Trump’s legitimacy is in Comey’s hands, Dems are digging deeper ditch, along with other comments

Security desk: Comey Now DC's Most effective Man

James Comey has emerged as “the most powerful person in Washington,” contends Eli Lake at Bloomberg, for one simple reason: “The director from the FBI will in a practical sense determine the legitimacy of our elected president.” And that's “the real dilemma for that republic right now.” Consider all the issues at the office: Did President Trump's associates deceive the public about their meetings with Russian government officials? And who within the Federal government disclosed Michael Flynn's intercepted phone calls? “It would be nice to blame the Russians with this sorry situation,” says Lake, “but really we can blame only ourselves.” So “the man Democrats say helped Trump win the election may end up providing Congress using the way to impeach him.” It's “a sorry state of affairs.”

Historian: Health Care Could Be a Lose-Lose For Trump

Jeff Greenfield at Politico compares President Trump's struggle within the ObamaCare-replacement bill to then-President Bill Clinton's 1993 budget battle. Torn between campaign promises and political reality, he notes, Clinton's bill “had sufficient bad-tasting medicine inside it to drive some key Democrats away from support.” But he rallied enough votes from his own party by warning rejection would destroy his presidency. Now that same argument is “being directed at dissident House Republicans” on healthcare. But just as Clinton's win included “high political costs” – Republicans took Congress in 1994 – so might Trump's, when the GOP plan passes but doesn't work. In that case, “what would be celebrated as a legislative triumph may find yourself being an epic disaster.”

View from abroad: Martin McGuinness Wasn't any Mandela

Stephen Glover in London's Daily Mail is “dismayed” by obituaries portraying former IRA terrorist Martin McGuinness as “a great statesman and architect of political reconciliation” akin to Nelson Mandela. But while Mandela “embodied a spirit of reconciliation” against apartheid, McGuinness “embraced violence and murder” somewhere which already enjoyed “free elections and a democratically elected government.” Yes, he and also the IRA did eventually accept the “peace process” after you have “waged war brutally,” but “largely simply because they were instructed to.” The IRA “gave up violence because it realized it would never achieve its aim of a united Ireland” at the reason for a gun. McGuinness may have “made his peace with God. But he never made his peace with those he'd wronged.”

Defense writer: Beware North Korea's Sudden Collapse

North Korea is the most dangerous nation on earth, says Max Kazianis in the Week, thanks to its growing nuclear arsenal that may target the US mainland by 2021. But there's “one event potentially more perilous” , and it's something most are rooting for – the collapse of North Korea's government, which “sends shivers down the spine of those who have studied the subject.” Beginning with the issue of “who has treatments for not just Pyongyang's nuclear and atomic materials,” nevertheless its “much larger chemical and biological weapons stockpiles,” and whether any WMDs would leave the country. Plus there is China, whose “greatest fear” is “a united Korea” like a rival for regional power. Around North Korea deserves freedom, “a spontaneous, uncontrolled collapse could cost huge numbers of people their lives.”

From the best: Dems' Ditch Is Only Getting Deeper

Democrats in Congress “are digging themselves a ditch that keeps getting deeper” and “couldn't appear any weaker,” argues Ed Rogers at The Washington Post: “There's no good battle to be had on Judge Neil Gorsuch, they're getting steamrolled on repealing and replacing ObamaCare and their base has lurched towards the far left, fully outside their grasp.” Their “out-of-touch leadership” can't “stop babbling.” And for “all the Trump administration's miscues, Democrats haven't laid a glove around the president.” Bottom line: “Democrats are clearly lost, with no sense of direction. Their efforts to oppose the GOP agenda failed, and their base knows it.”