COMMISSAR CAUGHT COMMISSARING: China’s Anti-Corruption Czar, Accused of Corruption, to Step Down.

DIVERSITY: Program embedding conservative thought into CU Boulder continues to thrive.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: “In other academic news, it turns out that if you dare to punish students who use coercive mob tactics to threaten and intimidate non-leftist speakers and those who wish to hear them, then you are creating ‘an unsafe and threatening environment’ for students who want to use threatening and coercive physical tactics. And also you’re racist, which rather goes without saying. Apparently, any hint of consequences for thuggish and censorious behaviour merely affirms ‘white supremacy’ and will ‘suppress and criminalise’ students whose own attempts to suppress veer towards the criminal. This, we’re told, is ‘unfair.’ The thinker of these deep thoughts, Charles H F Davis, a professor of education at the University of Southern California and the director of USC’s Race and Equity Centre, is aghast at the prospect of students being suspended if found to have repeatedly engaged in violence or disorderly conduct with the intention of suppressing debate,” David Thompson writes.

The annual cost of attendance at USC is $69,711. Parents and students, spend your money wisely.

IF THE PARTIES WERE REVERSED, DEMOCRAT ACTIVISTS WOULD ALREADY BE MAKING PERKINS, COIE RADIOACTIVE: Clinton Lawyer Under Fire After Disclosure That The Clinton Campaign Paid For Russian Dossier On Trump. “If Elias and Perkins Coie lied to the media about the role of the Clinton campaign and the DNC in the affair, such allegations fall into a murky area of legal ethics. Elias was clearly representing clients in this matter. Attorneys are subject to a code of ethics that bars them from making false statements in representation. This is usually a matter of court filings or litigation, which have well-defined systems for addressing such misconduct. Lying to the media is less defined but still covered by ethical rules. . . . Elias has deep ties to Clinton and Democratic politics. He still lists himself as general counsel to Hillary for America, the presidential campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton. He previously served as general counsel in John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Elias and Perkins Coie will now face some very serious questions going forward. Elias already spoke to the media on the allegations and did not claim privilege. This could also be fashioned as a possible criminal matter by investigators in negating privilege assertions. However, Elias has already gone public on the alleged involvement of both the Clinton campaign and DNC in the dossier controversy. It will be hard to get that cat to walk backwards.”

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER: Obama-era uranium deal yields new questions, new accusations and new investigation.

FBI investigations are typically not disclosed at the time they are ongoing, so it is possible that the government officials involved in approving the Uranium One deal were not aware of the criminal investigation at the time of the approval. CNN spoke with Ronald Hosko, assistant FBI director in charge of criminal cases at the time of the investigation, who said that he wasn’t aware of the ongoing probe, saying it was handled on the counterintelligence side of the bureau. Counterintelligence investigations are some of the most closely held in the FBI. Former Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, who chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the time of the probe, also told The Hill that he was never informed about the FBI probe either.

The informant who played a crucial role in the FBI investigation is now trying to speak out, but his attorney says he is barred by a non-disclosure agreement the FBI made him sign. A law enforcement source familiar with the process said it is common for cooperating witnesses to sign non-disclosure agreements when the investigation involves national security concerns, as it did in this case. However, these agreements are typically narrowly written, and do not typically prevent individuals from speaking to Congress about what they learned in the ordinary course of business while simultaneously working as an informant, the source said. However, the source says the agreement would prevent any disclosure of information that was gleaned while working closely with federal investigators as it pertained to the investigation itself.

The informant’s attorney tells CNN the informant has a lot of information about corruption that has not come out yet. In particular, the attorney maintains that while the FBI investigation was going on, FBI agents told the informant that President Barack Obama was being briefed on the probe, and that’s why the informant was so stunned when the Uranium One deal was approved in 2010. Obama’s representative declined to comment.

That’s an awful lot of official silence for something which Hillary Clinton says is “baloney.”

AT COLUMBIA, TACIT SUPPORT FOR CAMPUS TERRORISM: New York City’s Antifa coalition continues to dox and vaguely threaten the Executive Board members of Columbia University’s College Republicans chapter while the school remains silent.

AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases, updated hourly.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Digital Deals.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Dirty Dossier, RUSSIANS, Manafort, and Much, Much More.

DAVID HARSANYI: We’re About To Find Out If Democrats Really Care About Russian Interference. (They don’t.) Well, I think they’re starting to care about keeping their role secret.

PUSHBACK: “An organizer of a recent Free Speech Rally in Boston has filed a $100 million lawsuit against Mayor Martin J. Walsh after he says Walsh purposefully defamed the group as neo-Nazis, which led to him being hounded by internet activists and losing his job.”

HOLMAN JENKINS IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: The FBI’s Political Meddling: Mueller is the wrong sleuth when his ex-agency is so tangled up with Russia.

For anyone who cares to look, the real problem here is that the FBI itself is so thoroughly implicated in the Russia meddling story.

The agency, when Mr. Mueller headed it, soft-pedaled an investigation highly embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton as well as the Obama Russia reset policy. More recently, if just one of two things is true—Russia sponsored the Trump Dossier, or Russian fake intelligence prompted Mr. Comey’s email intervention—then Russian operations, via their impact on the FBI, influenced and continue to influence our politics in a way far more consequential than any Facebook ad, the preoccupation of John McCain, who apparently cannot behold a mountain if there’s a molehill anywhere nearby.

Which means that Mr. Mueller has the means, motive and opportunity to obfuscate and distract from matters embarrassing to the FBI, while pleasing a large part of the political spectrum. He need only confine his focus to the flimsy, disingenuous but popular (with the media) accusation that the shambolic Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin.

Mr. Mueller’s tenure may not have bridged the two investigations, but James Comey’s, Rod Rosenstein’s , Andrew Weissmann’s , and Andrew McCabe’s did. Mr. Rosenstein appointed Mr. Mueller as special counsel. Mr. Weissmann now serves on Mr. Mueller’s team. Mr. McCabe remains deputy FBI director. All were involved in the nuclear racketeering matter and the Russia meddling matter.

Let’s stop here. All this needs to be sorted out, but not in a spirit of panic and hysteria.

We’ve had nonstop panic and hysteria since last November.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuelan Oil Cargoes to U.S. Ports Plunge as Sanctions Bite.

Oil sales to U.S. buyers have fallen for two straight months and now are 56 percent lower than their 2016 average, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. Ever since President Donald Trump slammed the regime of Nicolas Maduro with sanctions in August, American refiners have found banks reluctant to provide letters of credit for purchases of oil from state-controlled Petroleos de Venezuela SA.

The quality of Venezuelan oil has also been called into question. At least one U.S. refiner has rejected oil that arrived laced with as much as four times as much water as it should have. Water content in oil cargoes is closely watched by chemical engineers because excessive quantities can damage sensitive oil-processing equipment.

Shoddy product will do more harm to Venezuela’s economy than sanctions ever could, but Yankee Imperialist sanctions will take the blame.

ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC: Nicolle Wallace: Members of Trump Admin ‘Do Not Appear to Be Human Beings.’

CHRISTIAN TOTO: 0 for 4! ‘Geostorm’ Latest Climate Change Flop.

Maybe the problem with socialist agitprop movies is that they just don’t have the right producers in charge.

BEN DOMENECH: Jeff Flake Authenticates The Party of Trump.

NEW YORK TIMES REPORTERS ARE SHOCKED, SHOCKED THAT HILLARY’S PEOPLE LIED TO THEM:

Two New York Times reporters are calling out people tied to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee for denying the Clinton campaign and DNC’s role in the making of the so-called “Trump dossier,” following a report Tuesday that found they funded the research for the dossier.

“When I tried to report this story, Clinton campaign lawyer @marceelias pushed back vigorously, saying “You (or your sources) are wrong,” New York Times reporter Kenneth Vogel tweeted of Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer Marc Elias.

According to the Washington Post report published Tuesday evening, Elias’ law firm hired Fusion GPS, a Washington opposition research firm, to conduct research that resulted in the Trump dossier, which contained scandalous material tying President Trump to Russia.

They “lied, with sanctimony.” To be fair, that’s usually how they do it.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER HATE CRIME HOAX: Police Arrest Suspect in ‘KKK’ Vandalism Case.

ANGELA MERKEL’S FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION OF GERMANY CONTINUES APACE: Germany’s new facial recognition technology reminiscent of Cold War surveillance for some. Officials are looking for ways to improve security in the wake of recent terror attacks and threats.

As Mark Steyn wrote last year regarding Merkel, “You can take the girl out of East Germany, but you can’t take the East Germany out of the girl.”

BYRON YORK: After Trump dossier revelation, FBI is next.

Investigators looking into the so-called “Trump dossier” were not surprised when news broke Tuesday night that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, working through the Democrats’ law firm, Perkins Coie, financed the “salacious and unverified” compilation of allegations of Trump collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign. (The “salacious and unverified” description comes from former FBI Director James Comey.)

There had been plenty of talk about the Democrats and Perkins Coie, so much that investigators almost assumed that was the case. But it wasn’t until the Washington Post broke the story that it was confirmed.

“I’m shocked,” one lawmaker joked Tuesday night. “Who could have ever guessed?”

And why did the story break when it did? Credit the much-maligned Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The California Republican has been pursuing the dossier more aggressively than anyone else, and it was his Oct. 4 subpoena for the bank records of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that handled the dossier, that finally shook loose the information.

But knowing that the Clinton campaign, the DNC, and Perkins Coie supported the dossier is not the end of the story. The most important next step is the FBI.

Sometime in October 2016 — that is, at the height of the presidential campaign — Christopher Steele, the foreign agent hired by Fusion GPS to compile the Trump dossier, approached the FBI with information he had gleaned during the project. According to a February report in the Washington Post, Steele “reached an agreement with the FBI a few weeks before the election for the bureau to pay him to continue his work.”

It was an astonishing turn: the nation’s top federal law enforcement agency agreeing to fund an ongoing opposition research project being conducted by one of the candidates in the midst of a presidential election.

People should be fired — and, quite possibly, prosecuted — over this.

WHAT’S GREEN ON THE OUTSIDE, RED ON THE INSIDE, AND DIRTY ALL OVER? China’s pollution is getting in the way of its solar energy goals.

LEFTISTS ARE STUPID: University of Wisconsin-Madison Students Protest Abraham Lincoln Statue Because ‘He Owned Slaves.’

NOT GOOD: F-35s Hobbled by Parts Shortages, Slow Repairs, Audit Finds.

Already, the agency said in the draft obtained by Bloomberg News, the Defense Department “must stretch its resources to meet the needs of continued system development and production while at the same time sustain the more than 250 aircraft it has already fielded.”

Upkeep of the F-35 fleet will become more challenging as the Pentagon prepares for what the manager of the program has called a “tsunami” of new production toward an eventual planned U.S. fleet of 2,456 planes plus more than 700 additional planes to be sold to allies.

The F-35 program office and Lockheed have identified steps to increase parts availability “to prevent these challenges from worsening” as aircraft numbers increase, the GAO said, but Pentagon documentation indicates “the program’s ability to speed up this time line is uncertain.”

The GAO also disclosed that the F-35B — the Marine Corps version of the fighter that’s scheduled to begin ship deployments next year — won’t have required maintenance and repair capabilities at sea and “will likely experience degraded readiness.”

This is akin to buying an exotic car you can barely afford, without also budgeting for insurance, repairs, and tuneups.

RIDICULOUS, IT’S NOT GETTING ANY PRESS: Ned Ryun: Trump’s Malaysia Gambit: Call It Another Win.

REPORTS: THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT IS ALSO AN INSULAR PROGRESSIVE BUBBLE FILLED WITH HARVEY-WEINSTEIN-LIKE SEXUAL PREDATORS.

Why are socialist institutions such cesspits of predation?