When every last Trudeau eyebrow has been scraped off the floor of the Manoir Richelieu, it's worth remembering that the divisions in the G7 are not quite as straightforward as the media would have us believe. For one thing, it's not G6 vs. Trump, for there's another disrupter in town:

And how about this for getting it right?  For the first time since the "humanitarian crisis" began five years ago, the Italian government has closed its ports to a migrant vessel: The MV Aquarius, operated by SOS Mediterranée and Médecins Sans Frontières, was refused permission to dock in Sicily, and told to push off and find somewhere else.

As the London Economist sniffed (6/12):  Italy Refuses to Let a Boat Full of Migrants Land. After all, what could be more heartwarming than an NGO rescue ship named after a song from Hair?

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No wonder the President was so upset he tweeted this earlier today (6/07).  He was reminded how bad this scandal is when he saw Luke Rosiak’s latest report on it in The Daily Caller Wednesday (6/05):  Wasserman Schultz Screamed At House Officials To Kill Hacking Probe.

The woman is terrified and for good reason.

The curious case of Imran Awan, which sounds like an international spy thriller, is entering its third act. Awan was a congressional IT aide to Florida Dem Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and he was finally fired just after he was arrested trying to fly to Pakistan last summer.

Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, were charged last summer with bank fraud. They now appear poised to strike a plea deal with the Department of Justice. A plea agreement hearing is set for July 3 before U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan in Washington, Fox News reported Wednesday.

Theft of congressional equipment, massive data breaches of Congress members’ emails, massive espionage and more are all wrapped up in this case that involves data from 40 or more Democrat members of Congress.  After endless delays, we may have explosive traction.

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Sandra Bullock is Miss Congeniality

New York Times headline yesterday (6/05), “Miss America Ends Swimsuit Competition.”

Gretchen Carlson, chairwoman of the now-swimsuit-free Miss America, would very much like you to know that she isn’t just a pretty face. She also has a degree from Stanford and spent a year studying Virginia Woolf at Oxford.

Even so, let’s pause and ponder for a moment which  elements on her CV got the studio executives most excited when considering her for her jobs on TV.  Choose a) or b).

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Avignon, France—The Rhone River Valley in southern France is a storybook marriage of high technology, traditional vineyards, and ancestral villages. High-speed trains and well-designed toll roads crisscross majestic cathedrals, castles, and chateaus.

Traveling in a Europe at peace these days evokes both historical and literary allusions. As with the infrastructure and engineering of the late Roman Empire right before its erosion, the Continent rests at its pinnacle of technological achievement.

There is a Roman Empire-like sameness throughout Europe in fashion, popular culture and government protocol—a welcome change from the deadly fault lines of 1914 and 1939.

Yet, as in the waning days of Rome, there is a growing uncertainty beneath the European calm.

The present generation has inherited the physical architecture and art of a once-great West—cathedrals, theaters, and museums. But it seems to lack the confidence that it could ever create the conditions to match, much less exceed, such achievement.

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On Sunday, June 3, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a press statement regarding the 29^th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre by the Chinese Communist Government on June 4, 1989.   In part it read:

“We join others in the international community in urging the Chinese government to make a full public accounting of those killed, detained or missing; to release those who have been jailed for striving to keep the memory of Tiananmen Square alive; and to end the continued harassment of demonstration participants and their families.”

While this was seriously displeasing to China’s rulers, they are in fact more worried about what is happening in their country right now. It’s being called the “Rice Bunny” movement for women’s rights in Communist China.  The characters for “rice bunny,” you see, are pronounced “me-too.”

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“FBI Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy,” read the headline on a lengthy New York Times story May 18.

“The Justice Department used a suspected informant to probe whether Trump campaign aides were making improper contacts with Russia in 2016,” reads a story in the May 21 Wall Street Journal.

So much for those who dismissed charges of Obama administration infiltration of Donald Trump’s campaign as paranoid fantasy. Defenders of the Obama intelligence and law enforcement apparatus have had to fall back on the argument that this infiltration was for Trump’s — and the nation’s — own good.

It’s an argument that evidently didn’t occur to Richard Nixon’s defenders when it became clear that Nixon operatives burglarized and wiretapped the Democrat National Committee in June 1972.

Until 2016, just about everyone agreed that it was a bad thing for government intelligence or law enforcement agencies to spy (er, secretly collect information?) on a political campaign. Especially a campaign of the opposition party. Liberals were especially suspicious of the FBI and the CIA.

Nowadays, they say that anyone questioning those agencies' good faith is unpatriotic.

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The words “Deep State” evoke images of evil geniuses carrying out schemes in hollowed-out mountains with submarine entrances.

What if they’re not that smart, though? Just malicious?

The New York Times earlier this month reported that a joint interagency task force met at CIA headquarters beginning in the spring of 2016 to dig up dirt on Donald Trump. The task force attracted a group of acolytes that reads like the cast of characters in a Hollywood script about a ragtag band of rogues turned commandos.

In the top role was their temperamental leader, CIA Director John Brennan, adding a Lee Marvin-esque gravity to the production.

Also starring Peter Strzok, the love-struck FBI agent who bonded with his paramour Lisa Page via virulently anti-Trump text messages.

Add to the mix National Intelligence Director James Clapper, who once perjured himself before the United States Senate.  His skill-set would be particularly helpful to this group of misfits.

For comic relief there was FBI Director James Comey.  In Comey-world, it was never enough to just be a gumshoe detective enforcing mundane things like immigration laws.  He had to be saving the world in an epic battle against Russians.

Can you imagine what Mack Sennett, creator of the Keystone Cops, would have done with these characters?

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The first thing I noticed when I walked into the Trump rally in Nashville last night (5/29) was that Trace Adkins was singing. Not bad! (Hey, it’s Nashville.)

The second thing I noticed was that Jim Acosta wasn’t smiling, virtually the only person in the auditorium who wasn’t. If you don’t like Adkins, either you don’t like music or your Trump Derangement Syndrome is so great you couldn’t even groove to Bach or The Beatles in their heydays. Too bad for Jim.

Which leads me to another Nashville moment. Being here in Music City, isn’t it high time for the right to take back the arts, or at least some decent part of them?

Why is it CBS, NBC, and ABC are all slavish soldiers of the moribund and increasingly boring Left? (Can you watch “Good Morning America” without feeling you are having your brains drilled?)

But enough diversion. Trump’s on.  Time to enjoy the show.

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The 75-year-old post-war order crafted by the United States after World War II is falling apart. Almost every major foreign-policy initiative of the last 16 years seems to have gone haywire.  And not because Trump wrecked it.

Donald Trump’s presidency was a reflection, not a catalyst, of the demise of the foreign-policy status quo. Much of the world now already operates on premises that have little to do with official post-war institutions, customs, and traditions, which, however once successful, belong now to a bygone age.

Historic forces have made post-war thinking obsolete and thereby left many reactionary “experts” wedded to the past and in denial about the often-dangerous reality before their eyes.  This is true everywhere you look – from Turkey to Russia to China to the European Union, not to mention North Korea and Iran.

The “experts” deny the reality while America’s president sees it clearly – which is why they hate and fear him so much.

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