The Patriot Post® · Monday Short Cuts

The Gipper: “The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.” —Ronald Reagan

For the record I: “Mueller’s shrewd staffers accomplished exactly what they hoped to accomplish: Make sure the report was disclosed to Congress intact, with 200 pages of obstruction evidence, a legal analysis that tends toward a finding of obstruction, and an express assertion by the special counsel that if he had found Trump did not commit a crime, he would have said so. And now, for good measure, Mueller took pains [in his press conference] to stress that, in our system, it is Congress’s duty to address presidential misconduct. For partisan lawyers who saw their special-counsel gig as an opportunity to play congressional impeachment counsel, it is Mission Accomplished.” —Andrew McCarthy

For the record II: “Mueller made a big deal out of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election on Wednesday and stressed in his written report how deeply involved they were. But you don’t hear the Democrats in Congress and the liberal media talking about the importance of stopping the Russians from interfering in our elections. All we’re hearing is the ‘I’ word — impeachment.” —Michael Reagan

Upright: “As long as both sides are focused on the Steele dossier and claims about coordination that are disproven by Mueller, neither party in Washington has a vested interest in dealing with the actual issues raised by Mueller. That provides an opening for Russia and other foreign powers in 2020.” —Erick Erickson

Blind squirrel: “We hurt our boys by calling something toxic masculinity. … I don’t find putting those two words together [is helpful] … because women can be pretty f—ing toxic.” —Meryl Streep

The BIG Lie: “Gun laws in the United States don’t make much sense. Anybody can buy any weapon, anytime, without, you know, without much if any regulation. They can buy over the Internet. They can buy machine guns.” —Barack Obama

Distractions: “The president didn’t know about it. I didn’t know about it. We think it’s much ado about nothing.” —acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney on the flap over the USS John McCain

And last… “In his statement, Mueller noted that the Russians he indicted are ‘presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.’ Apparently, for congressional Democrats, that presumption of innocence does not extend to Trump. All Mueller’s news conference did is muddy the waters. Any congressional testimony would do so 10 times over. He should have heeded his own advice, left the building quietly, and, as he put it in his statement, let ‘the office’s written work speak for itself.’” —Marc A. Thiessen