DEB HEINE: Mueller Took a Vicious Parting Shot at Trump with Cop-Out on Obstruction. “If Trump was not guilty of a crime, what was he supposed to be obstructing anyway?”

THE FEUDALIZATION OF CALIFORNIA (CONT’D): Employment, employment everywhere, but not a place to live.

WELL, THAT’S A TAKE: The press plays along with AG William Barr’s obstruction of justice ploy.

The bottom line: Mueller’s report provided evidence of obstruction of justice. After receiving the report, Barr then decided not to charge Trump with obstruction of justice (surprise!) and issued a brief summary of Mueller’s work. Right now, the Mueller report and all the underlying evidence remain under lock and key at the DOJ. And no, Mueller had no say over the contents of Barr’s letter, which quoted selectively from the prosecutor’s work.

The whole scenario seems preposterous on its face, yet the White House is hoping it can pull it off. The painful realization is that there’s a chance it can, and specifically that it can rely on the political press to lose interest in the conflict, kind of like it lost interest in Trump refusing to release his tax returns. (This is the same press corps that focused like a laser for 18 months on Hillary Clinton’s emails.)

If the roles were reversed, you’d be damn sure the press would be leading a crusade for more information.

If the roles were reversed — and as recently as 2016, they were — we’d still be glowing in reports about that “remarkably scandal-free administration.”

PAKISTAN: Balochistan’s Great Internet Shutdown. “For 2 years and counting, Kech district’s mobile internet has been shut off for ‘security reasons’.”

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Mueller Report Fallout and Much, Much More. “Schiff went on cable news for two years telling America that he had seen evidence of “collusion” with RUSSIA, only to be undercut by the Mueller report findings. Nevertheless, he will keep the dream alive. Impeachment is not dead! Long live impeachment. Meanwhile, the Trump team is telling media to stay away from RUSSIA conspiracy theorists. That is a tall order as most of their programming is centered around promulgating the RUSSIA conspiracy theory. What are they supposed to talk about now?”

I dunno — stuff that actually happened?

DOUBLING DOWN ON STUPID: Democrats not yet ready to conclude there’s no Russia conspiracy.

It would be sad if they didn’t hold so many powerful positions in Congress, the bureaucracy, and the media.

WELL, THAT’S A TAKE: How Michael Avenatti’s flash-in-the-pan celebrity perfectly fit Trump’s Washington.

Chris Cillizza, fanning hard to make this take hot:

Avenatti is the sort of person who, in this climate, can’t and won’t be ignored, even as everyone (maybe including Avenatti himself) knew that none of this would end well. At all.

Avenatti came onto the national radar thanks to Donald Trump. He was hired by porn star Stormy Daniels to represent her in a suit in which she sought to end the confidentiality agreement she signed in the run-up to the 2016 election to keep her allegations that she had an affair with Trump in the mid-2000s quiet. Soon after he was brought on in spring 2017, Avenatti, who had always harbored a flair for and love of television, became a near-constant presence on cable news — making the case, loudly, that he had proof that Trump had coordinated payments to Daniels.

The way I remember it is that CNN gave Trump millions in free air time, hoping to make him the loser nominee. When that failed, CNN made Avenatti a permanent fixture on the network, hoping to bring Trump down.

Now that that’s failed, it’s spin-spin-spin.

THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT IT IS: U.S. calls Russia deployment of planes to Venezuela ‘reckless escalation.’

WELL, THAT’S A TAKE: No Collusion. No Exoneration.

Charlie Sykes at The Bulwark, where they’re no long claiming to conserve conservatism:

Obstruction was always the greatest threat to Trump. Mueller’s pointed refusal to exonerate the president from a criminal charge – and an impeachable offense – now shifts the venue to Congress. As Ben Wittes noted, the failure to indict is not a finding of innocence; and Congress need not apply the same standard to “high crimes and misdemeanors” that the Department of Justice applied to the prospect of criminal prosecution. Barr’s letter suggests that Mueller’s report lays out “evidence on both sides of the question.” That narrative will make for very interesting reading as Congress begins its own investigations. Many of his efforts to derail the investigation took place in broad daylight, including firing the FBI director and browbeating the attorney general. Did it also include dangling pardons? Implicitly threatening witnesses? What else might be included in the report?

Orange Man still bad, I suppose, even though Team Mueller wasn’t even able to nail him for any process crimes related to the two-year-long investigation. My pet hypothesis is that Mueller refused to exonerate for obstruction, not on any Constitutional grounds, but as a last attempt at sowing further doubt about the legitimacy of the Trump Administration despite his failure to find any collusion.

CHANGE: Trump signs order recognizing Golan Heights as part of Israel.

REPUBLICANS POUNCE! Trump begins post-Mueller ‘reset’ by attacking Democrats, media.

Why is “reset” in quotes? Did someone from the White House call for a post-Mueller reset, and now they’re acting hypocritical about it?

No. The “reset” is an imaginary state, a wish of the Left and the Deep State to sweep two years of their own hype, lies, and misdirection under the rug. Or as longtime reader RBJ commented yesterday, “We spent over two years sh!tting on the horrible Drumpf and his deplorable supporters. Now that he’s been cleared these ingrates selfishly don’t want to make nice.”

This is where “He fights!” really pays off, I hope.

ANDREW G. BOSTOM: Systemic Western ‘Islamophobia’ Is Not to Blame for the Christchurch Mosque Attack.

The killer was a self-described “eco-fascist,” which has its roots not in nativism, but in leftwing eco-terror fantasyland.

GOOD BOY: K-9 finds children missing in Powhatan woods in 15 minutes.

THEIR JOURNEY TO THE SERVICES SIDE IS COMPLETE: The Old Apple is dead. Long live the New Apple?

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Real Threat to Our Republic: The Democratic Party. “They don’t care about rules, just winning.”

GODSPEED: Trickiest U.S. Missile Defense Test Is Finally Ready to Launch.

The Missile Defense Agency intends on Monday to fire two interceptors tipped with the latest Raytheon Co. warheads within seconds of each other in a test that hasn’t been publicly announced. The first interceptor would attempt to crash into a dummy target representing an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile. The second would use its sensors to detect another ICBM or other countermeasures.

Monday’s action would be first missile defense test since a successful one in May 2017. The system also scored an interception in June 2014 after two that failed in 2010.

Mark Wright, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, said in an email said he had “nothing to announce at this time.”

The $36 billion system of Boeing Co.-managed radar, command links and 44 ground-based interceptors in California and Alaska is designed to defeat a missile attack. The Pentagon is requesting $9.4 billion in fiscal 2020 for the agency’s programs, including $1.4 billion for the ground-based segment — an increase from the $9.36 billion previously planned.

Missile defense is cheap compared to the damage a nuclear-tipped missile could do.

THERE’S SOMEONE FOR EVERYONE: Pete Buttigieg Is Picking Up A Following In Iowa.

PAYBACK: McCarthy demands Schiff step down as intel chairman.

“[Schiff] owes the American public an apology,” McCarthy said. “Schiff has met the standard that he has imposed on other members of Congress of when they should step back from their positions. He has exceeded that standard, and there is no question he should step down from the Intel chairmanship.”

The GOP offensive comes as Schiff is forging ahead with a renewed congressional investigation of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia. His committee is slated to publicly interview on Wednesday Trump associate Felix Sater about his efforts to strike a deal for a Trump Tower Moscow during the 2016 campaign. On Thursday, the committee has a second Russia-focused hearing on how the Kremlin used oligarchs and their money to influence U.S. politics in 2016.

Democrats are privately raising concerns that Americans won’t have the stomach for a new, heavily politicized Trump-Russia probe, and Republicans are seizing the momentum from the Mueller findings to lash out at Schiff. Top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway called for Schiff to resign immediately. And Donald Trump Jr. — who bristled over Schiff’s question’s after a closed-door interview with the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 — tormented him on Twitter.

It’s Politico, so the “Republicans pounce!” angle is more reflexive than anything.

THE ANSWER IS NOT 42, BUT IT’S CLOSE: After Multiple Reports About New Zealanders Turning In Guns, Guess How Many Actually Did It?

MAKE AMERICA GREAT (AND DRESS DOWN) AGAIN: Men Ditch Suits, and Retailers Struggle to Adapt.

Business casual becomes more prevalent and even more casual in tight labor markets, as management attempts to keep workers happy.

CHANGE? New Jersey lawmakers face “razor thin” vote on recreational marijuana.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Can Comedy Recover from Russia Conspiracy Hoax?

Night after night, show after show, the notion that the U.S. president colluded with a foreign government flavored the monologues.

Don’t forget how “Saturday Night Live” carried the Russia collusion torch, too. The show hired Robert De Niro, an avowed Trump hater, to play Robert Mueller investigating the president’s alleged Russian ties. The purpose was clear: the president was one report away from going to the hoosegow.

The women of “SNL” even sang “All I Want for Christmas Is Mueller” just a few weeks back.

And, as we all just learned, it wasn’t true. No Russia collusion. Period. Full stop.

Click over for examples of the New Funny.

Comedy was never pretty, but it sure has gotten ugly.

MARGARET SULLIVAN DOUBLES DOWN ON STUPID: Serious journalists should be proud of — not bullied over — their Russia reporting.

Nobody ought to be bullied, but Sullivan has gone Full Stelter. And everyone knows you never go Full Stelter.

RICK MORAN: The Most Epic Media Failure in U.S. History. “How did the institution of American journalism fail so utterly to get it right?”

Easy. They meant to.

WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL? San Antonio Bans Chick-fil-A from Its Airport for Seven Years. “Excluding in the name of ‘inclusiveness’.”