In my monthly Richard C. Young’s Intelligence Report (IR), I cover all my portfolio top picks, including regular intelligence on precious metals. I concentrate not only on personal finances but also on personal security issues. As such, I regularly discuss my favorites in the personal security area. In this series, I want to deal with some favorites that I do not have the space to deal with in depth in my monthly IR.

As I have been writing here, Debbie and I spend an increasing amount of time in France each year studying a number of specific fronts, the least of which is certainly not the traction Front National continues to make on the French political landscape.

On the investment front, many areas of France offer excellent potential for those interested in a second home or investment or outright retirement. Many Americans are not aware of the excellent American Hospital in Paris, a wonderful resource for American ex-pats or simply for Americans on the road.

France has much to offer on a number of fronts, but it is French wine and specifically French red Burgundy that I am going to cover in my multi-part investment series.

Why Burgundy and not Bordeaux? The B-or-B debate is certainly the top rung on the ladder of French wine discussion. In The Wine Questionnaire, Daniel Johnnes, wine director for Daniel Boulud’s Dinex Group, succinctly sums up the discussion: “Ask anyone in the world of wine and they will laugh at the question. BURGUNDY.”

In my strongly advised Secrets of the Sommeliers, Rajat Parr devotes a full 27 pages to Burgundy and but 250 mostly unpleasant words to Bordeaux. I categorically agree with Daniel and Rajat, but certainly recognize that the opposing view has tremendous support around the world, a view that is most often a topic of discussion for Wall Street hedge-fund types.

In part two of this series, I will get started in Burgundy and will enliven the series with on-the-ground intelligence from our upcoming stay in Beaune (the wine capital of Burgundy) and Gevrey-Chambertin (boasts the Cote d Or’s greatest number of old vines).

JJ Cale, who died a year ago July, had a unique and deceptively simple sound that came from his playing behind the beat. On July 29, Eric Clapton’s tribute CD to JJ will be released. As Eric says about his friend, “He was a fantastic guy and a great musician. He was my hero.” Also playing on Eric Clapton & Friends – The Breeze are Tom Petty, Mark Knophler, Willie Nelson, Derek Trucks and John Mayer.

JJ wrote songs that became some of the biggest hits in the 1970s, two of which he wrote for Clapton—“Cocaine” and “After Midnight.” In an interview with NPR, Eric Clapton explains how he was tired of the “gymnastic guitar playing” of the 70s and 80s. Clapton credits JJ Cale in helping Eric keep his music minimal but still relevant. “That was the essence of JJ’s music to me, apart from the fact that he summed up so many of the different essences of American music: rock and jazz and folk, blues. He just seemed to have an understanding of it all.”

Do you recognize the driver in the video Eric Clapton & Friends—Call Me the Breeze?

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Jonathan Gruber, a MIT economist and staunch defender of O’Care, helped to write Obamacare. At least twice in public Mr. Gruber has made assertions that support the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last week in Halbig v. Burwell that, in the plain language of O’Care, subsidies for health insurance can only be delivered through state, not federal, exchanges. Yet the Obama administration claims this ignores the clear intent of the law.

In a video from 2012, Mr. Gruber told a nonprofit group, “If you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits.”

It doesn’t get much more straightforward than that, but Mr. Gruber is now fuzzy on why he said what he did. As The Wall Street Journal notes, perhaps it was because it was the truth. “Liberals feared some states wouldn’t set up exchanges, so they deliberately wrote incentives into the law so the states would do so.”

Michael F. Cannon, The Cato Institute’s “health care freedom fighter,” points out, “Simply put, the President is breaking the law.”

This act, introduced in the Senate by Bob Corker and the Republicans, potentially is going to bring the GOP, if not the country, to a watershed moment in American history.

I am opposed to S.2277 and urge all members of the Senate and House to reject this overt act of interventionist aggression.

As Pat Buchanan writes:

S.2277 would declare Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine ‘major non-NATO allies’ of the United States, move NATO forces into Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, accelerate the building of an ABM system in Eastern Europe, and authorize U.S. intelligence and military aid for Ukraine’s army in the Donbass war with Russian backed separatists.”

Pat continues” S.2277 would direct the secretary of sate to identify efforts to strengthen democratic institutions inside the Russian Federation, e.g. subvert Vladimir Putin’s government, looking toward regime change.

If Putin has not vacated Crimea and terminated support for Ukraine’s separatist rebels within seven days of passage of the Corker Ultimatum, sweeping sanctions would be imposed on Russian officials, banks and energy companies, including Gazprom. Economic relations between us would be virtually severed.

Where to even start responding to what can only be looked at as an ill-advised reactionary tantrum? A measured, thoughtful approach to forming a position to take on S.2277 starts with careful consideration of the original Weinberger/Powell Doctrine and its five essential elements.

Is support for S.2277 justified by each of the five essential elements of W/P? I rate the scorecard from W/P as zero for five. And I would be interested in hearing Senator Corker’s detailed response as to why he might draw exactly the opposing view.

At such a watershed moment in U.S. history, a reading of the Cato Institute’s Chris Preble’s The Power Problem is an eye opener for all Americans who believe they are being sold a bill of goods by the neocon/interventionists, but are not exactly sure how to respond and fight back.

If Republicans are looking for a solid way to kill their chances to take back the Senate this fall, then support for S.2277 is just the ticket.

Read Part II here.