THEY’LL GET RIGHT ON THAT, KEITH: Keith Olbermann Pleads with Spy Agencies Around the World to Help Him Take Down Trump.

It hardly seems likely that even the Deep State Obama holdovers in the American intelligence community want to get on board with Olbermann.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Facebook Targets Low-Quality Links With Spam-Fighting AI.. “A new algorithm will automatically purge posts in your News Feed that link to sites with lots of disruptive or shocking ads.”

Disruptive — to whom?

IT’S THE FRANCISCO FRANCO OF POLICY INITIATIVES: Obamacare Is Still Failing.

It’s worth remembering amid the brouhaha over the GOP’s tumultuous efforts to come up with a replacement: Obamacare still isn’t working. Many of its most valuable achievements are not sustainable. . . .

In any case, the thing that is slowly killing Obamacare, with or without Republican help, is the same thing that is making it so hard for the GOP to come up with an alternative: American health care costs too much. Solving this problem isn’t just about litigating the merits of Obamacare or Trumpcare; it’s about ensuring that the American people have access to the health care they want and need while keeping the country solvent.

We can’t do this all at once by some mighty government fiat—or, for that matter, through a blind faith in private markets. It took two generations for us to work ourselves into our present mess, and it will take time to work our way back to a sane and sustainable system.

America’s problem is that we have too many areas like this: Decades of gradual screwing-up by can-kicking politicians, with the bills now coming due in ways that can’t be fixed short of catastrophe.

JUST WAIT UNTIL THE PASSENGERS FIND OUT: Airlines Fret About Laptop Ban From Europe During Peak Season.

Extending electronics restrictions — now in place for travel from some Middle Eastern and African airports — to Europe would disrupt one of the world’s busiest and most lucrative travel markets just ahead of the peak summer tourism season. It could also hinder business passengers’ ability to work on their laptops on long-haul routes across the Atlantic.

Two travel trade groups, the Global Business Travel Association and the U.S. Travel Association, issued statements Thursday saying genuine security risks should be addressed, but also urging the U.S. Homeland Security department to be as flexible as possible to minimize disruptions.

“The question remains whether the targeted application of policies banning personal electronics is an effective measure to reduce the risk of terrorism,” Michael McCormick, GBTA executive director, said in a statement Thursday.

It’s certainly an effective way to expose the heavy-handed fecklessness of Homeland Security. The frequent business travelers I’ve spoken to are just about ready to engage in open revolt against the U.S. government, too.

THERE IS ONLY ZUUL: Spiky Ankylosaurus Looks Like Monster from ‘Ghostbusters’

I HOPE THEY’RE TRUE: Rumors of Supreme Court vacancy spark liberal panic.

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FAKE NEWS: Rod Rosenstein Says He is Not Resigning and Never Threatened To.

Rod Rosenstein is not resigning and has never threatened to do so. The final definitive account came from the Deputy Attorney General’s own mouth. Liz McKernan, a Senior Online News Producer at Sinclair Broadcast Group, managed corner Rosenstein in Washington and managed to pry the answers out of him as he walked down a hallway.

“No I’m not quitting,” said Rosenstein.

When pressed about whether he threatened to quit, Rosenstein responded “no.”

That ought to settle that, but I have the feeling the meme will live on.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): So how many fake news Trump-scandal stories have there been this week? Please list all the examples you can think of in the comments!

OUCH: Is Joe Scarborough the next Keith Olbermann?

SPACE RACE II: China takes aim at the Moon with long-term cabin trial.

Science students have moved into a cabin to simulate life in a lunar-like environment for up to 200 days.

The goal is to prepare for a long-term space mission with no input from the outside world.

China has poured huge funding into its space programme to rival that of the US and Russia.

Four postgraduate students from the astronautics university of Beihang on Wednesday moved into the cabin, ambitiously called the Yuegong-1, or Lunar Palace in English.

They will stay in the cabin for 60 days, followed by another group who will stay for 200 days. The first four will then return for yet another 105 days.

According to state news agency Xinhua, one of the main elements of the experiment is to explore is how a space mission could be entirely self-contained over a long period of time.

Human waste will undergo a bio-fermentation process, and crops and vegetables are to be grown with the help of food and waste by-products.

China’s space program is progressing much like their naval expansion program: With patience and determination.

SURE: PUT HIM IN, THEN APPOINT RANDY BARNETT TO HIS SEAT ON THE D.C. CIRCUIT. WIN-WIN! Senators open to idea of FBI Director Merrick Garland.

FASCINATING: A game theorist takes on North Korea, artillery, nuclear missiles, and international extortion.

It’s a longer piece, and impossible to excerpt. But it comes highly recommended if you have the ten minutes or so to spare.

THE EPIC OF SEBASTIAN GORKA: Holocaust Manipulation for Political Purposes.

YES: You Want Checks And Balances? Stop Ignoring The Constitution When You’re In Power: The Democrats’ newfound adoration of separation of power isn’t credible. And that helps Trump.

Fact is, we’ve had (at least) two norm-busting presidents with authoritarian impulses in a row. Both believe in ruling with a pen and a personality, disregarding process whenever it suits their political purposes. One was a thoughtful-sounding, charismatic force, and a talented fibber; a virtuoso at erecting strawmen and offering false choices. He pushed his party farther to the Left than it has ever been. The other is a clumsy and transparent fibber, an incompetent novice, pushing his party into whatever ideologically untethered position is catching his fancy at the moment. Only one of these men, however, was given a free pass by most people in the institutional media because his progressive ideological outlook pleases their sensibilities.

You don’t trust Donald Trump to name an FBI director, even though it’s within his purview to do so? Well, I don’t trust Barack Obama to enter into faux treaties with a bunch of nations without Senate approval or to unilaterally legalize millions of people without Congress. I understand that you find those unilateral decisions morally comforting, but if process and norms matter they should always matter. (An example of the opposite would be an ACLU lawyer who argues that Trump’s immigration order might have been constitutional had Hillary signed it. This undermines trust.)

While there is plenty of hypocrisy to go around, Democrats’ newfound adoration of checks and balances simply isn’t credible. And once that trust has been eroded, it’s difficult to regain it. Most Americans aren’t impressed by procedure. So why would they surrender power when they’re certain you will abuse it again four years from now?

Yes, I have zero trust in — or respect for — all the people suddenly concerned about nonpartisan bureaucracies and the rule of law after eight years of Obama getting a pass. To hell with you people, to coin a phrase.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Comparing the Class of 2016 employment outcomes with the classes of 2015 and 2014. “Because there was a significant decline in the number of graduates across these law schools between 2014 and 2015, and again between 2015 and 2016, however, this modest increase in the percentage of graduates in these positions masks an actual decline in the number of graduates in such positions. . . . In the three-year period, then, between 2013 and 2016, the number of first-time takers from ABA-accredited law schools taking the July bar exam who passed the exam and became eligible for jobs requiring bar passage declined by roughly 12,466, or by 32%. In that time period, however, the percentage of those eligible for full-time, long-term bar passage required positions who landed such positions has increased from 66.6% to 86.8% between 2013 and 2016.”

Plus: “Some geographic differences also are noteworthy. The percentage of graduates of all law schools in states with more than one law school who were in full-time, long-term, bar-passage-required or JD advantage jobs was over 80% in five states (Missouri (82.4%), New York (82.1%), Pennsylvania (81.9%), Tennessee (81.7%), Virginia (81%)). In nine states, however, it was less than 70% (Arizona (69.7%), Ohio (69.4%), Washington (67.8%), Michigan (66.3%), Louisiana (66.2%), Florida (65.5%), California (64.3%), Oregon (63.1%), North Carolina (59.6%)).”

KIMBERLY STRASSEL: Why James Comey Had to Go. “The FBI head’s sense of perfect virtue led him to ignore his own enormous conflicts.”

We don’t know what these things were, but it seems the head of the FBI had lost confidence — even before TarmacGate — that the Justice Department was playing it anywhere near straight in the Clinton probe. So what should an honor-bound FBI director do in such a conflicted situation? Call it out. Demand that Ms. Lynch recuse herself and insist on an appropriate process to ensure public confidence. Resign, if need be. Instead Mr. Comey waited until the situation had become a crisis, and then he ignored all protocol to make himself investigator, attorney, judge and jury.

By the end of that 15-minute July press conference, Mr. Comey had infuriated both Republicans and Democrats, who were now universally convinced he was playing politics. He’d undermined his and his agency’s integrity. No matter his motives, an honor-bound director would have acknowledged that his decision jeopardized his ability to continue effectively leading the agency. He would have chosen in the following days—or at least after the election—to step down. Mr. Comey didn’t.

Which leads us to Mr. Comey’s most recent and obvious conflict of all — likely a primary reason he was fired: the leaks investigation (or rather non-investigation). So far the only crime that has come to light from this Russia probe is the rampant and felonious leaking of classified information to the press. Mr. Trump and the GOP rightly see this as a major risk to national security. While the National Security Agency has been cooperating with the House Intelligence Committee and allowing lawmakers to review documents that might show the source of the leaks, Mr. Comey’s FBI has resolutely refused to do the same.

He should feel worse than “mildly nauseous.”

ANOTHER TAX PATRIOT: Ex-Rep. Corrine Brown guilty on fraud, tax evasion charges.

MOST OF THE KINDS OF INCIDENTS THE WAPO DECRIES ARE HOAXES, OFTEN PERPETRATED BY MINORITY STUDENTS OR FACULTY. DOES THE WAPO WANT DRACONIAN PUNISHMENTS FOR THEM? Washington Post editorial calls for universities to ‘make crystal clear that racist … speech [is] off-limits.’

If the call was simply to punish threats of violence — racist or otherwise — I’d be all for that; and some of the time, nooses might be seen as threats. But the editorial isn’t limited to that: It calls for administrators to punish “racist … speech” generally. (I assume the editorial must mean punishment, since it’s hard to see what else would “make crystal clear” that the speech is “off-limits.”) This is an editorial, the product of carefully considered labor on the part of a group of people, not an extemporaneous remark; when it says “racist … speech” (especially right after a sentence talking about political advocacy during a presidential campaign), I assume it means what it’s saying.

And the editorial’s proposal is an awful idea. At public universities, it would violate the First Amendment; at private universities, it would violate many of the universities’ stated commitments to open debate, as well as basic principles of academic freedom.

Well, to be fair, the WaPo editorial board shows few signs lately of being particularly bright, or principled, so I doubt this troubles them, if it even occurred to them.

I have noticed that more and more people seem to think that holding or expressing racist views isn’t just bad, but affirmatively criminal.

ANN ALTHOUSE CORRECTS THOMAS EDSALL: “Democrats don’t feel your pain either. It’s all a con.” Yep.

GOOD MORNING: Liz Sheld’s morning brief goes great with coffee.

GOOD: Trump signs order launching voter fraud investigation.

President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order establishing an “election integrity” commission to investigate voter fraud.

The commission will be chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will serve as vice chair, the White House announced during Thursday’s press briefing.

It will “study the registration and voting processes used in Federal elections” as well as “fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent voting,” the order says.

Lawmakers from both parties will be on the commission, which will be tasked with studying practices and policies “that undermine the American people’s confidence in the integrity of the voting processes used in Federal elections,” according to the text of the executive order.

This article in The Hill seems more than usually anti-Trump. The Hill has generally been somewhat better than the NYT or WaPo on its political reporting.

JOHN MOORE: North Korea’s Stealth WMD.

If undergraduates can design and use genetic material, then North Korea has the capability. It would be a mistake to underestimate them — just look at their missile program.

North Korea began a biological weapons program in the 1960s and is believed to be able to produce smallpox, anthrax, tularemia, and a number of other pathogens suitable for bioweapons. These may already be on missiles aimed at South Korea and Japan.

Worse, North Korean intelligence agents may have them, ready to strike in the U.S. North Korea’s intelligence agency has a long history of operating in free countries. Their assassination of ruler Kim Jong-un’s half brother in a Malaysian airport could have as easily used smallpox. That attack may have been meant to send two messages to us: they are willing to use nerve gas, and they can deliver chemical or biological weapons in foreign countries.

Read the whole thing.

I’m old enough to remember when an American president was mocked for including North Korea in a terrorist Axis of Evil.

YES, IT’S HARD TO TAKE PEOPLE’S COMPLAINT ABOUT TRUMP’S RULE BREAKING SERIOUSLY when they’re doing the same thing themselves.

Trump has, I’m afraid, made excruciatingly clear that our ruling class possesses neither self-discipline nor the ability to engage in self-criticism. It is, in other words, unfit to rule. This is not good, nor is it exactly new, but it is now clear.