MICHAEL WALSH: Is Gal Gadot now a bona fide movie star?

I’d say so. She and Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins managed to breathe life and more importantly charm into D.C.’s otherwise drab and joyless movie universe.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Drink Beer All Summer Long Without Getting a Beer Gut (According to Science).

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT: US shoots down another pro-regime drone in Syria.

A US F-15E fighter jet shot down a pro-Syrian regime drone near At Tanf, Syria, on Monday, two US officials told CNN, the third downing of a pro-regime aircraft this month.

The drone was downed just outside the 55 kilometer de-confliction zone, according to the officials.

It was an Iranian-made Shahed 129 and was thought to be armed and in firing range of US troops.

One official said that the drone was shot down because it was “assessed to be a threat.”

Obama gives Iran money. Iran builds drones. Syria gets drones. Trump shoots down Iranian money.

This is less non-sensical than most anything else going on in the region.

BREAKING: Explosions at Brussels Central Station, Suspect with Explosive Belt ‘Neutralized’

Patrick Poole will keep you updated throughout the day.

I’M SHOCKED! SHOCKED, I SAY!: Hidden trove of suspected Nazi artifacts found in Argentina. Waiting for liberal OpEds to demand Mueller investigate any Trump businesses there. “Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime.”

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A DEMOCRAT TERRORIST’S WOULD BE COUP D’ETAT: Mass murder would necessitate over a dozen special elections. (bumped)

INTERCEPTION OVER THE BALTIC: A Russian SU-27 Flanker intercepts a U.S. Air Force B-52H Stratofortress over the Baltic Sea. The B-52 was participating in a training exercise conducted June 9. A dramatic photo.

DAVID STEINBERG: To Fix the White House Press Briefing, Spicer Should Think ‘Art of the Deal’

SCRUTINY: Free Beacon Barred From Covering Jon Ossoff Campaign Event.

Numerous reporters gathered inside the campaign office for Ossoff’s speech, during which he said that “politics does not have to be about … division,” according to the Associated Press, one of the outlets granted access to the event.

It is unclear whether any other outlets were restricted from covering the event. Ossoff’s campaign declined to answer whether any other outlets had been barred.

The Ossoff campaign’s decision to restrict press access to its event has been criticized widely, including by reporters from CNN, the Huffington Post, and the New York Times. Ben Jacobs of the Guardian, who ended up in a physical altercation with a Republican candidate on the eve of last month’s special election in Montana, was also critical of the decision.

Ossoff isn’t very good at this stuff, and I get the feeling that all the money in the world — or at least California — won’t be quite enough to put him over the top.

NBC NEWS: Once Champions of Sunlight, GOP Pens Health Care Plan In the Dark.

Funny, but I can’t recall anyone at NBC News ever crediting the GOP with being “champions of sunlight” before now. Although to be fair, I might be thinking of the wrong NBC News.

WHEN NARRATIVES COLLIDE: Illegal Alien Murders Muslim Girl, Media Censor Key Details.

But of course. As Iowahawk once noted, “Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving,” and as Jim Treacher added, in the 21st century, the profession “is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn’t know because they might reflect badly on Democrats.”

JIM GERAGHTY: A Brutal North Korean Crime That Must Not Be Forgotten.

The reason you’ll see adults referring to Warmbier as a ‘kid’ is because most of us over 21 look back at our 21st year and marvel at everything we thought we knew and everything we later realized we still had to learn. We had adult bodies but not necessarily adult judgment. Plenty of us made foolish decisions at age 21 or a little before or a little after, but none of those foolish decisions warranted such pain and death.

Warmbier’s guilt cannot be taken for granted, considering what we know of the arbitrary North Korean justice system. The regime sentenced him to fifteen years hard labor. His confession was beaten out of him; he claimed that he stole the banner on behalf of the United States government. The Obama administration had no qualms about accusing the North Korean regime of arresting Warmbier for political purposes, in other words, as a negotiating pawn.

The Obama Administration certainly seemed to have qualms about actually doing anything for Warmbier.

PRIVACY: EU may outlaw the kind of backdoor access the FBI wanted Apple to create for iPhones.

FEDERALISM: Booker, Paul Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Shield Marijuana States from DOJ. ‘For far too long the federal government has overstepped the boundaries of common sense, fiscal prudence.’

DAVID BROOKS: Let’s Not Get Carried Away.

I was the op-ed editor at The Wall Street Journal at the peak of the Whitewater scandal. We ran a series of investigative pieces “raising serious questions” (as we say in the scandal business) about the nefarious things the Clintons were thought to have done back in Arkansas.

Now I confess I couldn’t follow all the actual allegations made in those essays. They were six jungles deep in the weeds. But I do remember the intense atmosphere that the scandal created. A series of bombshell revelations came out in the media, which seemed monumental at the time. A special prosecutor was appointed and indictments were expected. Speculation became the national sport.

In retrospect Whitewater seems overblown. And yet it has to be confessed that, at least so far, the Whitewater scandal was far more substantive than the Russia-collusion scandal now gripping Washington.

In this case, it would seem that where there’s smoke, there’s a Democrat-Media Complex blowing it up into places.

A TALE OF TWO ATTACKS: “Compare the media post Giffords to post Scalise. It’s amazing.”

You spelled “unexpectedly” wrong. Just think of the media as Democrat operatives with bylines and airbrushes, and it all makes sense.

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FILL ‘ER UP? Fattened, Genetically Engineered Algae Might Fuel the Future.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Number Of Conservative Events Disrupted By Protestors Has Tripled Since Trump’s Election.

BUT THE NARRATIVE! In another transparent attempt to distract the American people from his treasonous collusion with the Russian government, the Trump administration today announced new sanctions on Russia and on Ukrainian separatists.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Architecture of Regime Change.

The problem with the election of President Donald J. Trump was not just that he presented a roadblock to an ongoing progressive revolution. Instead, unlike recent Republican presidential nominees, he was indifferent to the cultural and political restraints on conservative pushback — ironic given how checkered Trump’s own prior conservative credentials are. Trump brawled in a way McCain or Romney did not. He certainly did not prefer losing nobly to winning ugly.

Even more ominously, Trump found a seam in the supposedly invincible new progressive electoral paradigm of Barack Obama. He then blew it apart — by showing the nation that Obama’s identity-politics voting bloc was not transferrable to most other Democratic candidates, while the downside of his polarization of the now proverbial clingers most assuredly was. To her regret, Hillary Clinton learned that paradox when the deplorables and irredeemables of the formerly blue-wall states rose up to cost her the presidency.

And now?

We are witnessing a desperate putsch to remove Trump before he can do any more damage to the Obama project. Political, journalistic, and cultural elites of a progressive coastal culture aim at destroying the Trump presidency before it can finish its full four-year term.

Read the whole thing.

SERIOUSLY? CBS EXAMINES ‘CIVILITY,’ SKIPS ATTEMPTED GOP SLAUGHTER.

To be fair, while discussing civility last week, CBS did report on the attempted GOP slaughter by a Bernie Bro — by blaming the guys who he shot.

DEVIN NUNES: ‘We Have to Stop Chasing Russian Ghosts Around the Closet and Actually Get to Real Work!’

Russiagate is a huge triple lay for the Democrat-Media Complex — deflecting from Hillary’s humiliation, keeping the GOP Congress tied up in knots, and helping to delegitimize the Trump Administration.

Why would they let up now?