TONY BLAIR: “I want to be explicit. Yes, the British people voted to leave Europe. And I agree the will of the people should prevail. I accept right now there is no widespread appetite to re-think. But the people voted without knowledge of the true terms of Brexit. As these terms become clear, it is their right to change their mind. Our mission is to persuade them to do so.”

Given what’s happened to Labour since Blair left office, his new anti-Brexit campaign seems like a non-starter. Who would call for a second referendum, now that Blair’s party has rejected his reforms, and Britain has rejected Blair’s party?

BURYING THE NEEDLE ON THE SMUG-O-METER:

It’s a wonder everybody doesn’t love them more.

A MARCH ABOUT NOTHING: Why the Women’s March Failed Women.

OF COURSE SHE DOES: Maxine Waters Thinks Trump Is a Secret Member of the ‘Kremlin Clan’ and Needs to Be Impeached.

HMM: Trump’s pick to replace Flynn turns down offer.

Harward had been widely reported as the favorite to replace former general Michael Flynn, who resigned after misleading Vice President Pence about the nature of his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

Trump asked the retired Navy SEAL, 60, to take the position, but he turned it down over concerns that he would not have full say over the composition of his staff, CBS and The Financial Times reported, citing unnamed sources.

Assuming the report is correct, and there’s yet no reason to doubt it, it looks like Trump went with the safe choice, expecting Harward to sail through. But to make sure that the establishment-friendly pick wouldn’t stray too far from Trump, Trump wanted to control Harward’s N.S.A. staffing. And that of course was unacceptable to a retired SEAL, and the deal fell apart.

Appointments get scuttled in ways like this frequently, but you’re supposed to have these details worked out before going public.

An unforced and embarrassing error for President Trump.

OH, CANADA! Drunk Canadian Men Arrested for Riding Couch Towed Behind ATV Through McDonalds Drive-Thru.

They were wearing helmets.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Four Ways SJWs Would Tear ‘Major League’ Apart Today.

My three favorite baseball movies probably couldn’t get made today. Bull Durham for showing a sex-positive feminist’s appreciation for a masculine sport and the men who play it. The Bad News Bears (original) for dealing honestly with kids and their issues. And Major League for the reasons Christian has listed.

BUT WHAT ABOUT ITS CARBON FOOTPRINT? Woolly mammoth on the verge of resurrection, scientists say.

And if we want to prevent them from going extinct a second time, open a chain of MammothBurger fast casual restaurants.

FALSE CONCIOUSNESS: Boeing workers in South Carolina vote against union.

After years of bitter campaigning, the International Association of Machinists failed to sway the factory’s 3,000 workers to organize in a state profoundly hostile to organized labor. Of the approximately 2,800 workers who voted, 74 percent chose not to unionize.

“We are disheartened they will have to continue to work under a system that suppresses wages, fosters inconsistency and awards only a chosen few,” the machinists’ organizer, Mike Evans, said of workers at the plant in a statement announcing the defeat.

I’m having a hard time reconciling “chosen few” with “74 percent.”

GAIA IS THE WORST POLLUTER OF ALL: A massive lake of molten carbon the size of Mexico is discovered under the US, and it could cause climate CHAOS.

Known as the upper mantle, this section of the Earth’s interior is known for by its high temperatures where solid carbonates melt, creating distinctive seismic patterns.

What they found was a vast buried deposit of molten carbon, which produces carbon dioxide and other gases, situated under the Western US, 217 miles (350km) beneath the Earth’s surface.

As a result of this study, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, scientists now believe the amount of CO2 in the Earth’s upper mantle may be up to 100 trillion metric tons.

In comparison, the US Environmental Protection Agency estimates the global carbon emission in 2011 was nearly 10 billion metric tons – a tiny amount in comparison.

Unless I dropped a zero somewhere along the way, that’s 10,000 to 1.

SO SHE’S SAYING… I HAVE A CHANCE? Scarlett Johansson to Playboy: ‘I Don’t Think It’s Natural to be Monogamous’

WELL, YES:

IT’S DIFFERENT WHEN THEY DO IT: Dear Bad Upper East Side Moms Who Targeted President Trump’s 4-Year-Old Grandson.

FLYING SOLO: Drone Flying Cars Will Soar Over Dubai This Summer.

The craft can carry a passenger weighing up to 100 kilograms (220 pounds) and a small suitcase. After buckling into its race-car-style seat, the craft’s sole passenger selects a destination on a touch-screen pad in front of the seat and the drone flies there automatically.

The drone, which has a battery allowing for a half-hour flight time and a range of up to 50 kilometers (31 miles), will be monitored remotely by a control room on the ground. It has a top speed of 160 kph (100 mph), but authorities say it will be operated typically at 100 kph (62 mph).

Al-Tayer said the drone would begin regular operations in July. He did not elaborate.

The Road and Transportation Agency later issued a statement saying the drone had been examined by the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority and was controlled through 4G mobile internet. The agency did not immediately respond to further questions from The Associated Press.

Just how secure is 4G mobile internet?

PROJECT VERITAS: Two More Anarchists Arrested in #DisruptJ20 Plot.

SANCTUARY CHURCHES? Colorado Church Offers Immigrant Sanctuary From Deportation.

[Jeanette] Vizguerra pleaded guilty to using a fake ID in order to work in 2009. ICE officials say they’ve already granted her six stays of removal, and declined to issue another. That’s when Vizguerra sought refuge in the church rather than face deportation to Mexico.

“It is our position as a people of faith that this is sacred, and faithful work,” said the Rev. Mike Morran during the news conference at his church. “We know Jeanette. We know her to be an honorable human being.”

But critics say the church is violating law.

“It is illegal for anyone to deliberately and knowingly shield an illegal alien from detection by federal authorities,” says Jessica Vaughan, policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit organization that favors less immigration.

“Potentially these church leaders could be placing their parish at risk for prosecution and fines,” Vaughan says. “I hope it won’t come to that.”

Some people are hoping it comes to exactly that for propaganda purposes.

MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH: The tale of how the USSR almost invented the internet.

Many of today’s digital utopians draw inspiration from a real world attempt to implement electronic socialism: Salvador Allende’s abortive 1970s programme that sought to rationalise and democratise the planning of the Chilean economy through a nationwide network of telex machines. “Project Cybersyn” was cut short by Pinochet’s coup, but, helped by the surviving images of its iconic retro-futurist central operations room, the episode continues to symbolise radical aspirations to harness technology to break through to an alternative economic system.

Cybersyn was conceived during the same era as a still more ambitious but less well documented project: a well-resourced programme to digitise the planning of the Soviet Union’s vast command economy. The labyrinthine story of the “Soviet internet” is told in detail in a new book by Tulsa University professor Benjamin Peters, who, venturing into Moscow archives “lit by a single flickering light bulb”, pieces together the tale of plans to supercharge the USSR’s stuttering economy through the installation and networking of a constellation of mainframe computers at major production points from Leningrad to Siberia. The project was one of the most spectacular manifestations of the restless Soviet ambition to lever technology to create the material conditions for “full communism”.

This is like arguing that another socialistic utopian, Gene Roddenberry, almost invented the teleporter.

CHARLIE MARTIN: General Flynn and Colonel Mustard: Let’s Piece Together Clues About the Leak.

RICHARD POLLOCK: How The Nation’s Spooks Played The Game ‘Kill Mike Flynn’

The talk within the tight-knit community of retired intelligence officers was that Flynn’s sacking was a result of intelligence insiders at the CIA, NSA and National Security Council using a sophisticated “disinformation campaign” to create a crisis atmosphere. The former intel officers say the tactics hurled against Flynn over the last few months were the type of high profile hard-ball accusations previously reserved for top figures in enemy states, not for White House officials.

“This was a hit job,” charged retired Col. James Williamson, a 32-year Special Forces veteran who coordinated his operations with the intelligence community.

Noting the Obama administration first tried to silence Flynn in 2014 when the former president fired him as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Williamson called Monday’s resignation, “stage Two of ‘Kill Mike Flynn.”

Former intelligence officials who understand spy craft say Flynn’s resignation had everything to do with a “disinformation campaign” and little to do with the December phone conversation he had with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

They charge officials from America’s top spy counsels leaked classified government intercepts of Flynn and President Trump’s conversations with world leaders and had “cutouts” — friendly civilians not associated with the agency — to distribute them to reporters in a coordinated fashion.

Read the whole thing.

BECAUSE IT’S EASIER THAN FACING REJECTION: Why More Democrats Are Now Embracing Conspiracy Theories.

Saved you a click.

PATRICK POOLE: Media’s Flynn-Russia Narrative Quickly Collapsing as FBI Reportedly Clears Former National Security Adviser.

WHERE’S MILO?

AS STIMULUS CHIEF JOE BIDEN SAID, “CORRUPTION IS JUST ANOTHER FORM OF TYRANNY.” Obama Stimulus Funds Went to California Dam in ‘Good Shape,’ But Not Oroville.

Despite more than a decade of warnings about Oroville, there is no public record of the country’s tallest dam receiving any of the more than $34 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act sent to California for infrastructure projects.

Over $22 million in stimulus funds did go toward safety improvements to the Folsom Dam, which was described as in “good shape” at the time the grant was awarded in 2009.

“The dam is in good shape but is starting to show its age,” a Bureau of Reclamation spokesperson said of the Folsom Dam at the time.

The stimulus was intended to “shore up the nation’s aging infrastructure,” said former representative Mike Thompson, a Democrat who served California’s 1st District where the Oroville dam is located before being redistricted to the 5th.

Thompson lauded numerous stimulus projects, which included $2.2 million for “more attractive” sidewalks and $2.5 million for a 205-acre “zero net energy” community on the University of California Davis campus to put a greater “emphasis on walking” and bicycling.

We have far more government than we need, but a hell of a lot less than we pay for.

TNR EDITOR: Trump ‘Turned the GOP Into the Party of Eugenics,’ Which It Always Was.

In case you are not yet convinced that Trump is eager to push a program of government-sponsored genetic improvement, [TNR social media editor, Sarah] Jones adds that anonymous sources interviewed by The New York Times said Steve Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, “occasionally talked about the genetic superiority of some people and once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners.” Jeff Sessions, the new attorney general, “praised the Immigration Act of 1924 in a 2015 interview with Bannon,” and Trump adviser Michael Anton has written (under a pseudonym) that Charles Lindbergh’s America First Committee was “unfairly maligned.”

That’s pretty much it, which is why Jones ends up switching her focus from Trump to the Republican Party and from eugenics to “the party’s agenda,” which “in many ways channels the spirit of eugenics, even if it does not accept the theory in a literal sense.” Hence the article’s subhead, which contradicts the headline by suggesting that eugenics was not introduced to the GOP by Trump but has “always been embedded in the Republican platform.”

How so? Republicans oppose Obamacare, like capitalism, talk about welfare reform, and support school choice, which according to Jones makes them eugenicists in spirit.

Jones should familiarize herself with the works of Democrat icon Margaret Sanger.

THE OTHER SIDE OF OBAMACARE: Millions Excluded from Obamacare Aid, Pass on Coverage.

“It’s hard to tell people who don’t see health care needs in the year ahead that they should be paying premiums and higher deductibles to make the system work for everyone else,” says JoAnn Volk, a senior research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms. “But the going-in idea is that you’ll need health insurance at some point.”

To 42-year-old Tiffany, one of several people U.S. News spoke with whose last names are being withheld to protect their privacy, the costs of coverage to her and her husband this year were overwhelming: $1,221.20 per month, with an $11,700 deductible. If they were to divorce, they realized, they would qualify for cheaper coverage. Alternatively, Tiffany’s husband, who is self-employed, would need to make an extra $20,000 a year to make up the difference once medication and doctor visits are factored in.

Though the option of ending their 17-year marriage wasn’t truly on the table, to them it accentuated the lack of options they faced this year. The Columbus, Ohio-area residents already had been unhappy with the plan they bought the previous year, finding that it covered few of the services they needed. Their regular medical needs include providing medication for a daughter with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and another with mild asthma.

As a family of five making between $115,000 and $125,000 a year, they did not qualify for subsidies. And doctors in the plans available were far away.

“This year, I just cried,” Tiffany says of the moment she saw how much insurance was going to cost them. “I’m not an emotional person. I was just floored. I completely shut down because there were no options.”

Somebody needs to tell JoAnn Volk that the choice between going broke now for certain, or taking a chance on going broke later, is no choice at all.

Anyway, ObamaCare sticks it to the middle and upper-middle class because, as Willie Sutton is supposed to have said, that’s where the money is.