THIS TREND GOES BACK DECADES AND UNDER BOTH PARTIES, BUT THAT DOESN’T MAKE IT GOOD: Uncle Sam’s armory outfits Colorado cops with military gear.

What’s surprising to me is how little concern there seems to be among majority Democrats about this, particularly from the more progressive members. One would struggle to total up the quantity of words spoken and written by them about “defunding” the police or distrusting the judicial system, yet I can’t think of the last time I heard one of them mention military equipment used by those same police.

You’d think there’d be all kinds of heartburn about it.

Not while the Progressives are the ones issuing the orders, no.

BRANDING:

And from the replies: “An emphasis on the 2nd Amendment may help in your enclave.”

Helps anywhere, really.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: You Should Be Wary Of Eating Raw Wild Mushrooms.

Reminds me of the prisoner who asked for his last meal to be mushrooms. “Why mushrooms?” the jailer asked. “I was always afraid to eat them before.”

UNEXPECTEDLY: California wolves are eating much more cattle than wild prey, study finds.

The return of the wolf in California has been met with joy by conservationists, who delight in the improbable population rebound, and with fury by ranchers who bemoan the toll on their cattle.

Now, a new study on the diet of gray wolves suggests that the population regrowth is a result of the animals feasting on cattle, as their natural prey sources remain comparatively scarce.

Researchers at UC Davis found cattle DNA in 72% of wolf scat samples collected in the summers of 2022 and 2023.

By comparison mule deer, the primary natural prey for wolves in California, appeared in 45% of samples, and small mammals appeared in 51% of samples.

“Whether it’s through scavenging or whether it’s through depredation, [cattle are] a huge component of the wolves’ diet,” said Tina Saitone, lead study author and professor in the UC Davis Agricultural and Resource Economics Department. “Their conservation success is because of livestock producers in the state.”

Whether it’s in California or here in Colorado, I’m convinced that wolf reintroduction is just another way for lefties to stick it to conservative ranchers.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

CORN, POPPED: Lab-Leak Payback Has Begun.

The origins of the coronavirus pandemic remain contested; the evidence is incomplete. But pundits, activists, and members of the Trump administration have long insisted that the case is closed, and that the virus slipped out from a lab in China. They’ve maintained the view that U.S. scientists were involved and later tried to hide the facts. They’ve said that justice must be served.

Now the reckoning they want appears to have arrived. An expert on the flu got hauled off by the FBI. A coronavirus researcher was indicted in Detroit. Two prominent virologists stepped down or were removed from senior roles. And a fifth infectious-disease researcher—Anthony Fauci, the central figure in an alleged “lab-leak” cover-up—was recently subpoenaed to appear before the U.S. Senate.

The precise timing of these cases, which have all come to light since April, may be a coincidence. Yet all five are centered on a small community of scientists affiliated with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci ran for nearly 40 years.

Of course — and read the whole thing.

A GEORGE, DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF, CANNOT STAND! The news feeds have been hijacked by endless memes of George Costanza. Here are the best ones. “I couldn’t possible understand the computing power that was about to be used to replace every record, photo, and person with George Costanza. I could have never predicted it. Everything was fine, and then, like a virus, George was everywhere. EVERYWHERE.”

Here’s the alpha and the omega, but just keep scrolling to see more than a few fistfuls of Costanza:

THIS IS THE WAY: Rubio and DHS Deported Child Molester Walz Tried to Keep In US.

What exactly did Walz, Ellison, and Democrats get out of this? They made it clear that they will let sex offenders on the street as a means to frustrate the enforcement of immigration law. At the same time, Walz also demonstrated his own incompetence to game out this situation more than a single step at a time. In fact, Walz may have made Vang more of a target for DHS and the State Department with his ham-handed abuse of the pardon process. Would DHS have made Vang a priority had Walz not turned him into some bizarre, pedophilic cause celebre?

The end result is that Vang is out of the US and Walz exposed as a radical who will put children at risk to score cheap points on immigration. If Walz could have played this worse, someone will have to explain how. 

Much more like this, please.

SMART: US Navy Issued RFIs to Korean Shipbuilders for Destroyers and Oilers. “The United States Navy has formally requested information from South Korea’s leading shipbuilders regarding their capabilities to quickly build destroyers and oilers, according to media reports in Korea. The Korean news agency Yonhap revealed that the U.S. Navy had issued requests for information last month, marking the first formal requests since South Korea launched its “Make American Shipbuilding Great Again” commitments.”

It sucks that we can’t do this domestically any longer — or at least no time soon — but this is where decades of bipartisan neglect by lawmakers and bad planning by the Navy have left us.

HIS LEGACY HAS CERTAINLY AGED BETTER THAN MORE RECENT PRESIDENTS WHO LEFT WITH HIGHER POLL NUMBERS:

OR MAYBE THE DOG WILL EAT HIS HOMEWORK: Platner privately told staff he’ll formally exit Senate race Monday.

Graham Platner privately told staff that he is planning to officially file paperwork to end his Senate campaign on Monday — the drop-dead deadline for him to exit the race.

Why it matters: Though Democrats largely appear to think Platner is done with his bid, his last-minute timing is likely to cause a final pang of anxiety within the party.

Driving the news: Platner made the comments to his team Wednesday night shortly before he announced publicly he was suspending his campaign.

It seems unlikely, but I sure wouldn’t be surprised if he somehow managed to accidentally miss the deadline…