BECAUSE SHUT UP: Critiquing Hillary’s $12,000 Jacket Called ‘Sexism.’

And it’s always “shut up,” isn’t it?

HMMM: Donald Trump’s polling surge has faltered — and Democrats haven’t even united.

Most candidates enjoy a nice little honeymoon between securing the nomination and the primetime acceptance speech.

BIAS: Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives.

Rogue?

ROSENBERGS REDUX: PJM’s Ron Radosh, writing in the Weekly Standard, spots the latest leftwing historian eager to apologize for the Rosenbergs’ treachery.

SHOCKER: Hillary Clinton Used Leadership PAC as “Slush Fund” in 2008-09.

Hill PAC dates back to 2001, but was dormant while Clinton ran for president. She relaunched Hill PAC after suspending her campaign in June 2008 and tossing her support to Barack Obama.

In an October 2008 article headlined “Democrats Have Reason to Celebrate: Hill PAC is Back,” the Washington Post cast it as a big win for down-ballot races.

“We’re throwing everything we’ve got into making sure [Obama] stands before the nation as a president with the political strength to break the gridlock, get things done, and start progress going in America again,” Clinton wrote to supporters in October. “And with a filibuster-proof Senate, we’ll be able to bring the change this country so desperately needs.”

A Hill PAC email sent the day before the election read: “I hope you will take action by joining us in this final push,” just above a button to contribute.

But only 11 percent of the relaunched Hill PAC’s spending ultimately went to candidates, filings show. Between June 2008, when Clinton dropped out of the presidential race, and the PAC’s termination the next summer, Hill PAC raised about $3.9 million but contributed just $421,500 to candidates.

Follow the money — if you can.

KEITH HUMPHREYS: I Like The Establishment — And You Should, Too!

GUILTY, GUILTY, AND GUILTY: ‘Minnesota Men’ on Trial, from Scott Johnson of Power Line, in the latest issue of the Weekly Standard:

The “Minnesota men” have a lot in common. They are all first- or second-generation Somalis in their early 20s who freely took advantage of educational and employment opportunities in the Twin Cities. (Two of the men worked on the tarmac of the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, while another was briefly a security guard elsewhere.) They all appear to be talented and resourceful young men. They are all observant Muslims (with an occasional weakness for marijuana). They had social lives centered on local mosques and supplemented their education with Islamic studies. They wanted to live under the caliphate declared by ISIS. They yearned to wage jihad and to die as martyrs. They hate the United States and are ungrateful for the opportunities it afforded them.

Read the whole thing.

RUM, SODOMY, THE LASH, AND A TOTAL LOSS OF ELECTRICAL POWER IN THE PERSIAN GULF: Britain’s Type 45 guided missile destroyers have a serious design flaw.

(Classical reference in the headline.)

IT’S EXACTLY WHAT YOU THINK IT IS: How Clinton Donor Got on Sensitive Intelligence Board.

A prolific fundraiser for Democratic candidates and contributor to the Clinton Foundation, who later traveled with Bill Clinton on a trip to Africa, Rajiv K. Fernando’s only known qualification for a seat on the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) was his technological know-how. The Chicago securities trader, who specialized in electronic investing, sat alongside an august collection of nuclear scientists, former cabinet secretaries and members of Congress to advise Hillary Clinton on the use of tactical nuclear weapons and on other crucial arms control issues.

“We had no idea who he was,” one board member told ABC News.

No biggie, just nuclear security issues.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1127.

AUSTIN BAY: The Political Message Behind NATO’s War Game in Poland: They’re exercising in June 2016 because the Kremlin invaded and annexed Crimea in February 2014.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: ABC News: Hillary Clinton Put Donor On Sensitive Intelligence Board.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Five Reasons Decent People May Want To Back Trump:

4. Immigration. Trump supporters are not wrong to say that elites of both parties have basically conspired to keep both immigration and trade off the agenda. Nor are they wrong to be annoyed when any opposition to increased immigration, or to legalizing people who are here illegally, is immediately dismissed as racist. No one who wrings their hands about gentrification can reasonably dismiss “I like my community the way it is” as an inherently racist and illegitimate sentiment.

Moreover, in a country with birthright voters, immigration means importing your future electorate; this, of course, sounds splendid to people on the left who think that this electorate will be more friendly to social democratic programs, but it is perfectly reasonable for people who prefer a more conservative government to oppose greater immigration for the same reason. Opposition to immigration can be racist, but it isn’t necessarily so. Trump’s pledge to deport all immigrants who are illegally in the U.S. is ludicrous, but it’s not ludicrous to think we should not reward people who have broken our immigration laws. Tarring these arguments as racist has not made them go away; rather, it appears to have made people less worried about being called racists. And empowered Trump, the only politician who has refused to be cowed by the epithet.

Read the whole thing.

POLL: Majority thinks Clinton is lying about emails.

That’s because she’s lying about her emails.

PIVOT: Obama’s strategy to thwart China in South China Sea showdown ‘almost entirely meaningless’

Retired Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force(JMSDF) Rear Admiral Sumihiko Kawamura, the former vice commandant of the Joint Staff College, told The Sekai Nippo that “the Obama administration’s strategy of freedom of navigation is intended to be a gesture indicating they do not recognize the seas around the artificial islands as territorial waters, but I think this is almost entirely meaningless.

“What the U.S. is currently doing is called ‘innocent passage.’ Innocent passage refers to passage through a nation’s territorial waters by another nation’s military vessels within 12 nautical miles of the shore, taking only the minimum of action necessary and without causing any alarm or intimidation. The passage of military vessels is permitted so long as it is innocent passage. According to the statements by US Department of Defense, U.S. Navy vessels are making innocent passage. That is to say, their actions imply that they recognize the area as Chinese territorial waters, which has the opposite of the intended effect.”

As intended by whom?

ROGER SIMON: To Win, Trump Must Defeat His Most Formidable Adversary—Barack Obama:

This is a subject on which Obama (and therefore Hillary with him) is uniquely vulnerable.  The economy, in a word, stinks.  The Democrats, as everyone knows, will deny this, blame Bush—ludicrous as that sounds after so many years—and urge everyone to “stay the course.”  But what course?  Most people know the situation.  The middle class, especially, live it…As always, for 2016—it’s the economy, stupid. Bring it on!

Read the whole thing.

20 MINUTES OF ACTION: Ott, Whittle, and Green on the Stanford rape sentence.

Full disclosure: I’m Green.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY NAILS IT:

Trump and his campaign are perfectly positioned to exploit every weakness we have in the electorate. If the Republican Party didn’t want to have this opposition, they should have picked literally any type of policy and just made it happen, even as late as last summer. If voters could have seen that the Republican Party was capable of doing something big and dramatic, and communicated that to the people, I don’t think that you would have had the hunger to blow up the system like with the Trump movement.

If they’d had just one otherwise-acceptable candidate who wasn’t an open-borders type, they’d have been immunized against Trump. But they couldn’t allow that.

UNHAPPY WITH CLINTON V. TRUMP? Blame the political establishment that let it happen. Or, maybe, out of 330 million Americans they really are the best two prospects for President.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Is This Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy? If we’re living in a computer simulation, it’s important to keep it entertaining.

MARK DAVIS: This Time Trump’s Not The Problem.

When Republicans have a severe communications mishap, all conservatives should be concerned about getting the situation righted as soon as possible.

If someone seeking to speak for all Republicans commits a seething unforced error, it must be addressed promptly so that voters know they can expect better moving forward.

I am referring, of course, to Paul Ryan.

The Democrats’ ability to goad the GOP into forming a circular firing squad is a major strength of theirs. Why does the GOP play along?

LYNDON JOHNSON COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT. U.S. Pilots Confirm: Obama Admin Blocks 75 Percent of Islamic State Strikes.

LIKE A DEDICATED CORPSEMAN, HE PROMISES TO CAMPAIGN IN ALL 57 STATES: Obama ‘Cannot Wait to Get Out There and Campaign for Hillary.’