MAKE TOY RETAILING GREAT AGAIN: CEO of MGA Entertainment Makes Formal Offer to Buy Toys ‘R Us.

SUPREME COURT: Supreme Court sides with immigrant facing deportation, Gorsuch casts deciding vote. Despite the partisan slant here, I’m not so sure he was wrong. Burglary isn’t a “crime of violence.” And note that although he ruled against Trump, he also voted against Obama: “The Trump administration had defended the law, as the Obama administration did.” Giving administrative agencies broad powers based on vague statutes isn’t a good idea.

BECAUSE SHE CARES ABOUT THE CHILDREN, NO DOUBT: Overheard on Acela: Teachers’ Union President Plots to Shut Puerto Rico Schools From First Class Car. Well, you can’t very well do your pro-worker plotting back in coach. What are we, animals?

PREDICTION: DAVID HOGG ET AL. WILL BE SHUFFLED OFFSTAGE ASAP: Gun policy has emerged as a major election issue at the same time that Republicans have closed the gap in the generic ballot, according to the Wapo/ABC poll.

UPDATE: Hey, look, the NRA is having a membership drive.

IF YOU HAVE TO ASK… Are You an Alpha or a Beta Male? Take Our 20-Question Quiz and Find Out.

ROGER KIMBALL: The McCabe Report Is Just An Appetizer. “In the coming weeks, Horowitz will follow up with entrees on the FBI’s partisan activities in the 2016 presidential election and, later, another report on (if I may employ the term) collusion with the State Department. . . . Andrew McCabe, you might recall, was a central player in the pseudo-investigation of Hillary Clinton’s misuse of classified information and self-enrichment schemes while Secretary of State. He was one of the people who made sure that went nowhere. He was also a central figure in the get-Mike-Flynn operation and, later, the Great Trump Hunt that has been occupying Robert Mueller for nearly a year. McCabe leaked information about an investigation to a Wall Street Journal reporter, lied about leaking in casual conversations with superiors as well as under oath. Attorney Jeff Sessions, digesting a preliminary report on McCabe’s conduct, fired him in March 2018 (not even a month ago, but it seems like forever).”

OH: Turns Out That New York Times’ Clinton Email ‘Botched Story’ Actually Wasn’t.

The Clinton campaign, which requested the corrections in the first place, seized on those small inconsistencies and attempted to use them to discredit the entire story. The campaign wrote a nearly 2,000-word public letter to the Times demanding an explanation for the “egregious” story and attacking the paper’s “apparent abandonment of standard journalistic practices.”

Liberal media outlets were more than happy to join in the pile-on. Newsweek‘s Kurt Eichenwald declared the Times guilty of “a level of recklessness that borders on, well, criminal behavior.” The Atlantic called the “botched story” a “huge embarrassment” for the paper. Salon.com declared it “another shoddy Clinton smear.” Mother Jones wrote that it was an “epic screw-up.”

But former FBI director James Comey’s new book indicates that the ridiculous semantics game was even more moot than it appeared. The Times actually understated the reality: Clinton was already under criminal investigation at the time by the FBI, and yes, she was definitely the target.

“Though The Times may have thought those clarifications were necessary, their original story was much closer to the mark,” Comey writes. “It was true that the transmission to the F.B.I. from the inspector general did not use the word ‘criminal,’ but by the time of the news story, we had a full criminal investigation open, focused on the secretary’s conduct.”

Read the whole thing.

HEALTH: Goldman Sachs Analysts Question Whether Curing Patients Is Good for Business.

UH-OH: Russia Steps Up Hacking, Spurring U.S.-U.K. Warning on Risk.

Russia is using compromised computer-network equipment to attack U.S. and British companies and government agencies, the two countries warned in an unprecedented joint alert.

The warning on Monday came from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation and Britain’s National Cyber Security Center. It included advice to companies about how to protect themselves and warned specifically of attacks on routers, the devices that channel data around a network.

“Russian state-sponsored actors are using compromised routers to conduct spoofing ‘man-in-the-middle’ attacks to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations,” according to a joint statement. “Multiple sources including private and public-sector cybersecurity research organizations and allies have reported this activity to the U.S. and U.K. governments.”

The main advice offered Monday for individuals and companies: Make sure that your router software is up-to-date and its password is secure.

It’s amazing how many people — including in national security agencies — fail to take those two simple precautions.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE; MOVE ALONG: British Chemical Weapons Inspector: Russia Blocking Access To Douma.

But the AP reports: “Syrian state TV: International chemical weapons watchdog team enters Douma, the town where the alleged attack happened.”

Which probably means that Syria and/or the Russian “contractors” have had enough time to get rid of anything incriminating.

REALCLEARPOLITICS: 10 Questions That ABC News Didn’t Ask Comey. By “ABC News” of course, we mean “former Clinton staffer and continued Clinton supporter George Stephanopoulos.” But hey, next Comey will be interviewed by former Democratic staffer Jake Tapper.

WHY ARE COLLEGE CAMPUSES SUCH HAVENS FOR HATE? More than 50 NYU groups pledge to boycott Israel.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS ABOUT THE NEW LITTLE PINK HOUSE MOVIE: Can the government take your land? Yep, but the ‘Little Pink House’ was worth fighting for. Excellent film, and highly recommended. I was able to get an advance screener and shared it with my Con Law class, where we were doing Kelo last week.

REMEMBER WHEN TRUMP’S TWEETS ON NORTH KOREA WERE GOING TO SET OFF A NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE? North and South Korea reportedly set to announce official end to war.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Cohen/Hannity, Comey, Midterms and Much, Much More. “The government argued that since Cohen doesn’t have ‘a lot’ of clients there should be no privilege. WUT? Is there some heretofore unknown threshold before attorney-client privilege kicks in? What kind of precedent does this set?”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I think we’re entitled to know the names of which “journalists” Fusion GPS had on its payroll. But weirdly, that hasn’t been released. Confidentiality and privacy, ya know.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: How Venezuela has resorted to importing oil as its core industry faces collapse. “They are importing barrels that cost $80 to $90 and selling them at $0.”

This is like something out of Atlas Shrugged:

The long queues for food and medicine in Venezuela are now well documented, but lines of cars waiting outside petrol stations – something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago, when petrol cost $0.01 (0.7p) per litre – are becoming more common.

Filling your tank is still cheaper than drinking water in Venezuela, but the industry can no longer meet domestic demands – and is having to put exports first. Monaldi says that if production continues to fall to below a million barrels, the consequences could be catastrophic.

“The domestic consumption of oil is around 450,000 barrels and Venezuela needs the exports to repay its debt with Russia and China,” he says.

“They have to import for two reasons. One is the collapse of the refining infrastructure and the other is that its oil is naturally heavy so they need to import diluents to blend with their oil to re-export it.

“One of the craziest things is that a part of Venezuela’s imports is for the domestic market, but given its price, they practically give gasoline away for free. They are importing barrels that cost $80 to $90 and selling them at $0.”

Cheap gas is one of the ways Maduro (and Chavez before him) buys support from voters. Looks like yet another socialist countdown clock is racing quickly towards zero.

Update: Link was missing — fixed now, sorry!

OH FER CRYIN’ OUT LOUD: Woman Calls Police Over Man Wearing Pro-Gun T-Shirt At Park.

Johnston said he was openly carrying his handgun in a holster on his hip, and was also sporting a Warrior 12 shirt emblazoned with the words, “I’LL CONTROL MY GUNS, YOU CONTROL YOUR KIDS” across the back.

The shirt also featured an image of an AR-15 rifle.

“I figured I might get some comments or looks,” Johnston said. “[But] I was legally exercising my First and Second Amendment rights.”

Approximately 30 minutes after the kids began playing, a man approached him with his wife and daughter in tow, Johnston said.

He said the man told him that a woman was “fuming” over the message on Johnston’s shirt, as well as the fact that he was armed.

“I thanked him for letting me know, and continued playing with my kids,” Johnson said.

A short while later, another man and his family approached Johnston, and asked to read his shirt, he said.

Johnston showed him his shirt, at which point the man warned him that his father-in-law had just been harassed by woman in the parking lot, and that she was contacting police regarding Johnson’s attire.

I had always thought that “the Fashion Police” was just a joke.

DAMNED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF YOU DON’T: Two weeks ago, Target settled a class-action lawsuit filed by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund for $3.74 million. The claim was that by asking job applicants about their criminal records, Target was discriminating against African Americans and Hispanics, since they are more likely to have a criminal record.

Meanwhile, in response to public pressure, Uber is upping its efforts to check into its drivers’ criminal backgrounds.

Will Uber now become a lawsuit target? Maybe.

This is an area of the law that really jumped the track. The EEOC’s policy is so vague that employers frequently have no idea what they can or cannot do. But more important, declining to hire someone because he has committed crimes isn’t race discrimination. The EEOC is not supposed to have jurisdiction under Title VII unless the employer has discriminated on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

Alas, however, the “disparate impact” theory of liability (upon which the EEOC and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund rely) is well-entrenched in the law. For the skinny on how that came to be and why it is a terrible idea, read my Statement on the EEOC’s Criminal Background Check Policy.

(Remember when MLK said he looked forward to the day when his children would be judged by the content of their character rather than their skin color?   Judging job applicants by their criminal record is as close to judging them by the content of their character as we mortals can hope to get. Sure, some people deserve a second chance, but shouldn’t that be up to the employer?)

CHUCK DEVORE: California’s crazy one-party liberal politics is why I had to finally leave the state — and I’m not alone.

That home prices and rents in California average 55 percent higher than in Texas isn’t just due to the former’s good weather—the Golden State’s high taxes, capricious regulations, onerous lawsuit climate, and powerful unions all contribute to constraining the supply of new housing while jacking up the price of existing housing.

California’s high housing costs drive America’s highest Supplemental Poverty rate—a dubious distinction held by the progressive bastion since the new, more comprehensive measure was introduced by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2009. In fact, not only are there proportionately 39 percent more people living in poverty in California than in Texas (20.4 percent to 14.7 percent), but, the plight of the poor comes into greater relief when comparing like demographic groups in the two most-populous states, both of which feature majority-minority populations.

This table compares the Supplemental Poverty rates of the four largest racial and national origin groups from children to working (0 to 64) in California, Texas and the U.S. averaged from 2014 to 2015. In every case, Texas’ poverty rate is below both California’s and the national average whereas in California, only that state’s rapidly growing Asian population enjoys a lower poverty rate than the U.S. average. So much for California as a liberal utopia.

I hate to have to correct Mr. DeVore, but that is a liberal utopia.

GRAVY TRAIN: HUD Let Nearly $2 Billion Go To People Barred From Getting Federally Protected Loans.

The loans were distributed in 2016 to 9,507 borrowers who were either delinquent on federal debt or hadn’t paid their child support, according to HUD’s inspector general (IG). The IG reviewed 60 of the nearly 14,000 loans Federal Housing Administration (FHA) closed in 2016 and found more than three-quarters were given to barred borrowers.

“FHA faced a higher risk due to an increased likelihood of default on the ineligible loans,” the report said. The borrowers had a delinquency rate “twice as high as those of the general population.” (RELATED: At Least A Quarter Of Every Tax Dollar For HUD Grants May Be Wasted)

The agency’s guidance prohibits lenders from giving out FHA-insured loans to borrowers with delinquent federal debt, according to the IG report.

The sources lenders used “to identify ineligible borrowers lacked sufficient current information, and FHA did not adequately guide lenders on reviewing child support,” the report said.

This happened during Barack Obama’s “amazingly scandal-free” administration.

ANALYSIS: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. The Democrats Are the Party of Fiscal Responsibility.

With the smallish exception of Medicare Part D, every single underfunded entitlement program projected to bust the budget from here to eternity was the creation of Democrats.