EVERYTHING IS PROBLEMATICAL: Outrage After England’s Prince George, Age 4, Plays With One Specific Item.

OBAMA EATS DOG, DOG EATS OBAMA’S HOMEWORK: Nat. Archives Stumble onto New Obama Scandal — ‘Wholesale Destruction’ of Gov’t Records.

“A first-rate librarian, (David) Ferriero has been driving a much-needed digital overhaul and expansion of the National Archives over the nine years of his appointment,” writer Thomas Lipscomb reported for RealClearPolitics. “This will greatly improve the ability of digital search locally and remotely, as well as accessing the files themselves.”

However, that only works if you have the files you need in the first place. And Lipscomb, well, doesn’t.

The former president, it must be noted, signed a law that put electronic communications under the 1950 Federal Records Act. However, it doesn’t seem that his practice is quite what he preaches.

Lipscomb wrote that “the accumulation of recent congressional testimony has made it clear that the Obama administration itself engaged in the wholesale destruction and ‘loss’ of tens of thousands of government records covered under the act as well as the intentional evasion of the government records recording system by engaging in private email exchanges.”

I probably don’t need to ask why this isn’t a bigger story.

ANDREW MCCARTHY ON ROD ROSENSTEIN’S SUBPOENA THREAT: He’s Conflicted, and He’s Acting Like It. “On what planet is it necessary for Jeff Sessions to recuse himself but perfectly appropriate for Rod Rosenstein to continue as acting attorney general for purposes of both the Mueller investigation and Congress’s probe of Justice Department investigative irregularities?”

SECSTATE POMPEO: North Korea Should Take Denuclearization Steps Within Next Two Years.

TYLER O’NEIL: Is Corey Stewart a White Supremacist?

Lots to chew on here.

HMM: Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen likely to cooperate as his attorneys leave case, sources say.

More to come — but how much more?

ARMED AND FABULOUS: Gay Americans are arming themselves to stay alive.

THEY’RE JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU: It’s Time To Stick A Fork In Cynthia Nixon’s Campaign.

PROOF THAT GOD WANTS US TO BE REALLY HAPPY: America’s Gone Beer Mad: 100 Breweries Or More In Nearly Half Of U.S. States.

DR. HELEN EXPLAINS: Why is John Schneider Being Jailed for Not Paying Alimony?

TYLER O’NEIL: ‘Incredibles 2’ Is a Clever, Relevant, Guaranteed Box Office Hit.

On a somewhat related note, the VodkaWife and I saw Ocean’s 8 on Sunday. We went in with our expectations set to “Please don’t have screwed this up,” and left the theater smiling at a surprisingly entertaining, non-preachy, and well-executed caper flick.

IT’S AN HONOR JUST TO BE NOMINATED: Trump Nominated for Peace Prize by Norwegian Lawmakers.

PRIVACY: Apple bans developers from creating, selling user Contacts databases. “One less thing developers can do with Contacts information after they have it.”

IT COULDN’T BE MUCH WORSE: A North Korean Pact Will Be Nothing Like the Iran Deal.

CHUTZPAH: Taliban Claim U.S. Violated Their Free Speech with Airstrikes on ‘Voice of Shariah’ Station.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Bad Iranian Deal Was Always Going to Get Worse.

The deal, after all, was a monstrosity born out of desperation for an Obama signature legacy. Or was it a product of an ahistorical, naïve, and therapeutic view of human nature — assuming that even theocrats and thugs view generosity as outreach to be reciprocated in kind rather than as abject proof of weakness to be exploited to the fullest? Or worse still, the deal was the manifestation of an unhinged view of the Middle East. For Obama, a revolutionary Shiite and Persian Iran was justified in seeking parity in the Middle East and attempting to carve out a legitimate sphere of influence. The ascendance of such an Iranian crescent, at least in the view of the Obama administration, would “check” the influence of both democratic Israel and the so-called more moderate authoritarian Sunni regimes in the Gulf and Egypt and Jordan. To believe in such a yarn, Obama would have to have believed either in some sort of dramatic and looming Iranian revolution to overthrow the mullahs, or an absurd theocratic enlightenment, or that whatever Iran did would not be as pernicious as what its enemies in the Middle East were doing. No matter: For all practical purposes, the U.S. after 2015 was a de facto partner of the Iranian regime and quite astonishingly assumed that the American-hating, anti-Semitic regime “could be a very successful regional power.”

Just think of them as Iranian intelligence agents with American security credentials, and you won’t go far wrong.

STEIN’S LAW: Feds Collect Record Individual Income Taxes Through May; Still Run $532.2B Deficit.

That’s more than half a trillion dollars in just five months.

HE’S RIGHT: Dershowitz Blasts the ACLU for Becoming a ‘Hard-Left Political Advocacy Group.’ “The ACLU is no longer a neutral defender of everyone’s civil liberties. It has morphed into a hyper-partisan, hard-left political advocacy group,”

MARGOT CLEVELAND: What To Look For In The Inspector General’s Report About DOJ And FBI Election Interference.

On the big picture, there will be two final take-aways of note from Horowitz’s report: first, whether the IG’s conclusions raise the possibility of criminal prosecution and, if so, of whom. The IG has already referred a criminal case against former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe to DC’s U.S. attorney’s office. That was based on Horowitz’s findings that McCabe was responsible for leaks to the Wall Street Journal but lied about his role both to his former boss, FBI director James Comey, and to investigators.

While the IG report will not announce what criminal referrals, if any, have been made, the findings will provide insight, just as did the announcement that McCabe demonstrated a “lack of candor” in his conversations with Comey and investigators.

And:

Pay Attention to Comey’s Clinton Exoneration Memo

Further, in discussing “certain underlying investigative decisions were based on improper considerations,” look for the IG report to focus on Comey’s drafting of a memo exonerating Hillary Clinton while the probe was still ongoing and before the FBI had interviewed Hillary and two of her top aides. How the FBI handled those interviews will be another area likely discussed, given criticism already leveled at the FBI for allowing Hillary to be interviewed without swearing an oath and the investigators’ decision to grant Hillary’s aides immunity.

The report will also likely delve into the process by which changes were made to the draft memo, which originally described Clinton’s actions as “grossly negligent” before the FBI toned the charges down to “extremely careless.” The “grossly negligent” label coincided with the statutory requirement for criminal intent, likely explaining the modification. The question is whether Horowitz uncovered any evidence that those supposedly investigating Clinton altered the memo for that reason.

More at the link, and much more tomorrow when the report is released.

LOONIE: Trump Threatens People of Canada With the Loss of ‘A Lot of Money.’ “Everyone knows that inside every Canadian, an American is screaming to get out.”

Heh.

SCOTT ADAMS: Trump Video Message To Kim “Might Be The Best Thing Anybody Ever Did In A Negotiation, Period.”

And here it is:

MATTHEW PETERSON: Thank God Trump Isn’t a Foreign Policy Expert.

In fact, many on the Right and Left over the past two years have suggested their main worry about Donald Trump is the fact he now represents America to the rest of the world and will cause a devastating disaster, nuclear or otherwise.

I propose some simple, evaluative questions and a thought experiment to set the minds of the nation at ease the morning after the most significant moment of the Trump presidency.

Does Donald Trump have enough experience and expert wisdom to give away as much to North Korea as the American foreign-policy establishment, with all its experience, top-shelf degrees, and stratospheric test scores, has given away in the past 30 years?

Does Donald Trump have enough experience and expert wisdom to keep the hostile stalemate the American foreign-policy establishment created and fostered with North Korea since America first waged the Korean War?

For that matter, does Trump even have the experience and caste of mind to start a war, say, in the Middle East, that costs trillions of dollars and disrupts and inflames the region as President Bush and his entourage did? Does he even know how?

Does Trump have the expertise to take over the wreckage of such a war and support jihadist rebels, help create ISIS and a global refugee crisis, and give Russia the most power it’s had in the region since the peak of the Cold War, like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did?

The truth may alarm you. Trump has never even started a war before—not even a little one.

As the wise old man said: “Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it.”

HMM: Taliban Denies It Is in ‘Secret Talks’ With NATO.

Bill Roggio:

“We reject the mentioned claim and emphasize that no such secret process exists,” Zabihullah stated. He then postulated that Afghan officials may be negotiating with Taliban impostors.

“But it is entirely plausible that some supposed Mujahideen faces or materialistic persons could have tricked the desperate and nescient Kabul regime into believing they are Mujahideen representatives. This however is a different issue and such people have no relations with the Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate,” he said.

Zabihullah’s assertion that Afghan officials may be negotiating with sham Taliban is not as far fetched as it seems. In 2010, Afghan and U.S. officials thought they were negotiating with Mullah Mansour, who at the time was the deputy to then Taliban emir Mulla Omar (Mansour replaced Omar as Taliban Emir after he died in 2013). The would-be Mansour even met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai before he was discovered to be a charlatan.

It’s complicated.

NOT OUR KIND, DEAR: Why does the commentariat so despise Trump’s success?

The bizarre thing about the anti-Trump response to the Singapore summit is how simple-minded it is in its sophistication. Donald Trump clearly understands the tentative exploratory nature of his diplomatic initiative. He understands that the diplomacy might not work. But the possibility of effecting the denuclearisation of North Korea is too great an opportunity to pass up. It is a possibility, which means that it might fail. That’s one reason Trump is maintaining the tough sanctions that are imposed against North Korea. His strategy of maximum pressure brought Kim to the bargaining table. Let’s see what else it can do.

Notwithstanding the cavils of the ATMC, Trump won major concessions from Kim. The agreement they signed calls for the rapid, complete, and verifiable denuclearisation of the country. In a late addition to the agreement, it also calls for the destruction of a major missile test site. Kim also agreed to return the remains of some 6000 American dead to their families.

Will all of this happen? Stay tuned. Two final thoughts. One, this is what bold diplomacy looks like. It is two parts theatre, one part substantive agreement. You don’t get the result you want instantly. It is, to use a word Trump deployed a week or two before the summit, a “process.” You don’t get a reformation of human rights and McDonald’s and the beach-front condos all at once. You don’t even get all the military concessions all at once. But you start the ball rolling. You say nice things about Kim. You tell the world that he is “talented,” that only “one in ten-thousand” young men would have been able to step into the role and maintain power as he has. You flatter him. “Do you see Kim Jong-un as an equal?” one reporter asked. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make the world a safer place,” Trump responded, even share a stage with him. Who is the bigger man, the clucking reporter or Donald Trump?

It’s been embarrassing to witness.

CHANGE? At Least 400 LGBT Candidates Vowing Political Wave This Campaign Season. “Katie Hill is more than one of the Victory Fund’s favored candidates. Democrats are hoping she will be able to defeat Knight, a Republican seeking his third term in Congress.”