocracy—the snobbishness, the restless ambition, the inclination to see merit only in what can be measured or paid for; even the tendency to pull intelligent people out of their native regions and set them down, like gilded tumbleweeds, in places without memory or character. But we get none of the benefits. We punish truth-telling and intelligence, and reward stupidity.

Commentary: Biden Is Making Russia Great Again

November 29, 2021March 17, 2022 Virginia Star Staff

Under former President Donald J. Trump, for the first time in decades, the United States became a net exporter of natural gas and oil. That helped to keep global energy prices relatively low. It also gave the United States leverage over the international system in ways it had not enjoyed since before the 1970s.

Alas, the propagation of the novel coronavirus from Wuhan, China, along with the ceaseless lies of the Western “mainstream” media made such a prosperous and secure future under Trump an impossibility.

In the eight months since assuming office under a cloud of controversy, Joe Biden has done more to harm America’s inherent strategic advantages in the global energy market than any U.S. rival could have imagined. Under Biden, the United States has gone from being a net exporter of global energy to begging the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to produce more oil for the world to consume.

Commentary: Five Trump-Russia ‘Collusion’ Corrections We Need from the Media Now

November 26, 2021November 25, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Five years after the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded collection of Trump-Russia conspiracy theories known as the Steele dossier was published by BuzzFeed, news outlets that amplified its false allegations have suffered major losses of credibility. The recent indictment of the dossier’s main source, Igor Danchenko, for allegedly lying to the FBI, has catalyzed a new reckoning.

In response to what the news site Axios has called “one of the most egregious journalistic errors in modern history,” the Washington Post has re-edited at least a dozen stories related to Steele. For two of those, the Post removed entire sections, changed headlines, and added lengthy editor’s notes.

Rand Paul Urges Whistleblowers to Expose Biden Administration Abuses of Civil Liberties

November 22, 2021November 21, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Sen. Rand Paul sharply criticized the “politicized” FBI and the Department of Justice, calling for more whistleblowers to expose government trampling of American liberties.

“I think anytime someone is breaking the law in government, it’s a good idea to hear about it,” the Kentucky Republican said in a Thursday interview with The Daily Signal. “And so, frankly, yes, I think it is a good idea for people to reveal when the government’s breaking the rules.”

Paul’s remarks follow news that the head of the FBI’s Criminal and Counterterrorism divisions reportedly ordered agents Oct. 20 to identify threats against school board members and teachers with a “threat tag”—although Attorney General Merrick Garland told lawmakers the next day that the FBI was not using counterintelligence tools to target parents.

Investigator Who Helped Unravel Russia Case Says Next Mission Is Forcing Media Corrections

November 15, 2021November 14, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Army Chief of Staff Gen. James C. McConville speaks with Acting Defense Secretary Christopher C. Miller and Miller’s Chief of Staff Kash Patel, at the opening of the National Museum of the United States Army, Fort Belvoir, Va., Nov. 11, 2020. (DoD photo by Lisa Ferdinando)

The congressional investigator who played a key role in unraveling the Russia collusion narrative says his next mission is to force the news media to make necessary corrections to the avalanche of false stories they produced over the last many years.

“The course correction that I’ve been trying to work on since I left government service is you have to find a way to correct the media,” Kash Patel told Just the News.

“Because for years, they lied to 50% of the American population who believe everything they said, that Trump was in bed with Russians and Putin and that Trump was getting paid. And Trump knew that Vladimir Putin was using U.S. dollars to kill American soldiers.”

Thousands of Migrants Stuck in Between Belarus and Poland as Tensions Flare

November 15, 2021November 14, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Thousands of migrants are stranded at the Belarus-Poland border, with Belarus and Russia performing military demonstrations amid rising tensions in the region, CNN reported Friday.

Up to 2,000 people are trapped between Poland and Belarus, enduring hunger and hypothermia in the freezing forests and camps along the border, CNN reported. The number of migrants at the border has the potential to grow to 10,000 people in the near future if the situation doesn’t change, according to Belarusian authorities.

Trump Comes to Bannon’s Defense, Says Contempt Prosecution Proof ‘USA Is a Radicalized Mess’

November 15, 2021November 14, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Former President Donald Trump on Sunday came to the defense of Steve Bannon, suggesting the Biden Justice Department’s prosecution of his ex-adviser on contempt of Congress charges was evidence that America is a “radicalized mess.”

“This Country has perhaps never done to anyone what they have done to Steve Bannon and they are looking to do it to others, also,” Trump said, making a likely reference to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who also has been threatened with contempt charges if he doesn’t cooperate with the House investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

The 45th president suggested his former advisers were being treated more harshly than American adversaries like China and Russia.

Environmentalists Are Making Putin Stronger Than Ever

November 4, 2021November 3, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

U.S. environmental policies pushed by the Biden administration and aimed at dramatically curbing domestic fossil fuel production have given Russian President Vladimir Putin more power on the world stage.

Since taking office, President Joe Biden has blocked domestic pipelines, ditched drilling projects, proposed sweeping regulations on the fossil fuel industry and attempted to ban oil and gas leases on federal lands while pledging to decarbonize the grid by 2035. But Biden has also turned to the Middle Eastern oil cartel the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia, asking the countries to increase their production of oil and natural gas respectively.

Commentary: America Gone Mad

October 28, 2021October 27, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

After three weeks in Europe and extensive discussions with dozens of well-informed and highly placed individuals from most of the principal Western European countries, including leading members of the British government, I have the unpleasant duty of reporting complete incomprehension and incredulity at what Joe Biden and his collaborators encapsulate in the peppy but misleading phrase, “We’re back.”

As one eminent elected British government official put it, “They are not back in any conventional sense of that word. We have worked closely with the Americans for many decades and we have never seen such a shambles of incompetent administration, diplomatic incoherence, and complete military ineptitude as we have seen in these nine months. We were startled by Trump, but he clearly knew what he was doing, whatever we or anyone else thought about it. This is just a disintegration of the authority of a great nation for no apparent reason.”

George Soros Teams Up with Billionaire Who Backed Liberal Disinformation Efforts to Fund Anti-Disinformation Media Venture

October 27, 2021October 26, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Liberal tech billionaire Reid Hoffman, a funder of numerous disinformation projects, is backing a new media venture launched Tuesday that seeks to combat disinformation, according to a report.

Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, joined ranks with financier George Soros to fund Good Information Inc., which will “fund and scale businesses that cut through eco chambers with fact-based information,” Axios reported.

Commentary: Christopher Steele Is a Product of Corrupt FBI

October 20, 2021October 19, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Just as the special counsel’s investigation into the origins of Crossfire Hurricane—the FBI counterintelligence probe launched in the summer of 2016 to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—is showing signs of life, one of the central figures in the hoax is attempting to burnish his sullied image.

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos has produced a documentary featuring Christopher Steele, the man responsible for the so-called dossier bearing his name. “Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier,” streamed on Hulu Monday night; promotional clips hinted that, far from a hard-hitting interview exposing Steele for the charlatan he is, Stephanopoulos gave Steele a chance to spin his story ahead of possible new indictments related to John Durham’s inquiry into the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax.

Mollie Hemingway Commentary: Taking on the Establishment

October 19, 2021October 19, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Before the 2018 midterm elections, Trump’s political advisors were thinking about the president’s re-election bid and noticed a curious commonality among incumbent presidents who didn’t get re-elected: they all faced challengers from within their own party.

Five U.S. presidents since 1900 have lost their bids for a second term. William Taft lost to Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover lost to Franklin Roosevelt, Gerald Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton. While each election is determined by unique factors, all five of these failed incumbents dealt with internal party fights or serious primary challenges.

Commentary: Spy Couple Follow in the Grand Tradition of Treasonous Leftist Couples

October 18, 2021October 17, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

In the wake of the recent arrest of Maryland nuclear engineer, Jonathan Toebbe, and his wife, Diana Toebbe on charges they tried to sell classified nuclear warship information to a foreign country, the mainstream media has focused on the “mystery” of how this could happen. But very little media coverage has focused on their progressive political background—the most likely key to their misdeeds.

In fact, strangely enough, husband and wife traitor teams are often linked to left-wing politics. Why hasn’t the establishment media focused on this tie?

Commentary: The Left Destroys Everything It Touches

October 13, 2021 Admin

What was the purpose for the insane opposition of the Left between 2017 and 2021? To usher in a planned nihilism, an incompetent chaos, a honed anarchy to wreck the country in less than a year?

No sooner had Donald Trump entered office than scores of House Democrats filed motions for impeachment, apparently for thought crimes that he might, some day, in theory, could possibly commit.

Commentary: The Left Can Finally Admit What It Wants

October 7, 2021 Admin

I remember a staggering conversation with my high school lunch table in the early 2000s. Everyone agreed with one kid’s statement that there was nothing special about living in America: Life in Canada, or anywhere else, would be identical except for maybe the weather.

At the time, I wondered what was going to happen to America when all these kids grew up. What happens when America’s young adults, far from having any intellectual commitment to freedom, don’t even understand what life would be like without it?

Trump Demands New York Times, Washington Post Be Stripped of Pulitzers for Russia Reporting

October 4, 2021October 4, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Former President Donald Trump asked the Pulitzer Prize committee on Sunday to strip awards to The Washington Post and The New York Times, arguing their award-winning stories in 2016 and 2017 alleging Russia collusion lacked “any credible evidence “

The newspapers’ reporting was “based on the false reporting of a non-existent link between the Kremlin and the Trump Campaign. The coverage was no more than a politically motivated farce,” Trump wrote in a letter to interim Pulitzer administrator Bud Kliment.

Trump noted that multiple investigations have dismissed any notion of collusion between his campaign and the Kremlin and that a recent indictment by Special Prosecutor John Durham traced some of the key allegations to people tied to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Investigation: Biden Security Adviser Jake Sullivan Tied to Alleged 2016 Clinton Scheme to Co-Opt the CIA and FBI to Tar Trump

September 28, 2021September 27, 2021 RealClearWire

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan figures prominently in a grand jury investigation run by Special Counsel John Durham into an alleged 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign scheme to use both the FBI and CIA to tar Donald Trump as a colluder with Russia, according to people familiar with the criminal probe, which they say has broadened into a conspiracy case.

Sullivan is facing scrutiny, sources say, over potentially false statements he made about his involvement in the effort, which continued after the election and into 2017. As a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton, Sullivan spearheaded what was known inside her campaign as a “confidential project” to link Trump to the Kremlin through dubious email-server records provided to the agencies, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Newt Gingrich Commentary: Biden’s Border Disaster

September 26, 2021September 25, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

As President Joe Biden vacationed at Rehoboth Beach, the disaster at the U.S. southern border continued to metastasize.

Anyone who has seen pictures of thousands of people crossing the Rio Grande en masse knows the administration has achieved complete failure.

Anyone who has seen the overhead drone footage of more than 12,000 people gathered under one bridge in South Texas knows that massive, historic incompetence is being allowed to flourish.

Commentary: Breaking Up America

September 15, 2021September 14, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

I never thought I’d be writing about secession or anything close. Not in a million years. “America, the Beautiful” is my favorite national song, bringing tears to my eyes with its “sea to shining sea.” Giving up the magnificence that entails would be heartbreaking on so many levels.

But the times being what they are and the man occupying the presidency being who he is, not to mention those surrounding him being who they are, plus the issues that divide us from national defense to education to immigration to race to public safety to the pandemic to values in general being so intractable, I feel compelled to discuss secession or division as if they were a real possibility worth considering.

The Taliban Controls a Vast Array of Weapons After America’s Withdrawal from Afghanistan

September 14, 2021September 13, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Afghan, coalition forces advance into Taliban heartland British Lt. Col. Andrew Harrison, 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment commander, conducts a shura with Tor Ghai village elders after ISAF and ANA secured the village during a recent operation. (Photo courtesy of Task Force Helmand Public Affairs)

When the Taliban assumed control of Afghanistan last month, the group took possession of a U.S.-funded weapons stockpile worth tens of billions of dollars.

The U.S. invested nearly $83 billion in bolstering the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), more than $24 billion of which went to funding weapons, vehicles and other equipment, according to a Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) report published in July. The amount of funding for weapons, vehicles and equipment is based on a 2017 Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimate that roughly 70% of the investment went towards other budget items like training.

In the aftermath of the shocking collapse of the Western-backed Afghan government last month, U.S. defense officials estimated that Taliban militants took dozens of aircraft including Blackhawk helicopters and thousands of vehicles, communications equipment and weapons. Republican lawmakers demanded the Biden administration provide them with a full accounting of the equipment that was in the Taliban’s possession while GOP members of the House Armed Services Committee introduced a bill requiring the White House to share the information with Congress.

Commentary: Biden Has Given Putin a Huge Win on the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline

July 26, 2021July 25, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

For years, Democrats and their cable news echo chamber conjured up and broadly disseminated the most lurid and patently ludicrous rumors about former President Donald Trump being a corrupted and (literally) compromised agent of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. Democratic talking heads ultimately tried in vain to distance themselves from this sordid oeuvre‘s most far-fetched talking points, such as the infamous “pee video kompromat” from the discredited Steele dossier. But for four years, Democrats’ unquenchable obsession with the “Russiagate” hoax pervaded, distorted and sullied our politics.

Oil Reaches Highest Price in Six Years Amid Low Supply, Output

July 8, 2021July 7, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Oil prices climbed to a six-year high Tuesday as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia continue to tamp down on global output, The Wall Street Journal reported.

An OPEC meeting was called off Monday, the WSJ reported. It was the group’s third attempt to discuss surging prices and an increase in oil consumption amid an opening global economy.

As Biden Seeks to Limit U.S. Oil Production, Reliance on Russian Imports Rises

June 21, 2021June 20, 2021 The Center Square

Within months of President Joe Biden halting the Keystone Pipeline, pausing new oil and gas leases on federal lands, and imposing further restrictions on U.S. oil companies, U.S. oil imports from Russia set a new record in March.

According to International Energy Agency, U.S. imports of crude oil and petroleum products from Russia reached 22.9 million barrels in March, the highest level since August 2010. They had reached over 25 million barrels in April 2009.

Crude oil imports from Russia in March stood at 6.1 million barrels, making Russia the third-largest oil exporter to the United States.

Putin Flatly Denies That He’s Behind Recent U.S. Cyberattacks

June 15, 2021June 14, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Russian President Vladimir Putin denied that he was behind the recent cyberattacks across the United States, calling the allegations against him “farcical.”

“We have been accused of all kinds of things,” Putin told NBC News Monday. “Election interference, cyberattacks and so on and so forth. And not once, not once, not one time, did they bother to produce any kind of evidence or proof. Just unfounded accusations.”

Russian intelligence and Russian-speaking groups have launched wide-ranging cyberattacks in recent months, affecting American consumer goods ranging from gasoline to meat. President Joe Biden imposed sweeping sanctions against Russia in April after U.S. intelligence determined that Putin personally ordered a massive SolarWinds hack on federal agencies and for his interference in the 2020 presidential election.

Commentary: The Lethal Wages of Trump Derangement Madness

June 8, 2021June 7, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Think about it: For about five years, anything candidate, president-elect, and President Trump said or did, the media, the Left, and progressive popular culture opposed in Pavlovian fashion.

Anything that Trump touched was ridiculed or discredited—regardless of evidence, data, or cogency. The merits of a Trump policy, a Trump assessment, a Trump initiative were irrelevant—given the primordial hatred of the Left of all things Trump: the president, the person, the family.

Under the reductionist malady of Trump Derangement Syndrome, facts and logic did not matter. Instead, anything not said or done in opposition to Trump empowered the supposed existential Trump threat. Ironically, some of the most deductive and reductionist Trump haters were supposedly professionals, the highly educated, and the self-proclaimed devotees of the Enlightenment. And yet in their uncontrolled aversion and detestation, they suspended all the rules of empiricism, logic, and rationality—and people died as a result.

Former Treasury Official Sentenced to Prison for Leaking Russia, Manafort Docs

June 8, 2021June 7, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

A former senior Treasury Department official was sentenced to six months in prison for leaking thousands of confidential reports on financial transactions related to people tied to former President Donald Trump and Russia, including former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, 42, pleaded guilty last year to a conspiracy charge. According to federal prosecutors, Edwards leaked the confidential documents to BuzzFeed News reporter Jason Leopold. Leopold then shared thousands of suspicious activity reports with publications worldwide.

Court documents reveal that beginning in 2017, she leaked banking reports related to people being investigated in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of foreign interference in U.S. elections. The material included reports concerning Manafort, his business associate Rick Gates, the Russian Embassy and Maria Butina, among others.

Virginia Congressional Delegation Asks Navy to Keep Ships Homeported in Hampton Roads

May 25, 2021May 24, 2021 Eric Burk

Virginia’s congressional delegation, led by Congressman Rob Wittman (R-Virginia-01), is warning the Navy not to forget the East Coast and Norfolk Naval Shipyard as international military and commercial dynamics draw attention to China and Russia.

“As we pivot towards the Indo-Pacific in our global force posture, it comes as no surprise that we’ve bolstered our presence on our Western Seaboard through increases in homeported ships. This increased presence is of such magnitude that San Diego has eclipsed Norfolk in the sheer number of homeported ships,” the delegation wrote in a letter to Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday.

Representative Mark Green Introduces Bill to Sanction Russia

May 13, 2021May 12, 2021 Cooper Moran

Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) introduced a bill Wednesday to sanction Russia for their invasion of the Donbas region of Ukraine.

If enacted, the Restraining Russian Imperialism Act would instruct the Biden administration to impose sanctions if Russia does not completely withdraw from the region within a year.

Cyber Attack Hampers Gas Delivery in Virginia

May 12, 2021May 11, 2021 Eric Burk

A major pipeline used to deliver gasoline to the eastern U.S. has been shutdown by hackers, leading to higher gas prices and decreased availability in some areas of Virginia. The Colonial Pipeline was targeted by a ransomware cyber attack on Friday, and the company took some systems offline in response, leading to the pipeline shutdown.

Chuck Schumer’s 2017 Warning About the Intel Community Seems to Have Come True

April 26, 2021April 25, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Weeks before Donald Trump took office, Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer issued an ominous warning.

“You take on the intelligence community? They have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you,” the New York Democrat said in an interview with MSNBC on Jan. 3, 2017.

Schumer was responding to Trump’s criticism of an intelligence community assessment that said Russia interfered explicitly to help the Republican win the 2016 election.

“He’s being really dumb to do this,” Schumer said of Trump.

American Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan Returning to Washington as Tensions Heighten

April 21, 2021April 20, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

United States Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan said Tuesday that he was returning to Washington for “consultations” with top American officials as tensions increase between the two countries.

The former deputy secretary of state and appointee of former President Donald Trump said that “it is important for me to speak directly with my new colleagues in the Biden administration in Washington about the current state of bilateral relations between the U.S. and Russia.”

Sullivan added that he was returning to see his family, and that he would “return to Moscow in the coming weeks before any meeting” between President Joe Biden and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

FBI Had Doubts About Russia Informant’s Allegation That Helped Prompt Mike Flynn Probe

March 24, 2021March 23, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Five days before the FBI formally opened the Michael Flynn probe in summer 2016, a confidential informant alleged to agents that Donald Trump’s national security adviser had left a 2014 foreign meeting alone with a Russian woman. Agents ultimately deemed the account “not plausible” and “not accurate” but proceeded to investigate Flynn anyway, newly declassified documents show.

Russian Police Arrest Thousands During Second Weekend of Pro-Democracy Protests

February 1, 2021January 31, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Over 4,000 pro-democracy protesters gathering in support of Alexi Navalny, a vocal Kremlin critic, have been detained by Russian police since the beginning of last weekend, according to local media and pro-democracy organizations.

The arrests have occurred across the country, from European cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg to far-eastern cities like Vladivostok, according to Russian monitoring groups, BBC reported.

Top House Democrat Calls on FBI to Investigate Parler’s Financing, Possible Ties to Russia

January 22, 2021January 21, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the Democratic chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, on Thursday called on FBI Director Christopher Wray to investigate financing for Parler, including whether the social media site has any ties to Russia.

Part of Maloney’s rationale for investigating Parler’s links to Russia is that the social media site’s CEO, John Matze, founded the company shortly after traveling to Russia with his wife, who is Russian.

Jen Psaki Donned Hammer-and-Sickle Hat During 2014 Meeting with Russian Officials

December 2, 2020December 1, 2020 Virginia Star Staff

Photos have resurfaced of Jen Psaki, the incoming Biden White House press secretary, meeting with Russian officials in 2014 while wearing a hat stitched with the hammer-and-sickle, a symbol of the communist Soviet Union, which caused the deaths of tens of millions of people in the 20th century.

‘Disinformation’ and Other Media Excuses for Downplaying, Dismissing Hunter Biden Revelations

November 3, 2020November 2, 2020 Virginia Star Staff

Establishment media outlets have largely downplayed and dismissed new revelations about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings and how much his father, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, may have known about those dealings.

Media outlets have offered a variety of rationales for downplaying the revelations, which have come from newly surfaced emails and from one of Hunter Biden’s former business partners, Tony Bobulinski.