MAY? Rubio Warns DeVos: Tech Partnerships May Open Door to China Espionage.

The whole point of Beijing requiring American businesses to work with Chinese “partners” is to gain the tech and know-how they couldn’t develop on their own, or develop as quickly as they’d like.

JUST LAST NIGHT, the Insta-Wife was praising my purchase of the MantelMount TV Mount that lets us have a TV over the fireplace but pull it down to eye level for viewing. It’s worked great, and the Amazon Home Services installation was also easy and reasonably priced.

#FIGHTFOR15: The First Burger Built by a Robot Is About to Hit the Bay Area.

Unexpectedly.

BECAUSE MONEY: Why OPEC Isn’t Going To Give Up On High Oil Prices That Easily.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuelan economy heading to complete collapse in months and probably a military coup. Millions have suffered because the Bush Administration failed to strongly back the coup that briefly ousted Hugo Chavez.

PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Southern Poverty Law Center Faces Dozens Of Lawsuits From Organizations It Falsely Labeled As Hate Groups.

MITT ROMNEY GETS LAST LAUGH: Obama cyber chief confirms ‘stand down’ order against Russian cyberattacks in summer 2016. “The view that the Obama administration failed to adequately piece together intelligence about the Russian campaign and develop a forceful response has clearly gained traction with the intelligence committee.”

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS. I’m Sorry And I Want You Back: Mary Katharine Ham’s Open Letter To Her Eyebrows.

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Cocaine in the Water Is Hurting River Eels.

TRUMP’S FAMILY INTERNMENT POLICY IS POPULAR, ACCORDING TO THIS ECONOMIST/YOUGOV POLL, which shows that only 19% of those polled (and only 30% of Democrats) favor a catch-and-release policy. By contrast, 44% — and 49% of Democrats — favor holding families together in family detention centers until a hearing at a later date. No other alternative draws anything like that much support.

WHY CARS ALL LOOK THE SAME NOW.

ARE YOU A YOUNG PERSON IN AN UNPAID SUMMER INTERNSHIP (OR NO JOB AT ALL)? ARE YOU ANNOYED THAT YOU COULDN’T LAND A REAL JOB?: Well, understand that when the government passes laws that make it riskier for an employer to fire or lay off an employee (and there are lots of them), it makes employers more cautious at the hiring stage. The rise of unpaid summer internships is one of the economy’s ways of responding to the regulatory environment: The more protected jobs are, the harder they will be to get. Highly regulated employment relationships hurt young people most.

But take heart, we may be entering a period where even those with no job experience (or a blemished record) can land a paying job. I saw a post on my neighborhood notice board recently from a woman who was shocked to get a job offer (apparently after a lot of heartbreak). She needed clothing appropriate for the job—fast. And the neighborhood came up with what she needed. Good-o.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Microsoft Employees Demand Cancelation of $19.4M ICE Contract over Trump Border Policy.

WHY NOT? WE INVENTED THIS STUFF. Defense Chiefs: U.S. Cannot Win Global Cyber Wars.

BILL GERTZ: IG Report Highlights FBI Counterspy Failings. “Counterintelligence division under fire for mishandling Clinton email probe.”

Critics have said U.S. counterintelligence was weakened during the Obama administration. One example was the mishandling of the arrest of 10 Russian illegal spies in New York in 2010.

Instead of charging the deep cover “illegal” spies with espionage – they did not enjoy the usual diplomatic immunity afforded to legal spies – the 10 Russians posing as Americans were sent back to Moscow without being fully interrogated.

As a result, valuable intelligence on Russian spying operations was lost.

The Obama administration at the time was seeking to curry favor with Russia as part of the failed reset policy toward Moscow.

The administration also failed to take action against Russian intelligence during its operations to interfere with the 2016 election. After the election, a group of Russian intelligence officers was expelled.

In contrast, during the Cold War, FBI counterspies achieved a major intelligence coup by recruiting as an informant the No. 2 official in the Communist Party USA, Morris Childs, who provided Kremlin and other valuable secrets between 1958 and 1982.

Michael Waller, an intelligence expert with the Center for Security Policy, said the IG report lays bare what some have been saying for decades: “The United States is the No. 1 target of every hostile intelligence service on earth.”

“With few exceptions, the FBI has very little to show that it has the strategy and leadership to cut off much more than the low-hanging fruit,” Waller said.”

Damning.

I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WHEN BILLIONAIRES SPENDING TO INFLUENCE ELECTIONS WERE A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY: Michael Bloomberg Will Spend $80 Million on the Midterms. His Goal: Flip the House for the Democrats.

SCOTUS JUST GAVE CALIFORNIA THE POWER TO TAX YOU: As Glenn notes, the Supreme Court  today allowed states to tax purchases made online from out-of-state sellers. I seem to remember something about “No taxation without representation,” but apparently the majority (weirdly, Kennedy, Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito, and…Ginsburg) forgot that. The opinion is a real piece of work, even going full “You didn’t build that” at one point. Roberts’ dissent is right on the money, pointing out that such a dramatic change to the internet economy could have far-reaching consequences, and that Congress is much better suited to address the issue.

In any event, here are some pertinent comments from colleagues who submitted an amicus brief to the court in favor of the status quo:

Jessica Melugin: “Stopping state regulatory and tax power at each state’s border should be the default rule for online commerce, but the Supreme Court has chosen to set state tax authorities loose on small online businesses and their customers across the country.

Erik Jaffe: “We are disappointed the Supreme Court today, in allowing states to extend their taxing authority beyond their borders, passed up an opportunity to reassert the horizontal federalism principles of the Constitution. Rather, adopting mistaken notions that state sovereignty extends beyond state borders and that the purchasing power of state citizens are assets belonging to the state, the court fundamentally subverts federalism.

“Instead, the only check on state overreach is now the court’s legislative judgment under a dormant commerce clause jurisprudence that gets both the commerce clause and the judicial role in enforcing it wrong. Hopefully, Congress will see the folly of this approach and act to constrain state encroachment on interstate commerce.”

Finally, I’ll note that some states are eager to tax people who put up links to companies like Amazon on their websites. Sorry, bloggers…

BEN CARSON: ‘Real Compassion’ Is Tackling ‘Perverse Incentives’ That Continue Cycle of Poverty.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: How did Peter Strzok’s notorious text stay hidden so long?

The Justice Department gave Congress Page’s “not ever going to become president” text months ago, when it produced thousands of texts to Hill investigators. But lawmakers — and the public — did not learn of the explosive second part of the exchange — Strzok’s “We’ll stop it” answer — until last Thursday, when Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Clinton email investigation was released. The newly-revealed text was devastating on its face. But it also raised eyebrows among Republicans who immediately asked why it had been not been turned over to lawmakers months ago.

I think we know why.

NARRATIVE: Glenn Beck: ‘We begged the media’ in 2014 to cover border kids and were ignored.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Ohio State closes sexual-assault center, fires 4 after complaints. “SARNCO also wrote that it had received reports that SCE advocates have written student conduct and other legal documents, and have told survivors they needed to embellish their stories because ‘their real experience wasn’t serious enough’ to receive justice or legal protection.”

And that’s just the beginning of the problems.

SINGLE PAYER, SINGLE DECIDER: Unneeded Drugs Killed Hundreds at U.K. Hospital, Inquiry Finds.

From 1989 to 2000, doctors at Gosport War Memorial Hospital — and one doctor in particular — routinely prescribed heroin, also called diamorphine, and other opioids for patients who were not in any pain, and for others whose pain should have been handled with much milder drugs, in blatant violation of accepted medical practice, the panel found.

“There was an institutionalized practice of the shortening of lives through prescribing and administering opioids without medical justification,” John S. Jones, an Anglican former bishop of Liverpool who headed the government-commissioned investigation, told reporters.

Perhaps most disturbing was that while many of the patients were elderly, most were not seriously ill.

But they had become burdens to the State.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: ‘This is a warning’: Jordan Peterson launches $1.5M defamation lawsuit against Wilfrid Laurier University. Canadian defamation law is less press-friendly than the American version.

IN A MAJOR DEVELOPMENT FOR INTERNET SALES, the Supreme Court overrules Quill, and holds that a company need not have a physical presence in a state to be subjected to state sales taxes for sales to residents. I think this decision is wrong, and at any rate should have been made, if at all, via legislation. That’s what the dissent argues.