SIMON CONSTABLE: Numbers Don’t Bear Out Corbyn’s Claims on ‘Soaring Inequality.’ “Quite ironically, it was the right-of-center Conservative Party that has seen UK income inequality decrease, not increase.”

I wouldn’t call that irony.

HEH: Official NBA ‘Finals’ Hats Inadvertently Triggers Liberals.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Did one of MSNBC’s most prominent hosts, Joy Reid, intentionally mislead the public when she claimed to have evidence that anonymous hackers were behind offensive posts on her old blog?

Neither Reid nor MSNBC addressed on Friday the fact that Reid once claimed to have definitive evidence that she had been hacked. After Reid’s claims fell apart under scrutiny, she admitted on April 25 that she didn’t actually have any evidence of hacking. (RELATED: Joy Reid’s Hacking Story Filled With Holes)

MSNBC did not return an inquiry from TheDCNF over the weekend asking whether the network believed Reid intentionally misled the public when she claimed to have evidence of hacking (which she didn’t have).

The network also didn’t answer a question on what effect Reid’s apparent misleading of the public might have on the host’s credibility.

Multiple panelists on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on Sunday chastised Reid and MSNBC over their handling of the hacking controversy.

When you’ve lost CNN…

BUT OF COURSE: Facebook ‘Tried to Shut Down’ a Pro-Life Roe v. Wade Film Produced by Martin Luther King Jr.’s Niece.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Is National Lampoon 2.0 Going Woke Already? “A new screenwriting competition suggests the rebooted brand will be anything but subversive.”

The old Lampoon was fearless — and hysterical.

ANTI-FASCISM: YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG. Portland sees bloody fighting as Antifa activists storm Patriot Prayer rally.

Some protesters on Sunday hurled bottles and fireworks at police officers while others were caught with knives and other weapons, Portland Police tweeted. Officials encouraged people to get out of the immediate area “for their safety.”

Many of the Antifa activists wore black and covered their faces. Some protesters said they were demonstrating against police brutality; one sign bluntly read “F— the police.”

Patriot Prayer, which bills itself as a peaceful First Amendment advocacy group, organized a rally — “Tiny’s Freedom March,” a going-away event for Tusitala John Toese, who’s close with group leader Joey Gibson — for 5 p.m.

The Rose City Antifa scheduled a counter-protest for 4 p.m. “to show Patriot Prayer, just as we showed them last year, that their violence and hatred has no place in Portland.”

Except for the violence and hatred perpetrated by the Left, of course.

BLUE WAVE? House generic ballot a toss-up.

The CBS News/YouGov Battleground Tracker shows that if the 2018 midterm elections happened now, Democrats would take 219 seats in the House, while Republicans would take 216.

The tracker has a margin of error of nine seats, making this year’s race for control a toss-up between the two parties.

This is definitely not the time to get cocky.

CHARLIE MARTIN: What Facebook and Google Do With Your Information Should Not Be a Surprise. “You’ve always been the product. Now you’re just a higher quality product.”

Funny, they don’t make me feel higher-quality.

OLD: Bake the cake, hater.

IN: Supreme Court rules narrowly for Colorado baker who wouldn’t make same-sex wedding cake.

Narrowly? It was a 7-2 decision, Reuters.

Update: Quick, sharp analysis from Paula Bolyard.

On the other hand…

So that’s how the Court got to 7-2. The next go-’round might be too close to call.

PLAYING THE LONG GAME: The FBI calls Chinese spies in the US a ‘whole of society threat’ — here’s how to protect yourself.

New court documents filed in the US allege that ZTE, another Chinese phone maker, was set up with the express purpose of conducting international espionage.

With a camera, microphone, and the logins of its owners accounts, accessing the smarphones of US citizens would be a massive intelligence boon for any nation.

Public naivety comes up again and again in intelligence circles. In May, the US banned all Chinese-made smartphones from the Pentagon, saying devices from Huawei and ZTE “may pose an unacceptable risk to department’s personnel, information and mission.”

If the Pentagon is taking seriously the risk of espionage via Chinese-made phones, maybe savvy US citizens should follow suit.

What I’d like to know is, when Chinese-made smartphones were becoming ubiquitous during the Obama Administration, why weren’t the American people warned?

FLASHBACK: How Non-Originalists Popularize Originalism and What that Means.

Seth Barrett Tillman wrote what could be the companion piece to Rick Moran’s “When in God’s name did a liberal ever care what the writers of the Constitution intended?” (Linked earlier today.) Except that Seth wrote his back in 2016.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: The New York Times Gets a Letter and Much, Much More. “The political celebrity class was giddy after the Trump letter was revealed, war-gaming themselves into a tizzy about hypothetical scenarios like Trump pardoning himself. But for what crime? Remember, there’s no crime at the foundation of the Mueller probe.”

“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime,” the scary man once said.

I CERTAINLY HOPE SO: Can China, United States prevent a war of words over South China Sea becoming a military storm?

HEH: Disney/ABC Should Merge with Starbucks and the NFL.

REMINDER: Democrats Want to Raise Your Gas Prices on Purpose.

Flashback: Obama Promised Electricity Costs Would Skyrocket.

Flash further back: Bill Clinton and Al Gore tried to pass a BTU tax in 1993.

It’s what they do.

HMM: Israel freezes Armenian ‘genocide’ bill due to fears it could aid Erdogan.

The bill, tabled in the wake of a diplomatic falling out between Ankara and Tel Aviv over Israel’s killing of protesters in Gaza, was presented by politicians in the governing coalition and opposition.

On Sunday, it was due to be put to a preliminary vote by a ministerial committee.

However, with Turkish voters going to the polls on 24 June in presidential and parliamentary elections, fears have surfaced that the bill could be politicised by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his favour.

“The Foreign Ministry advised Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] to postpone the discussion on recognising the Armenian genocide until after the elections in Turkey, since such a discussion is liable to aid Erdogan in the elections,” ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said in a statement.

“The prime minister accepted the Foreign Ministry’s recommendation,” Nahshon added.

I’d love to be wrong about this, but I’m not sure there’s any way left to derail the proto-Sultan’s coronation-via-election.

ATLAS IS SHRUGGING: A historic exodus is leaving Venezuela without teachers, doctors and electricians.

This collapsing socialist state is suffering one of the most dramatic outflows of human talent in modern history, with Aquiles Nazoa offering a glimpse into what happens when a nation begins to empty out. Vast gaps in Venezuela’s labor market are causing a breakdown in daily life, and robbing this nation of its future. The exodus is broad and deep — an outflow of doctors, engineers, oil workers, bus drivers and electricians.

And teachers.

So far this year, 48,000 teachers — or 12 percent of all staff at elementary and high schools nationwide — have quit, according to Se Educa, an educational nonprofit group. The vast majority, according to the group, have joined a stampede of Venezuelans leaving the country to escape food lines and empty grocery store shelves.

How many of Venezuela’s best and brightest will bother to return, even after the Bolivarian “revolution” has run its course?

BLUE WAVE? Will San Diego be the ‘blue wave’ canary in a coal mine?

California is central to the Democrats’ hope to flip the 23 Republican districts nationwide needed to gain the majority in the House of Representatives

The free-for-all in 49th Congressional District straddling San Diego and Orange counties, represented by retiring Republican Darrell Issa, is in the middle of it all. Hillary Clinton won the 2016 popular vote in the 49th and six other California Republican districts, and the Democratic Party is making a push in all of them.

While not one of the prime Democratic targets, the East County 50th District held by embattled Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter also is being watched for how well, or poorly, Democrats do.

Democrats came surging into the year with high expectations fueled by dissatisfaction with, in some cases hatred of, President Donald Trump. That momentum has been tempered by a shifting political landscape and the worry that there are simply too many Democrats on the ballot in some races, potentially splitting the vote to the benefit of Republicans.

There’s the potential — considerable in some districts, less so in others — that Democratic candidates could get shut out of November because of the state’s primary system, where the top two vote-getters advance regardless of party affiliation.

Stay tuned…

CONVENIENCE: Former U.S. Attorney Cites Framers’ Intent in Denying Trump Self-Pardoning Power. “When in God’s name did a liberal ever care what the writers of the Constitution intended?”

When it can be used to bash Republicans, of course.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: There’s No Traffic or Road Rage and It’s Awful: Life in Caracas. “Noisy, smoggy commutes used to grind the city to a halt. Now, that daily headache would be a sign of better times.”

As I keep saying: Socialists run out of everything but zeroes.

SARAH HOYT: Stop Buying the Left’s Pseudo-Freudian Analysis.

RENT-SEEKERS GOTTA SEEK RENTS: King Corn Suing EPA Over Ethanol Waivers.

President Trump has thus far refused to consider ending the Renewable Fuel Standard and its mandates for blending ethanol into the gasoline supply. This keeps the King Corn folks in Iowa happy, but pretty much nobody else in conservative circles. Some compromises have finally been reached, however, and the EPA has begun granting a few waivers to refineries which were the hardest hit by the mandates and associated penalties. It wasn’t much, but it’s at least a start.

So how did the corn contingent respond? They’re suing the EPA, saying that the waivers are violating their iron grip on the market or something.

“Entitlement” is a dirty word and an even worse attitude.

I CERTAINLY HOPE NOT: Do Tequila Drinkers Need to Worry about an Agave Shortage?

WHAT DO YOU CALL A GOOD START? U.S. Demanding ‘Complete, Verifiable, Irreversible Denuclearization’ from North Korea, Says Official.

ROCKET REPORT: SpaceShipTwo soars, BFR engine advances, a self-eating booster.

Here’s more on the autophage rocket:

Engineers in Scotland and Ukraine are working on a small “autophage” rocket that consumes itself during ascent. The autophage engine consumes a propellant rod which has solid fuel on the outside and oxidizer on the inside, according to PhysOrg. The researchers say such a rocket could be good for launching CubeSats.

Launch lunch… This is actually kind of a brilliant concept to shed large quantities of mass on the way to orbit and deal with the problem of an empty fuel tank. Whether it’s practical, who knows. At present, the engineers are working with an engine prototype in the lab now and have no direct path to building a rocket around it.

If it works, we’ll at long last have the definitive answer to the question: “What’s the exact opposite of a reusable rocket?”