I WAS HOPING FOR MORE THAN “I HAVE A PEN AND A PHONE,” BUT WITH THE GOP CONGRESS MAYBE I EXPECTED TOO MUCH: The Myth of Trump’s Do-Nothing Presidency: To gauge impact, go beyond the laws he has signed to the vast authority he wields through departments and agencies that apply the law.

Six months into his presidency, Donald Trump’s detractors portray him as a do-nothing president with no big wins on issues such as health care, taxes and infrastructure.

That may be true if the benchmark is legislation, but that is an incomplete benchmark. To gauge a president’s impact you have to go beyond the laws he signs to the vast authority he wields through departments and agencies that apply the law. On that score, Mr. Trump is on track to do a lot. On finance, the internet, immigration and drugs, to name just a few issues, Trump appointees have begun nudging the economy and the country in a more conservative, pro-business direction. Whether that is good or bad is to a great extent in the eye of the beholder. What isn’t debatable is that the imperial presidency, after expanding under Barack Obama, remains just as formidable under Mr. Trump.

In recent weeks headlines have been dominated by the Senate’s stop-start efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Away from this drama, Mr. Trump’s Labor Department moved to undo Mr. Obama’s expansion of eligibility for overtime pay, financial regulators dropped efforts to tighten restrictions on banker pay and the Interior Department signaled it would rescind proposed rules on oil and gas fracking on federal land. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump announced transgender individuals couldn’t serve in the military, reversing an Obama-era decision.

In Mr. Trump’s first six months, rule-making has changed dramatically. The latest update on regulatory actions released last week by the White House Office of Management and Budget contained 1,731 preliminary, proposed or final rules, down 40% from its peak under Mr. Obama in 2011 and a 17-year low, according to Sofie Miller of George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center. Many actions taken under Mr. Trump are actually reversals of earlier rules. Ms. Miller says of 66 completed actions at the Environmental Protection Agency, a third were rule withdrawals.

You take what you can get.

FOR IRAN, SPEEDBOAT BLUFF IN THE PERSIAN GULF IS ASYMMETRIC WARFARE WAGED AGAINST THE GREAT SATAN, AMERICA: The ayatollahs will continue to employ terror and crime until they obtain The Great Equalizers: nuclear weapons and ICBMs that can target Washington, Tel Aviv, Paris, etcetera.

THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T WORKING OUT THE WAY I HAD HOPED: Planned Parenthood Targets Toddlers for Talks on Transgenderism, Masturbation.

I REMEMBER WHEN PRESIDENT OBAMA MOCKED SARAH PALIN BY SAYING WE COULDN’T “DRILL OUR WAY OUT OF” OUR ENERGY PROBLEMS:

2017 has already been a banner year for American oil production. U.S. shale producers have gotten their feet underneath them once again, adapting to the low oil price environment by cutting costs and improving efficiencies en route to turning a profit at $50 crude, and we’ve seen output surge accordingly. Since last October, U.S. oil production has increased more than 900,000 barrels per day, but according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the party’s just getting started—it expects American producers to break a 47 year old record for production in 2018. . . .

The United States is already the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas, thanks to a recent surge in production of hydrocarbons trapped in shale. Fracking has catapulted the U.S. to the front of the energy producing pack, so to speak, and now it’s going to hurtle us past another important milestone, into uncharted territory.

Policymakers and the public are both still playing catch-up to this extraordinary transformation. For decades, the U.S. energy debate was framed in terms of scarcity, as the legacy of the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s loomed large in American minds. We’ve moved far, far beyond that, as next year’s projected milestone shows, into a new era of energy abundance.

And just as we once transitioned from a discussion of achieving energy “independence” (a farcical idea) to shoring up energy “security,” we might now shift again to discussing how to achieve American energy “dominance,” as the Trump Administration has described it.

Yes, please.

OBAMA’S VERY BAD DEAL WITH IRAN: It didn’t stop an arms race, it ignited one.

THE COLLATERAL COSTS OF diversity in legal education.

USA TODAY: Trump’s military transgender ban is unfair but correct.

An observation: The ObamaCare repeal effort suffered a humiliating defeat, but all the press can talk about is Trump reinstating the transgender military ban. And that’s something that polls well with Trump’s base, and lots of other people. So who’s the stupid one?

IT’S SAFER THAN CHASING DOWN ISLAMIST ACID-ATTACKERS: British Police Force to ‘Consider’ Charging People Who Mocked Promise to Track Down Trolls.

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HARRIER AT SUNSET: Yes, the AV-8B Harrier is still around. It hasn’t quite faded into the sunset. (Nice photo.)

ED MORRISSEY ON HOW Trump Needs To Follow Through On His Promise Of Increased Antitrust Enforcement.

THIS IS A SAFE SPACE. NO JEWS ALLOWED: Why are some American progressives embracing overt anti-Semitism?

On July 13, the Dyke March provided further proof that its intersectionality functioned as a flimsy pretense for anti-Semitism. A tweet from the group’s Twitter account used the term “Zio,” an anti-Jewish slur popularized by David Duke and his neo-Nazi followers. The Dyke March later sent another tweet apologizing for the insult—and adding, “We meant Zionist/white tears replenish our electrolytes.” Indeed, the group’s bizarre fixation on Jews frequently manifests itself as alt-right–style trolling. This is a mockery of intersectionality, not a defense of it.

For a primer on the leftwing conspiracy theory that is “intersectionality,” Christina Hoff Sommers has you covered:

Incidentally, I tracked down Sommers’ video in the Insta-archives, when I linked last September to a Washington Post story titled, “In the safe spaces on campus, no Jews allowed.”

I’m sensing the aura of a penumbra of an emanation of a pattern here, based on the remarkably similar headlines. Why are Democrat monopoly institutions such cesspits of anti-Semitism?

THE 36TH INFANTRY DIVISION’S 100TH ANNIVERSARY: I meant to link to this a few days ago. The 100th anniversary was July 18. In the 1930s my grandfather commanded the division’s 131st Field Artillery Regiment.

LIVING WITH A NUCLEAR-ARMED NORTH KOREA?: Admiral Scott Swift, Commander of the Pacific Fleet, discussed options with The Sydney Morning Herald.

Asked to clarify whether that meant the world might have to live with a nuclear North Korea that could strike other continents, Admiral Swift said: “It’s not for me to say. It’s part of the dialogue is what I’m acknowledging. When people say, ‘everything is on the table,’ in my mind I think it includes a dialogue with respect to North Korea as a nuclear power. I don’t know if that’s acceptable. I’m not part of those discussions. But I know that’s part of the dialogue because people are reporting on it.”

Asked for his response to the fact that the stated US position is that it cannot tolerate a nuclear North Korea, Admiral Swift said: “I’m not a policy-maker. That may very well be the policy that the United States arrives at. But that now becomes the starting point for the dialogue.”

He said that military intervention was also part of the dialogue.

MORE:

He said that no simple solution was going to emerge and this was going to be a complicated and long-term process.

Here are some other course of action options for dealing with North Korea’s nuclear quest. They aren’t good, they aren’t simple.

WEIRD, FROM WHAT I’VE SEEN IN THE PRESS AND ON SOCIAL MEDIA, ABSOLUTELY NOBODY EXCEPT A FEW NEANDERTHALS AGREES WITH TRUMP: Only 23% Favor Transgenders In Military.

A poll conducted less than one month prior to President Trump’s decision on Wednesday to reverse an Obama-era policy that allowed transgender individuals to serve openly in the military found more people opposed than supported it.

Rasmussen surveyed 1,000 likely voters on the topic in late June, almost exactly one year after then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the shift last summer.

“The U.S. Department of Defense now allows transgender people, those who identify with and want to live as the opposite sex, to serve openly in the military,” the survey said. “Is this decision good for the military, bad for the military or does it have no impact?”

Only 23 percent of people surveyed responded that it was good, while 31 percent said it was bad. The largest bloc of respondents, 38 percent, said it has no impact.

As the Washington Examiner reported earlier today, a Military Times poll conducted last December found 41 percent of active-duty troops believed the policy hurt military readiness, while only 12 percent said it helped.

Who knew?

CHANGES IN CIA MANAGEMENT POLICY?: According to the Washington Free Beacon, new CIA Director Mike Pompeo is giving more power to field agents and less to the bureaucrats.

Sounds like a good decision — but stay tuned.

UNDERSTANDING THE AWAN CONNECTION.

FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM: Students will defend due process of their accused peers in new national program.

With growing concerns about due process on college campuses, a civil-liberties group is rolling out a new program intended to help students advocate for each other in campus judicial proceedings.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education plans to start 10 campus organizations this fall under the banner “FIRE Student Defenders,” FIRE Student Network Director Molly Nocheck told The College Fix in a phone interview.

Good.

JOURNALISM IS ABOUT COVERING IMPORTANT STORIES. WITH A PILLOW, UNTIL THEY STOP MOVING: Total CNN and MSNBC Blackout of Arrest of IT Guy Continues; Print Media Mentions the Story — with Hilarious Understatement.

Just think of the media as Democrat operatives with lavalieres, and it all makes sense.

(Classical reference in headline.)

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: University to spend full week promoting ‘resistance’ to Trump policies.

MICHELLE MALKIN IS “LOOKING AT YOU, AMERICA-BASHING CORRUPTOCRATS IN MEXICO:” Who Owns the Border-Death Truck Tragedy?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Historically Black College Offers $25,000 Scholarships for ‘Self-Identified LGBTQ Advocates.’

YEAH, IN GENERAL, EXCEPT FOR SOME DISGUSTING INTERLUDES: Does History Move Upward?

ABOUT TIME SOMEONE DID: Indie Goes Where Hollywood Fears to Thread.

SOME GOOD NEWS:Scalise released from hospital .