SOFT LIMP POWER: Why Europe Gets No Respect.

Victor Davis Hanson:

In most high-stakes diplomacy—denuclearizing North Korea, attempting to make China play by international norms of trade and commerce, keeping Vladimir Putin within his borders, destroying ISIS, isolating a theocratic and potentially nuclear Iran, and the perennial Israel and Palestinian problem—Europe is largely a spectator. Its once heralded “soft power” of the 1990s and early 21st century is more soft than powerful. The friends of Europe no longer count on it; its enemies do not fear it.

The high-tech revolution that birthed Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft passed Europe by. Judged by the great historical determinants of civilizational power—fuel, energy, education, demography, political stability, and military power—Europe is waning. It is spending a mere 1.4% of its collective GDP on defense. Most analysts conclude that even what Europe does spend on security does not translate directly into military readiness, at least in comparison with the U.S. military. And with a fertility rate of less than 1.6%, Europe is slowly shrinking and aging—hence the short-sighted immigration policy of Angela Merkel who apparently sees immigration also as a solution to the demography crisis and a shortcut to low-cost labor.

Across the continent, laws against fracking, German dismantling of nuclear power plants, and massive green subsidies for erratic wind and solar generation—all self-inflicted wounds—have made European gasoline and electricity costs among the highest in the world. Europe remains dependent on Russia, Central Asia, and the OPEC countries for much of its energy needs. In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings of the world’s top 20 universities, only 1 was a continental European university; in contrast, 15 were American and 4 British.

Politically, the European Union has not squared the circle of uniting diverse peoples, languages, and cultures with long historical grievances into a pan-European nation—at least without a level of coercion that is inconsistent with democratic values. Instead, members increasingly find European Union dogma at odds with human nature, at least in terms of entitlements, immigrations, and national security. For a continent that celebrates diversity, the European apparat is quite intolerant of dissident voices.

Of course they do. If the European Union tolerated genuine dissent, there wouldn’t be a European Union for long.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD: The Man Can’t Bust Our Nookie!

OUCH:

UNEXPECTEDLY: Turkey’s Erdogan flexes new powers with decrees on second anniversary of coup.

YEP:

THE PRICE IS RIGHT? Pentagon Nears New F-35 Deal.

Ellen Lord, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, announced the preliminary deal in a statement on the eve of the biennial Farnborough Air Show, though last week she canceled plans to attend the U.K. event, citing other commitments.

The F-35 is the world’s largest military program and already accounts for about a quarter of Lockheed’s annual sales, as well as significant shares at partners including Northrop Grumman Corp. , BAE Systems PLC and United Technologies Corp. , the latter of which finalized a deal on the engines for the new jets earlier this year.

Pentagon officials have grown frustrated with efforts over the past three years to cut the cost of buying and flying as many as 2,400 of the radar-evading jets. The F-35 fleet would replace most U.S. jet fighters over the next 30 years at a cost of more than $400 billion. U.S. allies plan to buy up to 500 more jets.

Ms. Lord didn’t provide a contract value. Lockheed and its partners have already cut the average price of the F-35A model used by the U.S. Air Force to around $95 million, from $122 million five years ago.

They aim to reduce the price to roughly $80 million by the end of the decade. But Pentagon leaders want bigger cuts as annual production climbs toward 150 jets in the early 2020s, from 66 last year.

$80 million a copy isn’t all that much more than a less-capable and less-survivable Block 52 or Block 60 F-16.

DAVID MILLS: What Schumer and Pelosi Pretend They Don’t Know About Judges.

THE AMOUNT OF INSTITUTIONAL DAMAGE BEING DONE TO THE FBI BY ITS HILLARY/OBAMA CAPTURE IS ENORMOUS AND NOT YET FULLY APPRECIATED: Michael Goodwin: Peter Strzok’s arrogance is the product of a corrupt FBI.

Watching FBI agent Peter Strzok battle with Congress, my initial reaction was pure anger. His repeated, arrogant insistence that he had done nothing wrong despite tons of evidence to the contrary convinced me he deserved immediate firing — if not the firing squad.

Gradually, though, anger gave way to amazement as Strzok grew increasingly combative and condescending. Given his predicament, the sneering and smirking were stupid, and yet he persisted.

Who is this jerk, I wondered, and how in the hell did he get to be a big shot at the FBI? And why are taxpayers still paying for the privilege of his malignant presence on the FBI payroll?

My answers can be summarized in four names: James Comey, Jeff Sessions, Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray. They are chief culprits in the death of public trust in the Department of Justice.

The cause of death was murder, and it was an inside job.

And the loss of trust is biggest among the people who used to support the FBI the most.

SLEEP TIGHT: Russia Says Its New Aircraft Can Disable U.S. Satellites. Could This Trigger a Nuclear War?

“The work is currently underway to develop an aircraft equipped with jamming systems that will replace Il-22PP Porubshchik [electronic warfare aircraft], which are currently being delivered to the Russian Aerospace Forces,” an unnamed Russian defense industry source told Sputnik News. “This machine will receive a fundamentally new on-board equipment, which will allow to conduct electronic suppression of any targets—ground, air, sea—and disable enemy satellites that provide navigation and radio communication on the ground.”

Disabling the electronics on satellites? This would seem to be a different challenge, and how Russia plans to tackle it is unclear. For example, what does it mean to “turn off” a military satellite? Convince the satellite to shut down its systems, perhaps by spoofing a command signal from ground control? Or does it mean hitting the satellite with some kind of powerful beam that fries its electronics or disrupt its systems? And how powerful a system could be mounted on what is essentially a medium-sized airliner?

Always take Russian claims with a bolshoi grain of salt, but the vulnerability of our satellite fleet is a serious concern.

REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: How the NY Times Helped Outlaw Abortion in 1872.

ESPIONAGE: The Story of How Mossad Stole 100,000 Iranian Nuclear Docs. “For those willing to hear the truth, Trump’s dumping of the nuclear deal is looking better and better.”

And here I’ve been all this time, thinking the deal couldn’t possibly look any worse.

YES, BUT NOW WE HAVE A NEW BATCH OF RUSSIANS YOU’LL NEVER SEE: The Forgotten II: The Strange Case of the Missing Russians.

MARK PENN IN THE HILL: The Dishonesty Of The Deep State:

I’ve seen President Clinton deny he had a relationship with “that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” I’ve seen President Obama assure people they will get to keep their doctor under ObamaCare. And I’ve seen former press secretary Sean Spicer declare that President Trump’s inaugural crowd was larger than Obama’s.

But these falsehoods pale in comparison to the performances of a series of “deep state” witnesses who have combined chutzpah with balderdash, culminating so far in the testimony of FBI agent Peter Strzok.

Let’s review just some of the highlights.

Former FBI Director James Comey maintained he did not make any decision on the email investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton until after Hillary Clinton’s interview, even though his conclusion memo was written, edited and watered down months in advance of his announcement. We have all of the timing, the drafts of the memo, and the dates and times of the edits.

Former CIA head John Brennan denied he supplied the Steele dossier on Trump to then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the face of mounting evidence that he did precisely that and, at least orally, gave the former Nevada Democrat a full account of the dossier, leading Reid to write a public letter demanding an investigation.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has flatly denied that he lied to the FBI about orchestrating a self-serving leak, even denying knowledge in several interviews with FBI investigators, including one session that Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz has on tape, if one reads the fine print of his report.

Now comes Strzok who, to the actual applause of congressional Democrats, denies he ever did anything in 26 years that contained even a hint of bias, despite the most damning evidence imaginable in the record — quote after quote indicating, at each and every phase of the Trump-Russia investigation, that he hated Trump, would create an “insurance policy” against his victory, and would “stop” him from serving as president. On a trip to Walmart, he says he can “smell” the Trump voters there. After all, he said, he expected his texts would be private communications — even as he used government devices to avoid detection of his relationship with then-FBI attorney Lisa Page, with whom he texted.

And like all the other witnesses, he does not come in contrite but with verbal guns blazing. These witnesses seem to believe they belong to a protected class. He offered no proof that he carefully acted to separate these views — which he constantly expressed to his paramour Page, who also was on the investigation — from his actions that are now under investigation. It is false, by the way, to say he was cleared of bias in the Trump-Russia investigation; the inspector general faulted Strzok’s texts and is currently investigating the origins of that investigation.

Remarkably, we learned that special counsel Robert Mueller never even made the slightest direct inquiry into Strzok’s actions and behavior, other than to remove him from the investigation. Mueller, you may recall, for five months ducked answering congressional inquiries as to why Strzok and Page were reassigned, and we only learned the reasons when the DOJ inspector general sent these text messages to Congress. Mueller, it seems, was too busy combing every single email of the transition team, and later monitoring every single call of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, to stop and review how this bias might have tainted much of the evidence of his investigation and require new interviews of witnesses or other action.

One other revelation in Thursday’s congressional hearing was really quite stunning: Strzok named fellow FBI official Bruce Ohr, whose wife was hired by the political opposition research firm Fusion GPS, as someone who handed in a version of the Steele dossier to the FBI. And Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) read from an email indicating that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), journalist David Corn of Mother Jones magazine and Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson all had sent versions of the Steele dossier to the FBI. (Simpson, by the way, testified he never dealt with the FBI.) At that point, just as it was getting interesting, Strzok claimed the FBI was barring him from answering any further questions on this material.

This revelation goes to the very heart of the matter of how bias led to a ridiculous, unverified group of mostly easily disproven allegations being treated as if they were the holy grail to stop Trump from becoming president. Dossier compiler and former British spy Christopher Steele, who also lied to the FBI about his press contacts, and Simpson apparently created a massive echo chamber involving the State Department, the CIA, politicians such as Reid and McCain, and the FBI — through the undisclosed relationship with Ohr’s wife — to spread what was all the same information, from the same unverified sources, as though it was coming in from all over. And this was all paid for through undisclosed contributions from the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Remember, her State Department aides denied to the FBI even knowing that she had her own email server as secretary of State, despite clearly communicating about it in emails, and those who smashed and destroyed evidence were given either immunity or a pass.

It’s like they think the law doesn’t apply to them.