ABSOLUTE POWER, BABY: Sweden’s Controversial Blocklist Based on One Feminist’s Personal Whims.

SOMEONE SHOULD ASK ALL THE PEOPLE WHO COMPLAINED ABOUT COMEY’S FIRING WHAT THEY THINK ABOUT THIS: Declassified memos show FBI illegally shared spy data on Americans with private parties.

Question: If it’s illegal, will anyone be prosecuted? And you know the answer.

RELIGIOUS CLEANSING: On Eve of Ramadan, Islamic Gunmen Kill 28 Coptic Christians on Pilgrimage in Egypt.

PROCUREMENT: The Army has developed a bullet that penetrates 5.56 mm-resistant body armor.

During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Army’s budget request, Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, asked Milley how the Army was doing in developing a new rifle to replace the M4 and a more powerful round to replace the 5.56 mm bullet it fires.

“We think we have a solution,” Milley said. “We know we have developed a bullet that can penetrate these new plates.”

Milley said that rifles and body armor for U.S. troops are “critically important,” noting that 70 percent of U.S. casualties are borne by ground troops, mostly infantry and special operators conducting infantry-type missions.

“The 5.56 round, we recognize there is a type of body armor it does not penetrate, and adversarial states are selling that stuff on the Internet for about 250 bucks,” Milley said.

As I learned years ago from reading Austin Bay and Jim Dunnigan, in the escalating battle between thicker armor and deadlier projectiles, typically the deadlier projectiles win out in the end.

FASTER, PLEASE: Navy Adds Second Attack Sub to 2021 Plans; Considering 3 SSNs in Future Years.

Due to concerns about overwhelming the two sub construction yards – Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding and General Dynamics Electric Boat – with too much new work, as the Block V boats are set to include a new Virginia Payload Module section around the same time SSBN construction will begin, the Navy previously planned to buy just one SSN in years it also bought an SSBN. Due to an impending attack sub shortfall, though, Navy plans have continued to up and up the amount of work that could come to the two builders.

“In the past we had anticipated dropping down our submarine construction, our attack submarine construction, during years of the Columbia program procurement,” Acting Navy Secretary Sean Stackley told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee this morning.

“In fact, we intend to, and we’re laying the groundwork, to sustain [a] two submarine per year procurement rate – because that is our number-one shortfall.”

Our aging Los Angeles-class attack subs are being retired faster than the Virginia-class boats can be built to replace them — too fast even by our plan to shrink the submarine fleet.

ROGER SIMON: Leakers and Journalists Are Destroying Our Republic.

Like former President Obama and his colleagues, I doubt many of either group are losing much sleep over that.

PATRICK POOLE: State Department Says Muslim Brotherhood Terror Cell Hassm Threatens U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

THAT WOULD MEAN DEPARTING FROM THE NARRATIVE:

It would be wise for the nation’s objective and center-left media outlets to join the right in dedicating some attention to a bombshell scoop alleging the systemic violation of American civil rights in the Obama years.

According to an unsealed document obtained by Circa’s reporters, an opinion authored by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court disclosed that about 5 percent—or one out of every 20—intercepts of foreign communications by the National Security Agency swept up data on American citizens. Intercepts increased by three-fold following the Obama administration’s loosening of U.S. privacy rules in 2011. Those intercepts were self-reported by the Obama administration in late 2016, but the court issued an uncommon rebuke of the administration for failing to make those disclosures sooner. That “institutional lack of candor” concealed a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue,” the court document read.

This is no small matter. In January, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Attorney General Loretta Lynch approved of new rules for the NSA that would further loosen standards regarding what raw intelligence data it was allowed to share with the rest of the intelligence and law-enforcement community. At the time, privacy advocates demanded the administration rein in the powers of the presidency if only to box in Trump. Not only did the Obama administration do precisely the opposite, “former Obama administration officials” bragged to reporters about the obvious trail of intelligence gleaned from foreign intercepts they left behind for anyone interested in investigating the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.

Our “intelligence community” is looking more and more like a political machine.

OH: No funding plan doesn’t stop lawmakers from moving health care bill along.

A California Senate committee tasked with reviewing bills that spend state money passed a $400 billion universal health care proposal Thursday with no funding plan.

Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, introduced SB 562, a sweeping overhaul of the state’s health insurance market. He’s also the chair of Senate Appropriations. The committee passed the bill with a 5-2 vote during a fast-paced suspense file hearing, clearing the way for it to be taken up on the Senate floor next week.

The vote came days after the committee revealed the Legislature’s first cost assessment of the bill, which turns out to be more than the entire state budget for the year beginning July 1.

Lara has yet to reveal a detailed plan about how the state would come up with the money to provide health care to the nearly 40 million people living in California. Opponents argued that the funding issue should have been addressed before the committee voted on the measure.

It looks increasingly as though Sacramento is going to go ahead with single payer — and so far, without a care for how to pay or for the likely consequences.

BEGUN, THE LEAK WAR HAS: Declassified memos show FBI illegally shared spy data on Americans with private parties.

In his final congressional testimony before he was fired by President Trump this month, then-FBI Director James Comey unequivocally told lawmakers his agency used sensitive espionage data gathered about Americans without a warrant only when it was “lawfully collected, carefully overseen and checked.”

Once-top secret U.S. intelligence community memos reviewed by Circa tell a different story, citing instances of “disregard” for rules, inadequate training and “deficient” oversight and even one case of deliberately sharing spy data with a forbidden party.

For instance, a ruling declassified this month by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) chronicles nearly 10 pages listing hundreds of violations of the FBI’s privacy-protecting minimization rules that occurred on Comey’s watch.

The behavior the FBI admitted to a FISA judge just last month ranged from illegally sharing raw intelligence with unauthorized third parties to accessing intercepted attorney-client privileged communications without proper oversight the bureau promised was in place years ago.

The Deep State does what it wills.

JOURNALISM: Shock: Complete MSM News Blackout on NSA Illegal Spying Bombshell.

MEMORIAL DAY THOUGHTS: Bitter, Party of One.

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AMERICANS TO MEDIA: DROP DEAD! Greg Gianforte Campaign Raised $100K After Candidate Assaulted Reporter.

For once, maybe the question “Why do they hate us?” is actually germane.

(Classical reference in the headline.)

CONVOY DUTY, SUMMER OF ’41: A color photo of the battleship USS Texas (BB-35) participating in a North Atlantic convoy operation in the summer of 1941. A silhouette at sunset.

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-DOMINATED INSTITUTIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF REPRESSIVE VIOLENCE: Bay Area college professor used U-shaped bike lock in beating, police say: Alleged Antifa bike lock attacker Eric Clanton held in Berkeley jail.

Eric Clanton remained in custody in lieu of $200,000 bail at Berkeley Jail on Thursday and is scheduled to be arraigned at 9 a.m. Friday at Oakland’s Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse. He was arrested on three counts of suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon that isn’t a firearm and assault causing great bodily injury.

In a statement Thursday, police acknowledged that video of the incident, captured by onlookers and posted on social media, helped them identify Clanton as the suspect behind “several violent assaults” that happened April 15 during the demonstration at Civic Center Park on Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

Police confirmed Clanton can be seen in videos hitting people in the head with a U-shaped bicycle lock. Three people received “significant injuries” because of the beatings, police said.

Homicide detectives handled the investigation because of the seriousness of the assaults, police said. Investigators served warrants Wednesday at unspecified addresses in San Leandro and Oakland, the latter of which is where authorities took Clanton into custody.

Nice to — finally — see some accountability here.

THE RENEWABLE JOBS LIE: It’s one of many peddled by leftists. This column in Forbes, by James Taylor, fisks an article written by Allan Hoffman, a former Dept. of Energy bureaucrat who makes the claim that the renewable energy sector creates more jobs than conventional energy.

Renewable energy advocates often claim renewable energy creates more jobs than conventional energy, but such claims are based on deception and false comparisons. In reality, renewable energy isn’t even in the same universe of job creation as conventional energy.

More:

Public policy officials, do not be duped. The next time somebody claims wind and solar power create more jobs than natural gas and other conventional energy sources, ask them for specific definitions and parameters of the job numbers cited. If they falsely claim the definitions and parameters are similar, call them on it. If they truthfully answer that the definitions and parameters do not match up, ask them why they are presenting deliberately misleading data.

Indeed, a first class fisking!

BOY, THIS HAS BEEN A BAD YEAR FOR THE FBI: Bad intel from Russia influenced Comey’s Clinton announcement: report.

MEANWHILE, BACK ON THE CHINA-NORTH KOREA BORDER: The U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary of State Susan Thorton quoted Chinese officials as saying they have “tightened border inspections, beefed up policing on the border and stepped up customs inspections.”

However, Ms. Thorton added: “Their calculus about how much pressure to impose on North Korea is related to their tolerance for potential instability, which is low, I would say.”

Someone needs to remind Beijing that a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula will create actual instability.

SPYING: Andrew McCarthy: Explosive Revelation of Obama Administration Illegal Surveillance of Americans.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY: China’s imperial overreach.

Yet Xi has set his sights much higher: he aspires to become modern China’s most transformative leader. Just as Mao helped to create a reunified and independent China, and Deng Xiaoping launched China’s ‘reform and opening up,’ Xi wants to make China the central player in the global economy and the international order.

So, repeating a mantra of connectivity, China dangles low-interest loans in front of countries in urgent need of infrastructure, thereby pulling those countries into its economic and security sphere. China stunned the world by buying the Greek port of Piraeus for $420 million. From there to the Seychelles, Djibouti, and Pakistan, port projects that China insisted were purely commercial have acquired military dimensions.

But Xi’s ambition may be blinding him to the dangers of his approach. Given China’s insistence on government-to-government deals on projects and loans, the risks to lenders and borrowers have continued to grow. Concessionary financing may help China’s state-owned companies bag huge overseas contracts; but, by spawning new asset-quality risks, it also exacerbates the challenges faced by the Chinese banking system.

The risk of non-performing loans at state-owned banks is already clouding China’s future economic prospects. Since reaching a peak of $4 trillion in 2014, the country’s foreign-exchange reserves have fallen by about a quarter. The ratings agency Fitch has warned that many OBOR projects—most of which are being pursued in vulnerable countries with speculative-grade credit ratings—face high execution risks, and could prove unprofitable.

The coming years will determine whether Beijing’s reach exceeds its grasp, or if China’s Communists have pulled Central Asia and East Africa more or less permanently into their orbit.

TO BE HONEST, CAN YOU BLAME THEM? Salena Zito: Americans have lost faith in government.

It is no mystery that Americans do not have trust in their government. A recent Pew survey finds only 3 percent of Americans actually trust the government with 16 percent saying they believe they will “get it right” most of the time.

In the 1950s almost 70 percent of the country expressed a high level of trust in government, when Pew first started measuring the public’s trust in its institutions. Clearly, confidence in America’s institutions and their ability to get it right has hit an all time low.

But how did it get this way?

How, indeed? The rise of social spending, and the accumulation of programmatic parasites probably play a role.

HORSE, BARN DOOR: After Manchester Attack, Britain Looks at New Ways to Curb Extremism.

As TIME reported this week, experts believe Britain is unlikely to strengthen its anti-terrorism legislation in the wake of the Manchester attack. David Anderson, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said police and intelligence agencies are broadly happy with the extremely robust laws they have in place – which Anderson says are “very strong by international standards.” Prime Minister Theresa May promised there would be no “knee-jerk style” crackdown on security. The current “critical” threat level is expected to be a temporary measure.

But if the Conservative Party wins the June 8 election, it could decide to renew its legal attempts to make extremism an offense. In its manifesto is a promise to create a “Commission for Countering Extremism” that would help the government “consider what new criminal offenses might need to be created, and what new aggravated offenses might need to be established to defeat the extremists.”

This, says Anderson, could lead to a “watered-down version” of a controversial Counter-Extremism Bill introduced by May when she was Home Secretary, the government minister who oversees national security. The bill was introduced in 2015 in response to the hundreds of British nationals flocking to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS, but never became law.

Given than up to eight known wolves — some going back as far as five years — may have been involved in the Manchester attack, simple follow through might go a long way towards stopping the next bombing.

SO GIANFORTE WON BIG, AND THAT KIND OF HURTS THE NARRATIVE OF AN ANTI-TRUMP “WAVE” BUILDING:

Republicans shouldn’t get cocky, because special elections don’t mean much. But this is the third time the Democrats have made a big deal about a special election and failed. My own guess: The press is so unpopular that Gianforte’s bodyslam helped him more than hurt him with voters. That should inspire introspection with the press, as Kurt Schlichter says, but it won’t.

Predicted response: “Yeah, I’m in the Media — Screw You.”

Related: Loesch: Americans Are Tired of Being Manipulated & Lied to by Mainstream Media.

And on Facebook, Roger Kimball comments: “Was the Montana election a referendum on Trump? Only if the Dem won. He lost.” So true.