The 1% Doctrine

Ten years ago Dick Cheney's calculus on assessing and reacting to terrorist threats was immortalized in Ron Suskind's book The One Percent Doctrine. According to Cheney, who wielded enormous power in development and implementation of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policy,
"If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response."

source:nbcnews.com

We look forward to hearing Dick Cheney's take on the recent arrests of high level operatives in Russia's security service, the FSB. According to sources cited by TPM, Sergei Mikhailov was a U.S. asset who tipped off U.S. officials: 
"to information about Vladimir Fomenko and his server rental company “King Servers,” which the American cybersecurity company ThreatConnect identified last September as “an information nexus” that was used by hackers suspected of working for Russian state security in cyberattacks."

Josh Marshall asks the right questions about this affair:
"But this immediately poses the question: if Mikhailov was a US asset, how was he compromised? Did the information put out by US intelligence somehow lead to his exposure? Without putting too fine a point on it, a number of close advisors to President Trump are being scrutinized for ties to Russia. Some of them participated in the intelligence briefings the President receives.

Do we have a very big problem?"

The big problem is, as I posted Jan. 10th without any other content,  It's Not Illegal if a Republican president does it.  Is the dire possibility that Russia has a high-placed mole in the White House greater than 1%?

Is it lower than 100%?

What does conservative mean in 2017? Does it mean compromising our intelligence agencies and national security and the heart of our government, just so that terrible 'scourge' of 'Obamacare' can be eviscerated? You know, that terrible law that increased taxes on investment income over $200,000 so that lower income people in the U.S. can afford insurance coverage, and all Americans who fall through the cracks can be covered even if they have preexisting medical conditions.

Unfortunately, "when tactics become policy" means that Republicans are simply unwilling to compromise their current dominance in the federal government. They would rather tolerate severely compromised national security - when the Kremlin is on their side.