SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET:

A CHANGING AMERICA – FROM AP:   WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States is growing older and more ethnically diverse, a trend that could put strains on government programs from Medicare to education, the Census Bureau reported Thursday.  Every ethnic and racial group grew between 2015 and 2016, but the number of whites increased at the slowest rate - less than one hundredth of 1 percent or 5,000 people, the Census estimate shows. That's a fraction of the rates of growth for non-white Hispanics, Asians and people who said they are multi-racial, according to the government's annual estimates of population.  I would not read too much into this.  Predictions of what a country will be in 20 years are often notoriously wrong, as groups change over time, and so do political allegiances.  Remember the solid Democratic South?  Or the heavily Republican "affluent" suburbs?  At one time the "black vote" was Republican, but no more.  And the "Catholic vote" was a lock for the Democrats, but no more.

NEW TALES OF THE TAPE? – FROM FOX:  Sean Spicer, the White house press secretary, said Tuesday that he expects an announcement “this week” on whether there are taped phone conversations between President Trump and his former FBI director, James Comey.  So far Trump has, at best, been coy about his possession of such tapes.  In May, Trump fired a loud warning shot, tweeting, “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”  The president last month told reporters that "I'll tell you about that maybe sometime in the near future" but offered no hints as to whether the tapes exists, except saying that some journalists would "be very disappointed" to find out the answer.  Maybe we'll have an entirely new era in entertainment.  Or maybe we'll be stuck with the current soap opera.

A NEW McCARTHYISM – FROM DAILY SIGNAL:  The nation’s leading source of information on U.S. charities faces mounting criticism for using a controversial “hate group” designation in listings for some well-known and broadly supported conservative nonprofits.  GuideStar, which calls itself a “neutral” aggregator of tax data on charities, recently incorporated “hate group” labels produced by the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center.  The decision by the tracker of nonprofits prompted 41 conservative leaders to protest the move in a letter provided exclusively to The Daily Signal. The letter, dated June 21, asks the website to drop the “hate group” labels put on 46 organizations.   Reminds me of the lists published in the early 1950s, accusing people of Communist sympathies.  Same tactics.

June 21,  2017