HUMAN SHIELDS: ISIS Has Killed Hundreds of Civilians in Mosul, U.N. Says.

Iraqi forces, backed by airstrikes from a United States-led coalition, have made advances into the city, and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has responded in brutal fashion to halt the flight of civilians they want to use as human shields, the United Nations said.

The deadliest attack came last Thursday, when at least 163 civilians, including women and children, were killed near a Pepsi factory as they headed out of the Shifa neighborhood of Mosul, the United Nations’ human rights office in Geneva said.

“They were gunned down as they were fleeing,” said Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the human rights office, which reported that, as of two days ago, the bodies of the victims were still lying in the streets.

An estimated 200,000 civilians are still trapped in desperate conditions in the old city of Mosul, targeted by jihadists and suffering heavy casualties from coalition bombing and artillery fire.

They must be thinking, “Faster, please.”

COMMIES GONNA COMMIE: Watch Bernie Sanders Attack a Christian Nominee and Impose an Unconstitutional Religious Test for Public Office.

JUSTICE: U.S. Charges 31 Members Of Russian Gang With ‘Dizzying Array’ Of Crimes.

The U.S. attorney’s office in southern New York State said the suspects operated internationally and across the United States, trafficking in drugs and stolen goods, including cigarettes and shiploads of chocolate, while engaging in extortion, murder for hire, and credit card fraud.

Most of the 33 defendants were led by Razhden Shulaya and Zurab Dzhanashvili, were born in the former Soviet Union, and had strong ties to Ukraine, Georgia, and Russia, the federal prosecutors said.

Prosecutors called Shulaya a “vor” — the Russian word for thief — which they said in criminal jargon means that he belongs to an “order of elite criminals from the former Soviet Union who receive tribute from other criminals, offer protection, and use their recognized status as vor to adjudicate disputes among lower-level criminals.”

They said he was one of the first such alleged criminals to be charged with racketeering in the United States.

Have they looked into the DNC?

JAPAN WORRIES ABOUT CHINA’S IMPROVING AMPHIBIOUS WARFARE CAPABILITIES: The UPI report mentions both Okinawa and the Senkaku Islands.

RELATED: My Creators Syndicate column this week, titled Careful and Forceful in Singapore, surveyed the conflicts along the east Asian littoral.

JIM GERAGHTY: A Trump Claim That Wasn’t So ‘Literally Farcical’ After All. “We now know from Comey’s account that yes, he did indeed tell the president three times that he, personally, was not under criminal investigation.”

ISN’T IT JUST ANOTHER KIND OF “TRIGGER WARNING,” REALLY? Furor Over Note Urging Female Students Not to Dress ‘Provocatively’ And ‘Distract’ the Boys.

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IRAN ENCOUNTERS THE POST-OBAMA MIDDLE EAST:

The government is facing a more aggressive United States and unsure how to deal with it. In part because the increased aggressiveness by the Americans has emboldened the Arabian oil states to be more bold. This is being seen in Yemen and especially in the recent actions against GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council, the Arab oil states in the Persian Gulf) member Qatar.

Good.

OH: CNN Forced to Issue Correction After Comey’s Written Testimony Refutes Report.

REVERSING THE DAMAGE OF OBAMA’S CUBA POLICY:

If “America First” means anything, it must mean preventing a virulently anti-American criminal enterprise from perpetuating its existence next door and reproducing itself throughout the hemisphere. And since this is precisely what President Obama’s opening to the Castros accomplished, President Trump is duty-bound to reverse this mistake.

Obama’s negotiations with Cuba were “back channel.”

JONATHAN TOBIN: In quest for a Trump crime, Dems refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer.

But if even a veteran grandstander like Comey — as Democrats should remember from his various statements about Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal during the 2016 campaign — isn’t willing to say Trump obstructed justice here, it’s obvious these hearings are about politics, not criminality.

You don’t have to think Trump acted wisely to know Democrats view the Intelligence Committee hearings as an attempt to set the stage for impeachment should the GOP lose control of Congress in 2018. The same is true of the attempt to twist Trump’s sympathy for Flynn as “a good guy [who] has been through a lot” — a sentiment Comey said he shared — into an impeachable offense. In the absence of evidence beyond Comey’s equivocal and self-serving memo, the obstruction charge against Trump is almost certainly a legal dead end.

But it keeps the base riled up.

BYRON YORK: In Georgia trench warfare, Dems want to ‘stick it to Trump’.

The special election to replace Republican Tom Price in Georgia’s Atlanta-area 6th Congressional District has become a contemporary politics version of World War I, with both sides dug into fixed positions, both pouring people and money into the effort — it will be by far the most expensive House race in history — and no one holding much hope the results will settle anything.

Insiders now estimate that by June 20, Election Day, the campaigns and groups supporting Republican Karen Handel and Democrat Jon Ossoff will have spent about $40 million here — nearly doubling the previous record for the most costly House race. All agree that much spending for a single House seat is crazy, but they’ve sunk so much into the race they’ll be damned if they’ll let the other guy take the prize now.

“It’s sort of the political equivalent of a bidding war for a company that’s gotten completely out of hand, in which the symbolic value of the acquisition has exceeded its underlying value — and I think now there’s no way to turn it off,” said Ralph Reed, the longtime conservative activist who lives near the district and whose group, Faith and Freedom Coalition, is one of those pouring money into the race. Of the three special elections to fill seats held by House Republicans who left to join the Trump administration, in Kansas, Montana and here, the GOP has already won two. Democrats anxious to show they can ride Trump’s unpopularity to victory have one chance left. “Kansas is over, Montana is over,” noted Reed. “This is it.”

Depending on how you feel, you might want to get involved.

GET YOUR FURNACE CHECKED: What Happened to Spot? A Solar Update By Stephanie Osborn. “I have been following sunspot numbers for many years now. And while sunspot numbers have been decreasing steadily for several cycles to date, the current dearth is very unusual — especially for this point in the cycle.”

Plus: “The ‘Little Ice Age’ was actually a significantly extended cool period lasting several centuries, and no less than FOUR extended minima occurred during its ‘tenure.’ These include, in order, the Wolf, the Spörer, the Maunder, and the Dalton minima. These extended minima were not all of the same ‘depth,’ in that the minimum numbers of sunspots were not the same across all of them — the Maunder was far deeper than the rest — but there are indications that we are hitting numbers in the range of the Dalton already. . . . The fact that, as sunspot numbers go down, the overall energies output by the Sun also go down is an indication that, in this instance, correlation may well equal causation, at least to some degree. Add in a few large (or many small) volcanic eruptions to complicate matters — and there usually ARE such concatenations of volcanic eruptions in such multi-decadal timeframes, as a matter of course — and it may well prove interesting times ahead, as well as in the past.”

I don’t want to live in a John Ringo novel.

RETENTION BLUES: Desperate To Retain Troops, Army Offers $90K Reenlistment Bonuses.

To reach desired numbers, the Army will need to enlist 6,000 new recruits, retain an additional 9,000 current soldiers, and add 1,000 officers. Over the last two weeks, the Army has paid out over $26 million in bonuses, writes the Associated Press.

“The increased end strength of the Army will enable it to better meet the challenges of an ever-uncertain security environment but must be balanced against the readiness of the Total Force,” the Army said in a press release.

Officials tell the AP that their biggest concern between now and October will be whether they can persuade thousands of enlistees who are only months away from leaving the service to consider staying on active duty for four or more years.

Is retention difficult because of poor pay, frequent deployments, or P.C. B.S. — or all three?

THAT STUFF’S JUST TO RILE UP THEIR BASE: Top Dems reject impeachment push. It’s also stymied by the lack of any identifiable high crimes and misdemeanors.

AL FRANKEN: Kathy Griffin Should Come Back with ‘I Effed Up Tour’

“That was unbelievably wrong and out-of-bounds, what Kathy did,” he said. “Kathy has done USO shows and Kathy is a funny comedian and a generous person in all kinds of ways, and she just made this monumental, monumental mistake, and that was an incredibly inappropriate image and that should not be in our national discourse. I called her and told her it was a terrible mistake.”

Franken said Griffin has lost her sense of humor, and recommended she take some time off then return with an appropriately named tour.

“She apologized for it and she begged for forgiveness and she’s devastated by it. I think her strong suit, any good comedian’s strong suit, which she is, is your sense of humor,” he said. “And she just lost it and I think she needs to take some time off and come back with an ‘I effed up tour.’”

Nothing’s funnier than a heartfelt apology.

SO CRAZY, IT MIGHT JUST WORK! The FDA Commissioner’s Novel Plan for Cutting Drug Prices: Competition.

Lower-priced generic drugs saved the health care system an estimated $254 billion in 2014. An FDA study has found that as the number of competing manufacturers for a drug goes up, the price falls dramatically. When two companies compete, the price falls an average of just 6 percent; when there are nine competitors, the price drops by an average of 80 percent.

Gottlieb reportedly plans to prioritize the approval of additional generic competitors, and he hopes to eliminate the backlog of generic-drug applications within a year. It isn’t surprising that he’d set such a goal: He wrote an op-ed last August arguing that excessive FDA regulation was stymieing the development and approval of generic drugs.

For example, the Obama administration abruptly imposed higher manufacturing standards on generic makers in 2009, forcing many to leave the market.

While Obama was promising to save your family $2,500 a year on health care coverage, he was actually delivering the goods to Big Pharma.

THE HILL: GOP senator threatens to subpoena Comey.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is opening the door to summoning James Comey to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee after the former FBI director declined an invitation.

“Under our rules on our committee, if Senator [Dianne] Feinstein would agree to subpoena I would,” Grassley, the chairman of the committee, told CNN on Wednesday.

Comey is scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, making his first public comments since he was fired last month.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told reporters on Wednesday that he anticipated the hearing will be the only time Comey appears before Congress.

But members of the Judiciary Committee are continuing to demand that Comey also come before their panel, which has oversight of the FBI.

There are a lot of questions Comey should be asked that I don’t think he’ll be asked by the Intelligence Committee.

OLD NEWS, WE’VE BEEN ALL OVER THIS, THERE’S NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Nets Ignore Oversight Report Showing Holder Impeded Fast and Furious Investigation.

While the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) spent Wednesday focusing on a Senate hearing they were hoping would implicate President Trump in obstruction of justice, they ignored a House Oversight Committee report that showed President Obama’s administration did just that. “An absolutely blistering report tonight out saying the Obama administration in general and former Attorney General Eric Holder in particular repeatedly lied to the family of a slain Border Patrol officer about the weapons used in his death, and stonewalled efforts to get at the truth,” announced Fox News’ Bret Baier on Special Report.

Baier handed the segment off to Correspondent William LaJeunesse, who reported that “Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry died in December 2010, killed by guns tied to an Obama administration plan that armed Mexicans. A scandal officials tried to hide by wrongly claiming executive privilege.”

“The [Justice] Department’s belated admission that those 64,000 pages were not privileged, puts the gold seal of authenticity on the House’s bipartisan vote to hold the attorney general in contempt,” testified Senator Chuck Grassley at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

That seems like a big story.

COMEY’S WET BLANKET, HOLDER’S FLASHBACKS, AND OBAMA’S FLEXIBILITY: Liz Sheld’s morning brief has all that and more.

LIFE IN POST-OBAMA AMERICA: Transgender freshman sprinter, born a male, wins two girls state championships.

Transgender sprinter Andraya Yearwood, a freshman who was born a male, won the girls 100-meter and 200-meter dashes at the Connecticut high school Class M state championships — victories that didn’t come without some controversy.

“It feels really good. I’m really happy to win both titles,” Yearwood of Cromwell High School told the Day after winning at the May 30 meet. “I kind of expected it. I’ve always gotten first, so I expected it to some extent. … I’m really proud of it.” . . .

Kate Hall — who last year won the girls 100-meter dash Class M state title as a sophomore — came in second to Yearwood at this year’s 100-meter race and was tearful in the aftermath, the Hartford Courant reported.

“It’s frustrating,” Hall of Stonington High School told the Courant. “But that’s just the way it is now.”

After finishing third in the 200 — and watching Yearwood cross the finish line first in that race as well — Hall told the Courant, “I can’t really say what I want to say, but there’s not much I can do about it.”

“I can’t really say what I want to say.” Also part of life in post-Obama America.

SPEAKING OF “PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD,” ANDREW BOLT’S CALL TO INTIMIDATE, HUMILIATE ENEMIES OF FREE SPEECH COMES WITH REAL-LIFE INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO: “I can see the left’s headline: far right extremist loses it when the antifa guys tried to just punch a Nazi. Nothing to do with the left.”

JOHN HINDERAKER: James Comey, Novelist. “James Comey thinks he is the hero of his story, but he comes across more like Sid Sawyer or Master Blifil.”

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BEN SHAPIRO: The “toxic masculinity” smear: Emasculation is not the cure for social ills.