From the right: The Worst Police Shooting Yet

It’s difficult to think of a “more tragic, more senseless shooting in America” than last week’s killing by a Dallas police officer of Botham Shem Jean, asserts National Review’s David French. Jean was home alone in his apartment when Officer Amber Guyger entered, reportedly believing it was her own home, and fired two shots after (in her account) he ignored her “verbal commands.” Now there are “troubling indications” she intends to “raise the fact that Jean didn’t obey her commands as a defense.” But “it’s not a defense,” insists French: “The moment she opened the door to an apartment that wasn’t her own, she wasn’t operating as a police officer clothed with the authority of the law.” We ask a great deal of police officers — including that they “be subject to the very laws they’re sworn to enforce.”

Political scribe: Gov’s Bungles Outweigh Nixon’s Bagel

Despite Cynthia Nixon’s spirited challenge, Andrew Cuomo’s greatest setbacks in the Democratic gubernatorial primary have “largely been of his own doing,” suggests NY1’s Bob Hardt. Take that “outrageous” state Democratic Party mailer “misrepresenting Nixon’s position on Israel”: The Cuomo-controlled party “gave NY1’s Zack Fink the stiff-arm when he asked to see all of the party’s mailings.” Not surprising: “An obsession with secrecy and payback has been a hallmark of the Cuomo administration,” a culture that helped give “a green light to Joe Percoco, the governor’s former enforcer,” now convicted of corruption. Polls suggest Thursday’s primary will be “a cakewalk for Cuomo” — but the governor is “looking over his shoulder while relying on transactional relationships to get him over the finish line.”

Media critic: The Russian Sex Spy Fiasco

A judge’s gag order means we’re unlikely to learn anything more about the case of accused Russian agent Maria Butina beyond what emerges in court, says The Week’s Matthew Walther. It was, he suggests, “a perfect story”: A “red-haired spy-mistress” allegedly “trained by shadowy Russian malefactors to seduce one or more targets as part of a massive intelligence operation.” In fact, “it was too good to be true” — and having repeated the original unfunded claims, “it would be a good thing if more journalists went out of their way to acknowledge this crude prosecutorial slander. Slut-shaming should not be okay just because the R word is involved.” It also turns out that “she is certainly no Alger Hiss.” Butina may be a dissembler, but “on whose ultimate behalf beyond her own she worked and lied remains unclear.”

Conservative: Look Who’s Breaking Presidential Norms

George W. Bush, determined never to publicly criticize his successor, kept that vow “for the entire eight years” of Barack Obama’s presidency, notes Marc Thiessen at The Washington Post. Yet now Obama apparently has decided “that he is too important to stay on the sidelines.” In a recent college speech, he “launched into an unrestrained, full-frontal assault on his successor,” calling President Trump “a threat to our democracy” who’d tapped into “America’s dark history” of racial division. Yet one in eight Trump voters cast their ballots for Obama in 2012. They “bought into Obama’s promise of hope and change but never got what they were promised — so they decided to give Trump a chance.” Now “their lives are improving” and they are grateful — to Trump.

Business beat: Retail Is Back — Or Is It?

Two statistics about retail business in New York City, believes Crain’s New York’s Greg David, “don’t appear to make much sense when paired.” One is that seasonally adjusted retail employment increased by 6,000 through July, compared with 2,000 during the same period last year. Yet 20 percent of Manhattan’s retail space lies empty, when it was just 7 percent in 2016. Nationally, he says, “the retail story is about the revival of brick-and-mortar.” So “what gives with the worrisome increase in vacant storefronts?” Conventional wisdom says rents are too high, and that’s a factor. But “more important is that a large number of smaller, local retailers” — as opposed to national brands — “simply don’t have the wherewithal to compete with Internet retailers.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann