RICHARD POLLOCK: Soros, Clinton-Linked Teneo Among Donors to McCain Institute.

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain in 2012 turned over nearly $9 million in unspent funds from his failed 2008 presidential campaign to a new foundation bearing his name, the McCain Institute for International Leadership.

The institute is intended to serve as a “legacy” for McCain and “is dedicated to advancing human rights, dignity, democracy and freedom.” It is a tax-exempt non-profit foundation with assets valued at $8.1 million and associated with Arizona State University.

Conservative and liberal critics, however, believe the institute constitutes a major conflict of interest for McCain, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned.

Ya think?

Read the whole thing.

CUE THE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: U.S. Drillers Are Hammering OPEC’s Plans.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of kleptocrats.

TURNABOUT: Man Who Drove Truck Into Crowd of London Muslims Faces Terrorism Charges. “Theresa May calls attack ‘every bit as sickening as those which have come before.'”

Morally, May is correct. Legally, she may be setting a dangerous legal precedent, giving Islamic terrorists a new lawfare wedge.

GET COVERED! Liz Sheld’s morning brief has everything you need to know, from the battle for Georgia Six to Pravda vs CNN in the White House Press Room.

HORRIBLE: Muslim teen died of blunt force trauma.

Police in Virginia say “road rage” prompted the killing 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen. Police have charged 22-year-old Darwin Martinez Torres with murder. Police say they believe Martinez Torres acted alone and say they are not looking for other suspects.

The Fairfax County Police Department said they believe the killing was sparked by a fight Martinez Torres got into with a teenage boy on a bike. Police say Martinez Torres, who was armed with a baseball bat, later began chasing the group, caught up with Hassanen and attacked her.

Police say it appears that Martinez Torres was “so enraged over the traffic dispute that it escalated into deadly violence.”

The excitement from some corners was almost palpable for Hassanen’s murder to have been a Christian-on-Muslim hate crime, but her fate would have been just as heinous under any circumstance.

FASTER, PLEASE: Johns Hopkins researchers say they’ve unlocked key to cancer metastasis and how to slow it.

Hasini Jayatilaka was a sophomore at the Johns Hopkins University working in a lab studying cancer cells when she noticed that when the cells become too densely packed, some would break off and start spreading.

She wasn’t sure what to make of it, until she attended an academic conference and heard a speaker talking about bacterial cells behaving the same way. Yet when she went through the academic literature to see if anyone had written about similar behavior in cancer cells, she found nothing.

Seven years later, the theory Jayatilaka developed early in college is now a bona fide discovery that offers significant promise for cancer treatment.

Fascinating report, well worth your time.

SALENA ZITO: Don’t be so quick to dismiss Trump’s coal mining initiative.

The Acosta Deep Mine in Somerset County marks a dramatic upturn for the area. And while President Trump cannot claim that he brought the industry back here personally (this new mine was already being developed before the election), he is an effective cheerleader for folks who’ve been discounted by the political elite.

“We will begin by employing 70 to 100 miners and we hope to open a total of three new mines in the next 18 months — and that will mean additional hiring,” said George Dethlefsen, CEO of Corsa Coal, which owns the mine.

More than 400 people applied for the first wave of jobs that will pay from $50,000 to $100,000, Dethlefsen said.

In a region where the median household income is $29,050, and nearly 12 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, the economic injection is huge.

I’ve always been an All of the Above guy on energy, with a healthy dose of “Get the hell out of my way!”

UH-OH: RNC Contractor Exposes Data on Nearly 200M Voters: Should You Be Worried? “Perhaps the largest known exposure of voter information in history.”

BREAKING: Otto Warmbier, Student Returned by North Korea in Coma, Dies.

NOW THAT’S THE 21ST CENTURY I WAS HOPING FOR: This ATM Dispenses 24 Different Types of Beer, Not Money.

SLANTED DECISION: Supreme Court Decision Upholds Free Speech, a Good Sign for the Redskins.

PAYBACK: Senate leaders plan to rush a health-care bill to a vote, and there’s nothing Democrats can do about it.

They were warned they wouldn’t like the rules they established.

THE NEW SILK ROAD: China May Soon Establish Naval Base in U.S. Ally Pakistan.

“Ally” seems a little much.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: New Satellite Imaging To Better Forecast Locust Plagues.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: A Tweet Is Just a Tweet – It Tells Us Nothing about Whether Trump Is Under Investigation.

ICYMI, IT’S GLENN’S USA TODAY COLUMN: We need a Robert Mueller resignation or a second special counsel.

CHANGE IT BACK: Cuban Foreign Minister Hits Out at Trump for Hardening U.S. Stance.

NOTHINGBURGER: Jones Short on Straight Answers in Kelly Interview.

For all the hype, it was distinctly unremarked-upon last night on social media.

PEAK OIL: Rosneft Discovers Oil in Laptev Sea.

Russian oil major Rosneft has discovered oil in the Laptev Sea after drilling its northernmost exploratory well on the Eastern Arctic shelf.

The Tsentralno-Olginskaya-1 well was the first well drilled in the Laptev Sea and is located in the Khatanga license area which has water depths of up to 32 meters (105 feet). The company was awarded the license in November 2015 and began drilling in April this year.

The Khatanga field’s resource potential is yet to be confirmed, but seismic studies indicate 114 promising oil and gas-bearing structures, and preliminary estimates are that the sea may have a resource potential of 9.5 billion tons of oil equivalent.

Is there anywhere not awash in the stuff?

AMAZON EATS WHOLE FOODS: Why M&A Strategy (And Your Retail Experience) Just Changed Forever.

Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods is truly in a class of its own. None of the conventional reasons can explain the acquisition. For one, Amazon won’t be consolidating the grocery sector. By the end of 2016, Walmart commanded the lion’s share with 14.45% in the food and grocery market. Whole Foods had a paltry 1.21%, while Amazon’s share was negligible at 0.19%. The product categories between Amazon and Whole Foods are also so distant that it’s hard to imagine a viable “one-stop shopping” strategy. It’s unlikely that quinoa lovers would pick up an e-reader or set of Wi-Fi speakers while shopping at Whole Foods. And Whole Foods itself is definitely not going to disrupt Amazon.

Still, with Whole Foods under its belt, Amazon could take its retail experimentation to a whole new level. Famous for the “test and learn” approach, CEO Jeff Bezos has been opening physical bookstores and cashier-less convenience stores. Upon visiting any of Amazon’s bookstores, one would discover the unusual tweaks everywhere; each book is positioned with its cover exposed, rather than showing the spine, as is customary in a traditional store. Small black cards are placed below each book with customer review data pulled from Amazon’s website.

“We love that mixture between creativity and data, and understanding our customers and continually trying to learn how we can make a better store for them,” Jennifer Cast, VP of Amazon Books, told Geekwire. But these physical stores are not merely distribution channels; there are only a few of them. They are research laboratories.

I’ve joked that “synergy” is the word CEOs use to rationalize a merger with no real business case or whose numbers just don’t add up, so it will be interesting to see what Bezos is actually up to with Whole Foods and whether he can make it work.

SPENGLER: China leapfrogs US in critical strategic technology.

ELECTRONIC WARFARE: The Army Can Now Stop Enemy Tanks In Their Tracks Without Firing A Shot.

This is an important step forward in an area where the Army is believed to have fallen behind near-peer rivals like China and Russia.

VIDEO: Unhinged Leftists Endorse Violence Against Republicans.

MICHAEL WALSH: Put me down with my PJ colleague Andrew Klavan regarding the Shakespeare in the Park incident the other day.

HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN? The Fitzgerald, The U.S. Navy, and Collisions at Sea.

It is difficult to understand how something like this could happen, given the size of the vessels, the well-understood rules that govern the movement of ships, the expanse of the ocean, the technology available to avoid collisions, and the (relatively) slow speed at which ships move. As this tragedy unfolded in near-real time, on Friday night (Eastern time), I participated in a robust exchange on Twitter, trying to offer what little I could to concerned people trying to make sense of the news. Concern for the crew dominated the discussion, but there were many well-intentioned “how does something like this happen?” tweets. It would be premature and irresponsible to comment on the specifics of this collision, because I know nothing of them. What we have are photographs of two ships which give us some idea of the alignment of the vessels at impact, but which tell us little about their relative positions when the error chain began. There will be investigations and they will affix responsibility — such is the way of admiralty law and the practice of the U.S. Navy. Blame and responsibility have no place in this essay.

From 2004 to 2006 I commanded USS Bulkeley (DDG 84), a ship very much like the Fitzgerald, and during the rest of my 21-year Navy career I spent a good bit of time at sea. I have never been involved in a collision, but I have been in very tight situations which, had my ship or the other not properly responded, could have resulted in one. During my career, on the rare occasions in which Navy ships were involved in collisions, voluminous lessons learned were promulgated. We studied these incidents and incorporated them into our training. In virtually every instance, decisions made by fallible human beings were contributing factors.

Enlightening stuff for landlubbers.