MICHAEL GOODWIN: Why James Comey had to go.

The suddenly-former FBI boss was long cavalier about making enemies among both Democrats and Republicans, as if going rogue repeatedly proved his rectitude. On occasion it did, but Comey increasingly wore his self-righteousness on his sleeve, confident he was too big to fire.

That was his fatal mistake. And it’s why Trump made the right decision to show him the door.

Comey’s power-grabbing arrogance is why I called him “J. Edgar Comey” two months ago. His willingness to play politics, while insisting he was above it all, smacked of Washington at its worst. He was the keeper of secrets, until they served his purpose.

As such, the president did to Comey what no president had the courage to do to J. Edgar Hoover. Five presidents wanted to fire Hoover, with Harry Truman accusing him of running a police state and of blackmail. But all were afraid of Hoover, so he died in office.

Trump acted before Comey could get that kind of lifetime protection, which has no place in American democracy. At our best, we are a nation of laws, not of people who accumulate power and ruthlessly wield it without accountability.

The president didn’t have just one good reason to act. He had a choice among many.

The proximate cause was lying to Congress, which isn’t just enough to be shown the door — it’s nearly obligatory.

HMM: Senate Intel Chairman ‘Troubled by Timing and Reasoning’ of Comey Termination.

Developing, as they say.

CNN PLAYS “NAME THAT PARTY!:” Seattle mayor Ed Murray drops re-election bid amid sexual abuse claim scandal.

The mayor was accused in a lawsuit by Delvonn Heckard, now 46, who said the mayor “repeatedly raped” him when he was a 15-year-old boy and the mayor was 32. Heckard says Murray, now 62, also paid him for sexual acts.

The lawsuit also alleges that Heckard was not the only child abused by the mayor. “On at least one occasion, D.H. was at Mr. Murray’s home when another apparently under aged boy was at the apartment. D.H. was of the understanding that Mr. Murray was having sex with the other boy for money at the same time,” the complaint reads.

Murray’s missing party affiliation? Democrat.

IT’S COMPLICATED: Trump to Arm Syrian Kurds, Even as Turkey Strongly Objects.

American military commanders have long argued that arming the Y.P.G., a Kurdish militia fighting alongside Syrian Arab forces against the Islamic State, is the fastest way to seize Raqqa, the capital of the militants’ self-proclaimed caliphate.

And Mr. Trump, who made fighting Islamist militants a priority during his campaign, again showed the high regard he has for Pentagon generals by endorsing their advice when faced with a policy dilemma.

Turkey has objected vociferously to such a move, raising fears of a backlash that could prompt the Turks to curtail their cooperation with Washington in the struggle against the Islamic State.

A high-level delegation of Turkish officials was informed of the decision by Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, when they visited the White House on Monday, and the Pentagon announced the move on Tuesday.

Ankara objects to armed Kurds under most any circumstance, and anyway has recently been more cooperative with Moscow than with Washington.

GOOD MORNING: Liz Sheld’s Morning Brief has your Hump Day covered.

KATIE PAVLICH: Goodbye To My Friend, Bob Owens.

Rick Moran remembers an “uncompromising defender of the right to bear arms.”

And this:

TYLER O’NEIL: No, New York Times, Christianity’s Opposition to Abortion Is Anything But New.

PROGRESS? The Echo Show’s killer feature is next-level FaceTime.

Along with the Echo Show, Amazon is launching a new communications platform for Alexa devices, which allows for calling and messaging between Echo units and smartphones that have the Alexa app installed. A feature called Drop In lets the devices connect instantly, without requiring someone to “answer” the call. This allows the Echo Show to be an always-ready, internet-connected video intercom that I can call from anywhere in the world using my smartphone.

As a parent of two young children who takes a number of work trips per year, I make a lot of video calls back home to say good morning or wish them good night. Services such as Skype and FaceTime have completely changed how I can keep in touch with my family when I’m away, as a video call is always more intimate than text messages or a voice call, especially for young children.

But FaceTime and similar services have their own limitations: they need a smartphone, tablet, or computer open and available and for the other party to answer the call. A video intercom that’s always on and ready for a call has no such limitations.

Is not having someone’s uninvited face suddenly appear in your kitchen or den really such a limitation?

THIS SCIENCE IS SETTLED: John Daly claims he lost 67 pounds by adopting a ‘whisky and popcorn’ diet.

I bet he could have lost more weight even faster if he’d gone with a good single malt instead of Jack Daniels — or at least, if the need should ever arise, that’s what I’ll tell my wife.

SHOCK-JOCK POLS: Democrats are projecting competence by swearing.

Noah Rothman:

A New York Magazine profile of obvious 2020 hopeful Kirsten Gillibrand featured the esteemed gentlewoman from New York unleashing cascade of profanity upon her interlocutor. Her interview included “one ‘f***,’ two ‘f***ings,’ one ‘bulls***,’” and a variety of other lesser but equally crude expletives, according to Politico’s Alex Caton. At a public event, while sitting across from several former speechwriters for Barack Obama, California Senator Kamala Harris (another likely 2020 candidate) castigated Representative Raul Labrador for claiming that Americans do not die for want of health insurance. “What the f*** is that?” she remarked. Her audience roared and ate it up.

Republicans “don’t give a s*** about people,” barked newly elected Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez in an attack on the GOP’s approach to health-care reform. Perez employed similarly salty language to attack the Trump White House’s spending proposals. “They call it a skinny budget,” he said. “I call it a sh***y budget.” Representative Beto O’Rourke can often be seen weaving the occasional “s***” into stump speeches as he prepares to challenge Senator Ted Cruz. “Mr. President: If there was a wiretap at Trump Tower, that means a fed judge found probable cause of crime which means you are in deep s***,” tweeted Representative Ted Lieu, whose garment-rending online persona has attracted a devoted following of hysterical liberals.

Once is sui generis. Twice is a coincidence. Forty-seven times is a campaign.

Indeed. It’s about keeping the base riled up until November, 2018.

As to what that says about the base, I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader.

VIDEO OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN: MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle Claims Being a Woman Is a Preexisting Condition.

There’s video. It happened.

LONG WAY DOWN: Iceland drills 4.7 km down into volcano to tap clean energy.

At this depth, engineers hope to access hot liquids under extreme pressure and at temperatures of 427 degrees C (800 F), creating steam that turns a turbine to generate clean electricity.

Iceland’s decision to harness the heat inside the earth in a process known as geothermal energy dates back to the 1970s and the oil crisis.

But the new geothermal well is expected to generate far more energy, as the extreme heat and pressure at that depth makes the water take the form of a “supercritical” fluid, which is neither gas nor liquid.

“We expect to get five to 10 times more power from the well than a conventional well today,” said Albert Albertsson, an engineer at the Icelandic energy company HS Orka, involved in the drilling project.

To supply electricity and hot water to a city like Reykjavik with 212,000 inhabitants, “we would need 30-35 conventional high temperature wells” compared to only three or five supercritical wells, says Albertsson. The cost would be much less.

On a remote island nation with lots of volcanic activity, geothermal would seem to make sense. But even after digging “Thor,” scientists “have two years to determine its success and the economic feasibility of the experiment.”

TOLERANCE: Jakarta’s Christian governor Ahok found guilty in Islam blasphemy trial.

The sentence was harsher than expected and will come as a shock to many of his supporters. TV news coverage of the scene outside the court showed some supporters weeping.

Prosecutors had called for a suspended one-year jail sentence on charges of hate speech. The maximum sentence is four years in prison for hate speech and five years for blasphemy.

Judges said he did it deliberately and did not show remorse. Ahok told the court he will appeal the ruling.

Thousands of police have been deployed across the capital in case clashes break out between Ahok’s supporters and hard-line Islamists who demanded he be sacked and jailed over the allegations.

His crime? “Ahok said during the campaign that people were being deceived if they believed a specific verse in the Quran forbids Muslims from voting for non-Muslims.”

That’s instructive.

THIS IS NOT THE GOP MAJORITY I WAS PROMISED: GOP Senator Determined Healthcare Bill Will Pass ‘Jimmy Kimmel Test’

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Could marijuana hold a key to keeping our brains forever young? Science is starting to find out.

Their findings were provocative: A low dose of THC, they reported, “reversed the age-related decline in cognitive performance of mice aged 12 and 18 months.” They traced this change to a shift in gene expression — the way that our DNA codes are transcribed and translated into proteins and other molecules. According to the study, “the expression profiles of THC-treated mice aged 12 months closely resembled those of THC-free animals aged 2 months,” as if the older mice’s brains were getting younger.

The experiment focused on learning, spatial skills and memory. While older mice typically did not perform as well as young ones in mazes or with location-recognition tasks — an outcome consistent with the decline of brain function in aged individuals — they performed just as well as their younger cohort under the influence of THC. Meanwhile, younger mice given doses of THC demonstrated worse performance, more in line with that of average old mice.

I had a high school teacher who jokingly (?) said that drugs should be legalized, but only for old people. “We’re bored and everything hurts,” was the punchline.

Maybe it will turn out that he was onto something.

NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT: Richard Simmons sues National Enquirer over stories claiming he is changing gender.

VIDEO: Sally Yates Undercuts Democrats’ Argument For A Special Prosecutor In Trump-Russia Probe.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. With its bedrock smashed to pieces, Labour cannot win.

No part of the UK has been more faithful to Labour than Wales. The party has won almost every general election in nearly 100 years. In the south Welsh valleys, “Tory” is less of an affiliation than an insult. Now all that stands to be upended – in a result that will drive political columnists to file obits for Corbyn. But spend some time in Bridgend, as I did just after May’s flying visit, reporting for the Guardian and making a film for Vice News, and a more complex and worrying picture emerges.

First, this is not an election that the Conservatives are winning, it’s one Labour is losing. In Bridgend, I never once spotted a blue placard or poster. There wasn’t even a Tory candidate, until late last week, when central office imposed its own woman against the wishes of the local association. All this reminds me of visiting south Wales before last year’s Brexit vote, and realising that the ground game for Vote Leave was mainly a bunch of teenagers – one of whom was about to sit his GCSEs.

What’s affecting the Labour vote? The truth is, it’s been sliding for years in Bridgend, and leadership is only a small part of the reason why. Party diehards will say almost unanimously that they like Corbyn “and his ideas”, but the most telling comment I heard was from Ben, a thirtysomething who worked at the local Ford plant. He reeled off the Labour leaders he’d lived under: Blair, Brown, Miliband, Corbyn. “These people couldn’t be further from what I am. They don’t represent me.” He saw the divide not as ideological but cultural. Never mind the nuances in policy, what he heard was the same breed of professional politician. And while his dad and granddad had “always voted Labour”, he wouldn’t.

As Labour has removed itself culturally from its working-class roots (sound familiar?), it has also retreated politically from the center and into far-leftism (which should also sound familiar).

THEY COULD USE ONE: A competitor for Fox News?

“SOCIALISM”: How Venezuela Ruined Its Oil Industry.

So there are primarily two related causes that have resulted in the steep decline of Venezuela’s oil production, despite the sharp increase in the country’s proved reserves. The first is the removal of expertise required to develop the country’s heavy oil. This started with the firing of PDVSA employees in 2003 and continued with pushing international expertise out of the country in 2007.

Second, the Chávez government failed to appreciate the level of capital expenditures required to continue developing the country’s oil. This was in no small part due to inexperience among the Chávez loyalists that were now running PDVSA, but it may not have mattered in any case. When oil prices were high, Chávez saw billions of dollars that could be siphoned to fund the company’s social programs, and that’s exactly what he did. But he failed to reinvest adequately in this capital-intensive industry.

One of the amazing things about today’s low oil prices is that they’ve been achieved concurrent with a longterm decline in Venezuelan production. Assuming the country returns someday to sane and sensible government, the first thing they’re going to do is get those oil fields working again — and probably with very little regard to price.

That’s going to put the pinch on North American frackers, but the rest of OPEC is going to suffer, too, and perhaps to an even greater extent.

NOTHING TO CELEBRATE: A Hundred Years of Communism.

Stalin killed so many people in the Great Purge that it is remarkable that anyone was left to do the killing. Former comrades, artists and intellectuals, military officers, clergymen, dissidents, outcasts and normal Russian men and women were slaughtered in a tidal wave of blood. What is striking is not just who Stalin killed but who he spared. While hundreds of thousands of innocents were massacred, Lavrentiy Beria, who was not just a bloody killer but a known rapist, received generous promotion. [“If only Comrade Stalin knew!” -ed.]

Having carved up Eastern Europe with Adolf Hitler, and oppressed its beleaguered inhabitants with such atrocities as the Katyn massacre, where 22,000 men from the Polish officer corps and intelligensia were shot in cold blood, Stalin was himself subjected to invasion. The Red Army fought with startling courage and conviction to prevail, but as the West looked on they became embarrassed. A storm of rape and murder followed the Soviets, carried out by callous and vengeful soldiers. The Nazis in Eastern Europe were replaced with cruel and subservient Stalinist officials. Bierut in Poland, Hoxha in Albania, Rákosi in Hungary and Gottwald in Czechoslovakia kept their people mired in poverty and persecution.

The Soviets inspired others. Mao took power in China and launched a sweeping campaign of modernisation that left millions of expendable victims starved or killed. Juche arose in North Korea, wrapping itself around the country in a chokehold that has persisted to the present day. Pol Pot butchered almost a quarter of Cambodians. Mariam mass-murdered in Ethiopia. Perhaps the most successful of the communist states was Cuba, where, at least, there was not large-scale killing or famine.

Read the whole thing.

(Hat tip, Will Collier.)

WELL, YES: Donald Trump is turning liberals into conspiracy theorists.

This comes from none other than Chris Cillizza:

The firing of White House chief usher Angella Reid, the first woman to hold that job, was seized on as the latest piece of evidence that Trump and his administration was nothing more than an old boys club — openly hostile to women and minorities.

Turns out, according to Axios reporting, that Reid got along well with the President and First Lady but was far less popular with the staff of the White House she oversaw. “When her departure was announced to the residence staff yesterday morning, workers burst into applause,” Axios reported.

In each of these four instances — and all of these have been in the last week! — liberals, fueled by Twitter outrage, jumped to conclusions that portrayed Trump and other Republicans in the poorest possible light. And, on each occasion, the fuller story either totally or mostly rebutted the version of the story the left had seized on.

Cillizza cautions that “Democrats run the risk of appearing like the boy who cried wolf to the public — and in the process taking some steam out of the very legitimate questions they are asking about the Trump administration.”

But the panic-mongering isn’t about posing legitimate questions. It’s about keeping the base riled up until November, 2018.

PUBLIC SAFETY: NC motorists who hit protesters blocking roadways will be legally protected under proposed bill.

PATRICK POOLE EXCLUSIVE: Visiting the Site of the December Coptic Church Suicide Bombing in Cairo.

MAJOR DRAW: Tim Tebow Is Destroying Minor League Attendance Records.