PROPER POLICE PERSPECTIVE...Fran's Friday Forum...!!!

Yes, Chicago has a big problem, but the country as a whole has seen a dramatic reduction in crime. As far as the gun laws go; where do you think the guns being used in Chicago are being purchased?

Yes, the State Department did approve of Russia’s gradual takeover of a company with U.S. uranium assets, but it didn’t act unilaterally. State was one of nine government agencies, not to mention independent federal and state nuclear regulators, that had to sign off on the deal.

The bottom line: While the connections between the Clinton Foundation and the Russian deal may appear fishy, there’s simply no proof of any quid pro quo.

The company in question, Uranium One, does have mines, mills and tracts of land in Wyoming, Utah and other U.S. states equal to about 20 percent of U.S. uranium production capacity. It churns out a smaller portion of actual uranium produced in the United States (11 percent in 2014), according to Oilprice.com.

The United States doesn’t actually produce all that much uranium (about 2 percent in 2015) and is actually a net importer of the chemical, according to Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at Middlebury Institute and former director at the New America Foundation.

Russia doesn’t have the licenses to export uranium outside the United States, Oilprice.org pointed out, "so it’s somewhat disingenuous to say this uranium is now Russia’s, to do with what it pleases." The Kremlin was likely more interested in Uranium One’s assets in Kazakhstan, the world’s largest producer.

The Kremlin’s 2010 purchase of a controlling stake in Uranium One had to be approved by the nine members of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

That included Clinton as secretary of state, but also the secretaries of the Treasury (the chairman of the committee), Defense, Justice, Commerce, Energy and Homeland Security as well as the the heads of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The deal also had to be okayed by the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission as well as Utah’s nuclear regulator.

While it’s conceivable Clinton advocated for the deal, the author of Clinton Cash, Peter Schweizer himself admitted that he doesn’t have "direct evidence" proving Clinton played a part. The State Department’s principal representative on the committee, Jose Fernandez, told Time that Clinton "never intervened with me on any CFIUS matter."

Why on earth would the United States allow the transfer of a uranium company?

As others, including a New York Times’ investigation, have explained, the United States was still seeking to "reset" its relationship with Russia and trying to get the Kremlin on board with its Iran nuclear deal. But at the end of the day, the Russian deal wasn’t that big.

Russia’s purchase of the company "had as much of an impact on national security as it would have if they set the money on fire. That’s probably why (CFIUS and the NRC ) approved it."