"I don't know if there's a big conspiracy by the deep state. But it's pretty obvious to me that leaders of our institutions aren't above engaging in spying. John Brennan spied on the legislative branch and lied about it to the American people. James Clapper spied on the American people through a domestic surveillance program and lied about it to Congress. Although the Obama administration never tweeted nasty attacks on journalists, it did spy on and prosecute them. It's completely plausible that those in the upper echelon of law enforcement saw Trump as a threat, then used wobbly evidence as the pretext to investigate his campaign. If not, it'll be good to clear their names. ...

"If, as I've been assured by numerous smart people, the FBI and DOJ would never ever engage in such partisanship or recklessness -- or maybe ineptitude -- then a methodical accounting of events leading up to the special counsel investigation would help them."

"The 'deep state' is in a deep state of desperation. With little time left before the Justice Department inspector general's report becomes public, and with special counsel Robert Mueller having failed to bring down Donald Trump after a year of trying, they know a reckoning is coming.

"At this point, there is little doubt that the highest echelons of the FBI and the Justice Department broke their own rules to end the Hillary Clinton 'matter,' but we can expect the inspector general to document what was done or, more pointedly, not done. It is hard to see how a year-long investigation of this won't come down hard on former FBI Director James Comey and perhaps even former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who definitely wasn't playing mahjong in a secret 'no aides allowed' meeting with former President Clinton on a Phoenix airport tarmac.

"With this report on the way and congressional investigators beginning to zero in on the lack of hard, verified evidence for starting the Trump probe, current and former intelligence and Justice Department officials are dumping everything they can think of to save their reputations.

"But it is backfiring."

"The blue wave that Democrats are counting on to win the day in November, and the Congress with it, just can't seem to break out of the swamp. This week's party primaries were counted on to produce candidates moderate enough, or at least sane enough, to restore credibility to Democratic prospects. It didn't happen quite that way.

"'Tuesday,' observes The Washington Post, the house organ of the party, 'was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Democratic moderates. The success of very liberal candidates in primaries across four states is causing a new bout of heartburn among party strategists who worry about unelectable activists thwarting their drive for the House majority.'

"Indeed. It's going to take more than Alka-Seltzer to relieve that heartburn. The Democrats start with a severe handicap in the Senate. They hold 24 of the seats (plus two independents who caucus with them) up for election this year, and Republicans have to defend only 9. With a 51 to 49 split, every seat matters, and the results on Tuesday were good news for the president and his party.

"Democratic prospects in the House of Representatives are better, but still muddy. The Democrats should gain seats, as opposition parties almost always do in the midterms, but Republicans now have a few things going for them this year. The economy is going gangbusters, with unemployment below 4 percent. The generic ballot polling shows that the Democrats hold only a 3-point lead over the Republicans, down from double digits several months ago. ...

"It's not yet summer, but this year the Democrats have, so far, cornered the market on terrible, horrible, no good, very bad doofus candidates."

"The media falsely accused President Donald Trump of referring to immigrants as 'animals' on Wednesday.

"The falsehood started because of a selectively edited clip posted by CSPAN that showed the president saying, 'We have people coming into the country ... You wouldn't believe how bad these people are. These aren't people. These are animals.'

"A number of journalists and media outlets fell for the idea that Trump was referring to all immigrants as 'animals,' including MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, The New York Times, the Associated Press, CBS News and The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin.

"However, the full video shows that Trump was specifically referring to members of MS-13, a violent gang whose motto is 'rape, control, kill.'"

"What really drove the Left crazy about Wolfe was his habit of wicked, ruthless noticing of the foibles of so many of their most cherished icons, and how he trained his satiric force on them. For half an American century he scythed through folly, from the Merry Pranksters on the West Coast to the Pantheristas in Leonard Bernstein's penthouse on Park Avenue. It's a commonplace to say he was our Zola, our Trollope. But he was also our Mencken."

"The world's double standard against the Jewish state helps explain the decision by Hamas leaders in Gaza to mix armed terrorists and unarmed civilians and urge them to crash through the border fence. This was murder, and not by Israeli soldiers defending their country against a mass invasion.

"The blood of the dead and wounded is on the hands of the merciless Hamas thugs who sent their people on a suicide mission that had zero chance of military success.

"But, of course, military success was not the goal. The goal was to get the headlines and pictures the world is seeing, the bloodier the better.

"So when The New York Times writes that 'Israel Kills Dozens and Wounds 1,700 at Gaza Border,' it's mission accomplished for Hamas.

"Success is getting the usual suspects to gang up on Israel. Indeed, the statements condemning it for a 'disproportionate' response didn't even need to be written anew."

"The tax cut law is proving more popular by the day, and for good reason. It's been a boon to workers and families. So if you're a Democratic senator who opposed tax reform, how do you justify your no vote to constituents?

"Simple: You reinvent yourself as a deficit hawk.

"Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., declared the bill would 'explode' the debt. 'It will put nearly $1.5 trillion on the country's credit card, passing those costs on to our children and grandchildren,' she said.

"Her words were echoed by Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., who said he voted against the tax bill because the added debt would be 'paid back with interest by our children and grandchildren.'

"And Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., similarly stated she could not support the bill because it 'explodes our deficit.'

"Yet just a few weeks after voting no on tax reform, those same senators voted 'yes' on the Bipartisan Budget Agreement of 2018, a package that not only blows a huge hole in the deficit but also contains billions in special interest tax giveaways.

"At $1.5 trillion, the cost of the budget deal would be roughly equal to what the Joint Committee on Taxation, the official congressional scorekeeper for tax legislation, said tax reform would cost over that same period."

"One of the great and enduring mysteries of American foreign policy is the ongoing, bipartisan tolerance for Iranian efforts to kill Americans by the hundreds. Iran has been waging an undeclared war against the United States since the Hostage Crisis of 1979-1981. Its hostile acts against the United States are almost too numerous to list, but the lowlights include the Beirut Marine barracks bombing, the Khobar Towers bombing, a successful Quds Force plot to kidnap and kill American soldiers in Iraq, and the hundreds of American deaths and injuries due to Iranian-designed and -supplied explosively formed penetrators, the most deadly form of IED in Iran.

"Yet time and again the American response has been muted at best and downright meek at worst, as in the case of the Obama administration's dreadful Iran deal, when the world's most powerful nation went hat-in-hand to the jihadist enemy that was killing its soldiers and actually empowered that enemy's violent expansionism. ...

"But Israel is not the United States. It has far less patience with threats to the lives of its citizens, and the Trump administration's support allows it greater freedom of action to meet such threats vigorously.

"Witness what happened last night: Iran attacked Israel, and Israel responded with devastating force. Utilizing its military assets close to the Israeli border, Iranian forces launched 20 rockets at Israeli positions in the Golan Heights. The Israelis claimed that the attacks were ineffective; the rockets either were intercepted or fell short of the border. Rather than respond tit-for-tat, the Israelis escalated, launching comprehensive attacks against Iranian positions in Syria. In the words of Israel's defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, 'If there is rain on our side, there will be a flood on their side.'"

"Here in West Los Angeles, it's social suicide to suggest that our president has done anything right or noble or good. But in moving America's embassy to Jerusalem next week, President Trump managed all three. And he signaled to the world that Israel's capital should no longer be treated as Jews' private delusion.

"Next to the other events of this presidency, the U.S.-embassy move can seem like a footnote. Jerusalem has long functioned as Israel's capital -- home to the Knesset, the supreme court, residences of Israel's president and prime minister. And yet, barring a miraculous breakout of peace on the Korean Peninsula, the Jerusalem-embassy move is a strong candidate for Trump's most enduring presidential achievement.

"As a technical matter, the move represented no great change in U.S. policy. With overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both chambers, Congress directed the American embassy to be moved to Jerusalem back in 1995. But the Jerusalem Embassy Act contained a waiver, allowing each president to welch if he chose. Every president for 22 years so chose.

"Common knowledge in Washington among cognoscenti has long been that regardless of what our law says, Israel is different. Israel is always different. Recognizing this sovereign nation's choice of capital simply could not be done. What would the neighbors say? Such a move would enrage Palestinians, inflame the region. Following the will of the American people, in this instance, was something a president just couldn't do.

"That is, until we had a president who bristled at being told what he just couldn't do."

"President Trump's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal is the greatest boost for American and global security in decades.

"If you think that is an exaggeration, then you evidently think the Obama administration's injection of well over a hundred billion dollars -- some of it in the form of cash bribes -- into the coffers of the world's leading state sponsor of anti-American terrorism was either trivial or, more delusionally, a master-stroke of statecraft.

"Of course, there's a lot of delusion going around. After repeatedly vowing to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons (with signature 'If you like your health insurance, you can keep your health insurance' candor), President Obama, and his trusty factotum John Kerry, made an agreement that guaranteed Iran would obtain a nuclear weapon.

"They rationalized this dereliction with the nostrum that an unverifiable delay in nuclear-weapons development, coupled with Iran's coup in reestablishing lucrative international trade relations, would tame the revolutionary jihadist regime, such that it would be a responsible government by the time the delay ended. Meantime, we would exercise an oh-so-sophisticated brand of 'strategic patience' as the mullahs continued abetting terrorism, mass-murdering Syrians, menacing other neighbors, evolving ballistic missiles, crushing domestic dissent, and provoking American military forces -- even abducting our sailors on the high seas."