The Patriot Post® · Friday Short Cuts

Upright: “It is far more plausible that the FBI director believed he was insulating the future president from criminal charges, as well as preserving his reputation by being tough on her. There was certainly no way the partisan attorney general was going to prosecute the person most people assumed was going to be the next president of the United States. Comey did the best he could navigating these turbulent political waters. And what’s become clear is that rather than engaging in the pursuit of justice, Comey was engaging in the age-old Washington pursuit of self-preservation.” —David Harsanyi

Observations: “One could also say that the Democratic Party lost the presidency because it nominated a candidate under investigation for committing a felony. And it seems as certain as these things can be that if Hillary Clinton had followed the law and regulations, there would be today no President Trump, no Attorney General Sessions, no EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, no Justice Neil Gorsuch. The blame ultimately belongs to Barack Obama, who knew of Clinton’s private email system and who could have ordered her to follow the law. But that’s one bit of collusion that didn’t occur.” —Michael Barone

Braying Jenny: “RIP Barbara Bush, the only woman who was 92 for 30 years.” —"The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" writer Jen Spyra

Hot air hyperbole: “We’re going to have widespread disruption, more conflicts, more terrorism, more insecurity because of climate disruption. The prospect is three billion people on this planet will be subject to fatal lethal heat events — three billion — and one billion will be subjected to vector diseases that they’re not now subject to now. This is a horror.” —California Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown

And last… “The story at Starbucks isn’t racism but entitlement. The two men felt entitled to loiter on private property without buying anything. They decided that the rules didn’t apply to them. And apparently they were correct.” —Matt Walsh