DIVORCE SETTLEMENT: Bezos to keep 75% of Amazon stake, all of WaPo and Blue Origin.

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: How a Few Stubborn Dutchmen Are Keeping Corporate Behemoth Wendy’s Off an Entire Continent.

GIVEN AMERICANS’ DISMAL SAVINGS HABITS, THIS MIGHT NOT BE A BAD IDEA: Democrats Propose Emergency Savings and Retirement Plan for Workers. “The tax credits to jumpstart the savings program would cost about $200 to $250 billion, Sen. Klobuchar says.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Electoral College Was Not a Pro-Slavery Ploy.

Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz:

Slaveholders didn’t embrace the idea of electors because it might enlarge slavery’s power; they feared it because of the danger, as the North Carolina slaveholder Hugh Williamson remarked, that the men chosen as electors would be corruptible “persons not occupied in the high offices of government.” Pro-elite concerns, not proslavery ones, were on their minds — just as, ironically, elite supporters of the Electoral College hoped the body would insulate presidential politics from popular passions.

When it first took shape at the convention, the Electoral College would not have significantly helped the slaveowning states. Under the initial apportionment of the House approved by the framers, the slaveholding states would have held 39 out of 92 electoral votes, or about 42 percent. Based on the 1790 census, about 41 percent of the nation’s total white population lived in those same states, a minuscule difference. Moreover, the convention did not arrive at the formula of combining each state’s House and Senate numbers until very late in its proceedings, and there is no evidence to suggest that slavery had anything to do with it.

Read the whole thing.

SENATOR CORY GARDNER: Trump said he would sign pot bill.

Sen. Cory Gardner said Thursday that President Donald Trump told him he’d sign legislation to ensure states can decide for themselves whether to legalize marijuana, but that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell needs some more convincing.

The Colorado Republican, along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), reintroduced their bicameral bill Thursday. The legislation was introduced after the Trump Justice Department, under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, rescinded guidelines that limited the prosecutions of businesses or people who sold marijuana legally under state law.

“I think we still have more work to do with Sen. McConnell,” Gardner said. “He got partway there with hemp but [he’s] not exactly the bastion of libertarianism on this.”

He added: “I’m assuming Kentucky ain’t exactly Boulder.”

It isn’t. Which is precisely why the issue should be left up to the states.

PRESIDENT MONROE COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Venezuelan deputy minister says more Russian troops could arrive.

The deputy minister also said Russian forces will stay in Venezuela as long as needed, and that there is no set period for their stay.

“The group of military specialists is (in Venezuela) in the context of our agreements and contracts for military-technical cooperation,” Interfax quoted Gil as saying.

Earlier the Kremlin said Russian military specialists are in Venezuela to service pre-existing contracts for the supply of Russian arms.

That’s quite the euphemism.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Norah O’Donnell and Her ‘Giant Ego’ Are Gunning for Jeff Glor’s Anchor Desk.

Today’s report brings back a memory from 2009 (IIRC) when I was doing a weekly roundup of the Sunday morning talking-heads shows for PJTV. O’Donnell was doing an interview with new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and there was one brief exchange which I found so revealing about the both of them, that it’s stuck in my head all these years.

In one of her questions, O’Donnell parroted a line — that line about “fundamentally transforming” America which the press had largely buried in the days before the 2008 election — straight from Barack Obama. She asked Clinton something like, “As Secretary of State, how are you going to pursue the fundamental transformation this country requires?” And she sounded quite earnest about it, too. Which, OK, nice to know you aren’t bringing any America-hating biases with you to the news desk, lady.

And then there was Clinton’s immediate response.

More at the link.

RUN ALL THE CANDIDATES! Tim Ryan, Ohio moderate, joining crowded Democratic field of presidential contenders.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Texas AG Launches Investigation After San Antonio City Council Intentionally Excludes Chick-fil-A From Airport Contract.

THIS IS CNN: CNN Plays Cover-Up On Analyst’s Ties To Qatar Regime.

“PROBLEM,” SINGULAR? Biden’s Problem Is His Ego.

He’s clueless in the way that old Washington hands who refer to themselves in the third person and consider themselves living legends always are—only more so.

To use Biden’s own term, he believes his own malarkey.

He really thinks he’s the most charming man in the room and a master at human interaction. In his view, he’s doing everyone a favor by giving them a warm bath of Biden.

It’s truly never occurred to him that some women might not want to be grabbed, smelled, held, nuzzled, Eskimo-kissed, whispered to, and generally handled by their great champion and defender, Joe Biden.

I’d wager that his office and his security detail are the only reasons some husband or father hadn’t decked him long ago.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: With Mueller Hopes Gone, So Goes Progressive Unity. “They may now begin to turn on one another… and the fighting won’t be pretty.”

Periodic leaks from Mueller’s team during the investigation’s 22 months prompted giddy media anticipation that “the walls were closing in on” Trump. It always seemed that the “noose was tightening” around him, and that yet another “bombshell” was about to go off.

This anti-Trump echo chamber lessened the need for progressives to offer a comprehensive, coherent and winning alternate agenda. Damning the sure-to-be-impeached Trump was unity enough. All progressives at least agreed on that.

But as Mueller was supposedly about to indict Trump, a divisive, hard-left agenda was almost imperceptibly floated to the public: the Green New Deal, reparations for slavery, abortion redefined as permissible infanticide, open borders, packing the Supreme Court with liberal justices, the abolition of the Electoral College and ICE, free college tuition, the elimination of student debt, Medicare for all, a wealth tax, a 70 percent top marginal income tax rate, a 16-year-old voting age, voting rights for ex-felons, and on and on.

It seemed as if today’s radical proposal would become yesterday’s sellout within 24 hours, as progressives awaited tomorrow’s even more revolutionary idea.

The Left eats its own, always.

And it’s VDH, so read the whole thing.

YES: GOP Senator Puts Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Notice: Time for a ‘Third-Party Audit’ of De-Platforming Policies. “Sen. Josh Hawley hinted that Twitter’s immunity from civil liability may need to be reviewed.”

Twitter acts like a publisher, not a common carrier, and ought to be treated as such.

MODERN PROBLEMS: Microsoft is removing books from the Microsoft Store on Windows 10. “Microsoft has announced that starting today, customers looking to buy books from the Microsoft Store will no longer be able to do so. The book store, hosted within the Microsoft Store on Windows 10 and online, is going away. Customers who have previously purchased books from the Microsoft Store will be receiving refunds, as those customers will not be able to access their already paid for books after July 31.”

It’s nice that people are getting refunds, but if an ebook seller were to go bankrupt, there’s no guarantee that readers would be left with anything other than wasted money. Ebooks are great for one-time reads, but for anything you treasure — or need on hand for an emergency — paper is still the way to go.

BEST READ BY MOONLIGHT: NASA Mission AS-506 Apollo 11 Owners’ Workshop Manual. “Across 216 pages, this in-depth book illustrates everything there is to know about the now-legendary Apollo 11 mission. That includes every detail from the evolution and design of the Saturn V rocket, to the intricacies of the spaceship’s trio of modules, to the space suits worn by the crew, and so much more. It also outlines all the procedures followed by the crew from the moment they boarded the capsule straight on through their re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. This unparalleled look into NASA’s most famous manned mission is on presale now for $35 and releases on June 25th.”

21ST CENTURY CRIME: Teenager hit with 73 counts for “swatting” calls. “A 17-year-old from Ohio placed dozens of fake emergency calls to police.”

The investigation was triggered by an August call to the sheriff’s department in Putnam County, New York. A caller claimed he had shot his wife and was holding his son hostage with an AR-15.

Thankfully, that turned out to be a lie. The house was unoccupied, and the police were able to check the story without anyone getting hurt. But the sheriff’s department didn’t let the issue drop. They began investigating who had placed the call.

“Investigators were able to get information about the phone used to make the fake emergency call,” a Putnam County press release states. “They also learned that there were similar incidents in other jurisdictions around the United States.”

More at the link.

I’m usually in favor of leniency for stupid teens pulling harmless pranks, but SWATting can be deadly, and ought to be dealt with by prosecuting to the max.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: NYT ‘sources’ unhappy with Barr ‘narrative’ and much, much more. “The New York Times published a gossip piece yesterday, trying to revive their demoralized Trump-RUSSIA cult readers that the Mueller report is, in fact, bad for Trump.”

Spin, spin, spin.

BOW DOWN TO THE RACE-HUSTLING ANTISEMITE: Democrats are so afraid to piss off Al Sharpton.

This week, nearly every single Democratic candidate for president — save the otherwise-distracted Joe Biden — has or will appear at Sharpton’s annual convention for his National Action Network, which he calls a charity.

A more rational observer might call it a personal piggybank funded by shakedowns.

This is a man who, as The Post exclusively reported in December, sold the rights to his life story to his own “nonprofit,” paying himself $531,000 — on top of his $244,661 salary to run NAN in 2017.

When asked by The Post when he would see that half-million, Sharpton — who was covering the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth in South Africa for MSNBC, itself a sacrilege — took offense.

“What does that have to do with anything?” he asked.

Such is Al Sharpton’s M.O., one that’s kept him in public life for over 30 years: dodge, deflect, deny, distract — and then cry racism.

Well, he is a Democrat.

THE OBAMA/HOLDER PRECEDENT: Most targets in House’s Trump corruption probe haven’t provided docs.

HMM: Police body cameras have little effect on officer, citizen behavior.

Police body cameras are not providing the type of irrefutable evidence that law enforcement and civil rights advocates had expected, according to the most comprehensive study of the technology to date.

“Although officers and citizens are generally supportive of [body camera] use, [they] have not had statistically significant or consistent effects on most measures of officer and citizen behavior or citizens’ views of police,” says a recent report from the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Key findings show that body-worn cameras tend to reduce complaints against police. But researchers said it is unclear whether that is because improved officer conduct has led to fewer complaints or because citizens who know they are being recorded are less likely to file complaints.

But have they led to increased accountability?

UM, NO. Ocasio-Cortez takes shot at Kushner over alleged WhatsApp use: What’s next, ‘putting nuclear codes in Instagram DMs?’

Given what we’ve learned about our intelligence establishment over the last two years, anyone in this White House might be wise to rely on end-to-end encrypted communications apps like WhatsApp or Wickr.

WELL, GOOD: Ted Cruz Threatens Maduro With ‘Every Lever’ If He Doesn’t Release Six Captive Americans.

GOP Texas Sen. Ted Cruz met Tuesday with the families of the “CITGO six,” American oil executives held captive in Venezuela, and called for their release.

CITGO is a U.S.-based oil company that is majority-owned by PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company. Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro imprisoned CITGO’s former vice president for refining Tomeu Vadell, former vice president for supply Jorge Toledo, former vice president for shared services Jose Luis Zambrano, former Corpus Christi refinery director Alirio Zambrano and former head of public affairs Gustavo Cardenas in November 2017.

“For over a year, they’ve been imprisoned,” Cruz told reporters after the meeting. “[Their families] haven’t spoken to them in nearly a month, as communications have been cut off. They’ve seen their family members drop weight precipitously. They’re kept away from sunlight – often away from human contact, denied basic human rights.”

Socialist hospitality.

MARK ELLIS: If Mexico Won’t Lift a Finger, President Trump Should Lower the Boom. “The time has come for the commander-in-chief to cut through the dross and do something.”

AT LEAST IT WASN’T DURING CONCEPTION: Cameras secretly recorded women in California hospital during childbirth and surgery, lawsuit says.

TALES OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY (CONT’D): Cree musician won’t withdraw album with Inuit throat singing from the Indigenous Music Awards.