RUSSIA IS A RIDDLE WRAPPED IN A MYSTERY INSIDE AN ENIGMA, JUST LIKE THE DEATHS OF MOST SPINAL TAP DRUMMERS. Finally: Actor Rob Reiner Launches Committee to Investigate Russia.

Related: Morgan Freeman now narrating … Russiagate?

DANIEL GREENFIELD: WHY OBAMA REALLY SPIED ON TRUMP. “Desperate Obama cronies had figured out that they could bypass many of the limitations on the conventional investigations of their political opponents by ‘laundering’ them through national security.”

STAKES RAISED: Palin, Gorka To Campaign Against Trump’s Candidate In Alabama GOP Senate Primary.

Increasingly this feels less like GOP civil war than a world war, with far-flung players getting sucked in. First it was Roy Moore versus Luther Strange in the Alabama Senate runoff. Mitch McConnell naturally backed the incumbent Strange, who’s been a team player in the Senate. Steve Bannon then jumped in on behalf of Moore, who’s led Strange in the polls and whose victory in the primary would serve notice to Republicans on the Hill that the base wants populism. But then, somewhat illogically, Trump decided to double down on his endorsement of Strange during the primary by agreeing to hold a pre-runoff rally for him in Alabama this coming Friday night. If anything can save Strange from likely defeat, it’s POTUS’s support in a deep red state.

But Bannon’s not licked yet. He’s going to counter Trump’s support for the establishmentarian by bringing in a pair of big-name right-wing populists, Sarah Palin and Sebastian Gorka, to hold a rally for Moore on Thursday evening. Checkmate for Strange? Not just yet: Mike Pence will travel to Alabama next week and hold a rally of his own for the incumbent on Monday night, the day before the election.

These things gotta happen every five years or so, ten years. Helps to get rid of the bad blood.

OIL AND THE NORTH SEA: A NEW HOPE.

Don’t look now, but there’s actually some good news coming out of the North Sea. The region helped make the UK a net oil exporter in the 1980s, but in the intervening years its offshore fields have matured and production has declined dramatically. To make matters worse, companies operating in the decreasingly profitable region are facing decommissioning costs that one industry group predicts will add up to £17 billion over the next decade. When you factor in the bearish turn oil markets have taken in recent years, you get a perfect storm for one of the UK’s most important energy resources.

But London will be heartened by what it’s seen in the North Sea in 2017. Operating costs have fallen nearly 50 percent, an industry reaction to today’s low-price environment, and that’s allowing firms to keep more existing projects in operation. In March, a new field was discovered off the coast of the Shetland Islands that has been hailed as “the biggest new oil discovery beneath UK waters this century.” Then, this summer, the British oil company Enquest started production in its ominously named “Kraken” oil field—a project that could save the firm from insolvency.

Release the Kraken!

CNN DEBUTS DOCUMENTARY TEACHING HIGH SCHOOLERS ABOUT ANAL SEX, TRANSITIONING: “This comes after CNN host Brooke Baldwin was so offended by an offhand reference to “boobs” that she shut down an entire segment.”

REMINDER: Trump is hardly the first president to remind North Korea of America’s ability to obliterate it.

Though Trump’s comments are indeed remarkable considering the context and setting in which they were delivered, he’s hardly the first president to remind everyone of America’s ability to wipe the Hermit Kingdom off the map.

In 2016, for example, President Barack Obama remarked casually that the U.S. could, in fact, turn North Korea into a memory.

“We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals,” he said in an interview with CBS News.

He added this careful qualifier, “But aside from the humanitarian costs of that, they are right next door to our vital ally, [South] Korea.”

That same year, in his final speech before the U.N. General Assembly, Obama referred to North Korea as a “wasteland,” and said it would have to face “consequences” if it continued to pursue its nuclear program.

Years prior, during a press conference in 1993, President Bill Clinton warned that the U.S. would wage total war against North Korea should it get out of line.

“I know of no one who seriously believes that the United States and [South Korea] would be defeated in a war of aggression by North Korea if they were to attack,” he said. “And I made it as clear as I could that if they were to do that, they would pay a price so great that the nation would probably not survive as it is known today.”

Yes, but it’s different when Trump does it because shut up.

SOUNDS LIKE CLICKBAIT BUT ISN’T: The First Web Apps: 5 Apps That Shaped the Internet as We Know It. A fascinating dive into the early history of the web and how its early developers changed everything.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, CORNHUSKER EDITION: Profs rally for colleague who bullied conservative student. “The demonstration was organized by the American Association of University Professors, which ostensibly advocates for academic freedom generally, but has been accused of favoring liberal causes over conservative ones.”

AT AMAZON, fresh new releases, updated hourly.

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TRAVEL BAN CHALLENGER: Trump Should Like His Supreme Court Chances on Travel Ban.. “I don’t think the court will be disappointed at all if the case goes away as moot, and they don’t actually have to issue a decision on the merit.”

RUSSIA’S WAR IN UKRAINE AND WAR GAMES IN BELARUS: The RUBK connection.

DON’T LET THE LAW STAND IN THE WAY OF CAPITULATING TO MASS HYSTERIA: Dallas: City Bent Contract Rules to Remove Lee Statue From Park.

Just after the Dallas City Council voted Sept. 6 to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from a public park, a crane and work crew appeared to take it down. Municipal government is not known for its speed, and it is constrained by rules to make spending slow and therefore more transparent.

So how did the city come to spend an estimated half-million so quickly? The City Council isn’t entirely sure, and those on the council offer differing views on how the contract, valued at around $450,000, was allowed to be signed without being put out for competitive bidding from contractors.

I’m sure there was no graft involved.

THIS STORY FROM MONDAY SEEMS LESS RELEVANT AFTER TUESDAY’S UN SPEECH: How Trump’s advisers schooled him on globalism.

ROGER KIMBALL: WHY TRUMP’S UN SPEECH WAS A TRIUMPH.

Donald Trump on Tuesday confirmed yet again why he is the most robust president since Ronald Reagan. Following up on his brilliant speeches before a joint session of Congress in February, his speech about combating Islamic terrorism before Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia, and his splendid defense of Western civilizational values in Warsaw a few months ago, Trump addressed the United Nations and articulated for the 150 delegates at that ostentatiously corrupt institution the signal lesson of successful international relations: that freedom within nations, and comity among them, is best served not by the effacement or attenuation of national sovereignty but its frank and manly embrace. . . .

The United Nations has in recent decades become a poster child for bureaucratic despond: corrupt, wasteful, and inefficient. It has also evolved into a megaphone for anti-American, left-wing sentiment, often hiding behind utopian world-government rhetoric.

This development, Trump reminded his listeners, is a blunt betrayal of the noble aspirations that formed the United Nations in the aftermath of World War II. Trump quoted Harry Truman, who stressed that the success of the United Nations depended on the “independent strength of its members.” The United Nations was not created to subvert national sovereignty but to help guarantee it.

One of the most refreshing things about Trump’s address—it is characteristic of his speeches—was his frankness. At the U.N., this had a positive as well as a critical side. On the positive side, I found it a breath of fresh air to hear an American president celebrate the achievements of America.

Read the whole thing. The text of Trump’s speech is here.

FREEDOM: Appeals court upholds Wisconsin right-to-work law.

A Wisconsin appeals court upheld the state’s right-to-work law Tuesday, the second time in two months that Badger State unions have seen their legal challenges to the law rebuffed in court.

The unions had argued the law, which prohibits workers from being forced to join a union or pay a regular fee to one as a condition of employment, was unconstitutional. The court ruled that the issue had been long settled.

“The unions have no constitutional entitlement to the fees of non-member employees,” Judge Mark Seidl wrote for the court.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker applauded the ruling and defended the purpose of the law. “The purchase of any service should be voluntary and not coerced. Wisconsin’s right-to-work law protects freedom, not special interests. I applaud the court in affirming the constitutional right of all Wisconsin workers to be free to choose whether they want to join a union or financially support a union.”

Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, who defended the law before the court, said they were “vindicated.”

Can we go national on this?

MAYBE SHE CAN GET A JOB AT ESPN, OR THE NFL: Post-Trump Megyn Kelly buried in bad reviews.

Critics ripped up Megyn Kelly’s canceled Sunday night news magazine show and are now ripping up her morning talk show, which one critic says makes President Trump the real winner of Kelly’s fall from TV stardom.

“It’s as if the old Kelly — sarcastic, cutting, sharp — got replaced by a Trump-approved version that grins hard and just wants you to like her,” according to a review at The Week magazine. “She won’t talk politics! She promises! If this startling about-face tells us anything, it’s that Trump, Kelly’s tormentor, has won.”

Fox viewers liked Kelly, but they liked Fox more. She thought her audience would follow her, and she was wrong. Related: Jessica Heslam: Megyn Kelly isn’t a morning person.

OH FER CRYIN’ OUT LOUD: Hours After Hurricane Irma, Miami-Dade County Tickets Residents For Code Violations.

Celso Perez was helping his neighbors remove some fallen trees blocking their street when a county code enforcer rolled up and issued him a safety notice for having a downed fence. “I laughed,” Perez tells WSVN-TV. “I thought he was kidding. ‘You are kidding right? We just had a hurricane six hours ago.'”

It wasn’t a joke. The official told Perez that the downed fence—which encloses a pool—was a safety hazard, and that if it wasn’t fixed by the time he returned, Perez would be hit with a fine. The official then hung the safety citation on the portion of Perez’s fence that remained standing, leaving him and his neighbors to finish clearing the debris from their street.

According to WSVN, the county has handed out 680 safety notices for downed pool barriers, and another 177 electrical hazard safety notices. Reason reached out to the county to confirm those numbers, but has not received a reply.

From what can be gleaned from the WSVN story and from county code enforcement procedures, these safety notices appear to be just warnings, meaning no fines have been handed out as of yet. Reason tried to confirm this with the county as well, but was again rebuffed.

Still, these warnings carry with them a duty to correct the violation within a specific window of time. That might not even be possible for some residents, given how many businesses are still out of operation.

Tar, feathers.

GOOD! Paper ballots are back in vogue thanks to Russian hacking fears. Even though there’s no actual evidence that the Russians changed a single vote, this is a good idea.

As I’ve noted before.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Trump’s UNGA Speech, Mexico Earthquake and Much, Much More.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Left’s National Nervous Breakdown, and How to Exploit it Ruthlessly.

BETSY WOODRUFF: Facebook Silences Rohingya Reports of Ethnic Cleansing.

Rohingya people trying to use social media to share information about the attacks on them tell The Daily Beast they have had their posts removed and their accounts shut down, and that they hope Facebook stops silencing them.

A Facebook representative told The Daily Beast the company would look into the situation. “We want Facebook to be a place where people can share responsibly, and we work hard to strike the right balance between enabling expression while providing a safe and respectful experience,” said Facebook spokesperson Ruchika Budhraja in a statement. “That’s why we have Community Standards, which outline what type of sharing is allowed on Facebook and what type of content may be reported to us and removed. Anyone can report content to us if they think it violates our standards. In response to the situation in Myanmar, we are carefully reviewing content against our Community Standards.”

Facebook shows little compunction about doing the bidding of oppressive regimes, although to be fair it’s impossible to say if that’s due to an impartial application of the company’s Community Standards — or something more sinister.

Either way, it’s something to keep in mind when sharing your most personal details with the social media behemoth.

DEAN AT SAN DIEGO LAW EXPRESSES HIS SUPPORT FOR “DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION” BY MAKING CLEAR THAT “diversity” doesn’t include different ideas, and conservatives aren’t included.

I’m happy to see that Larry Alexander, despite his sin of promoting bourgeois virtues like hard work, got a letter of support from numerous colleagues. The dean, meanwhile, should be sent for remedial lessons in the enlightenment tradition, and in common decency.

Alexander’s colleague Tom Smith adds:

The point is, a man or woman should be entitled to express him or herself in the public prints without having a Dean rain down a ton of politically correct nonsense on his head, for heaven’s sake. Especially on one, i.e. Larry, who nearly put this law school on the map. And also, I just have to say, what Larry is calling for (get up in the morning, go to your job, don’t take drugs, don’t have kids out of wedlock, etc., etc.) is rather in line with traditional Catholic teaching, is it not? So if someone says something that is “loudly dogma[tic]”, to coin a phrase, in a newspaper, or at least is consistent with that dogma, he runs the risk of being shamed by the administration of a nominally Catholic law school? That just ain’t rat. Larry of course is not Catholic, he’s a secular Jew, but he’s advocating things that are absolutely in line with what a good or even just sort of good Catholic person would do or practice.

Yes, you’d think that Alexander’s law school dean — who, frankly, I’ve never heard of — would be a bit slower to condemn the most famous and celebrated scholar on his faculty. Well, you might think that, if you hadn’t been paying attention to academia the last few years. And nominally Catholic law schools are pretty nominal these days.

Plus, from the comments: “The Dean’s ignorant response has disgraced the school. His letter, in effect said, ‘shut up, you might discomfit the poor darlings.’ Lawyers have to bring dispassionate judgment to the most troubling human issues. By publishing such a patronizing view of USD law students, he suggests they are not emotionally fit to handle the profession for which they train.”

If deans can’t bring more adult judgment than students do, why have deans? And, frankly, if law students can’t handle an oped about bourgeois values, how are they to be trusted — as lawyers are — to protect clients’ lives, property, and liberty with no more than their own ability to think clearly and express themselves persuasively?

CAUTION: SPEED BUMPS AHEAD. Latest Push for a Health-Law Repeal Picks Up Speed in the Senate.

Mr. McConnell said on Tuesday the Senate leadership was “in the process of discussing” whether to hold a vote on the latest bill, which would unwind much of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.

“If we were going to go forward, we would have to act before Sept. 30,” Mr. McConnell told reporters. “We are in the process of discussing all of this. Everybody knows that the opportunity expires at the end of the month.” He was referring to the short shelf life of the procedural tool that allows Republicans to pass bills through the Senate with a simple majority.

GOP Senators met Tuesday to discuss the repeal bill from Sens. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R., La.) and two hearings are planned next week. The White House also threw its muscle behind the legislation, with Vice President Mike Pence saying Tuesday that the administration is “all in” on the effort.

The bill still faces the same challenge that sank a July repeal effort: Moderate Republicans worry the proposal goes too far in rolling back the current health law.

Senator Rand Paul says he won’t vote for the bill because it doesn’t go far enough, which puts the new replacement effort in the exact same bind as the previous replacement effort.

FORGET THE ALAMO? IN DALLAS, MAYBE: Dallas education board ponders ghosting names of offensive white males Sam Houston, William Travis, and Jim Bowie from schools.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Middlebury College Empowers Violent Students, Heckler’s Veto.