THE TEA PARTY WAS DEMONIZED FOR FAR LESS: The “Resistance” Moves Towards Violence and Intimidation as Key Tactic. Yeah, the Tea Party cleaned up after its opponents, it didn’t clean their clocks.

Early in Obama’s first term, completely peaceful Tea Party protests happened around the country. The liberal media routinely denounced the Tea Party as dangerous and hostile.

Since the night of Trump’s election, the left has been engaging in protests which often look more like riots. Windows have been smashed, people have been punched and the media sits by ignoring the whole thing.

In 2010, Tea Party protesters showed up at town hall meetings to protest the passage of Obamacare. Again, the media called them racist and dangerous. Now leftists are showing up at town halls, but the media coverage is vastly different.

To the media, and the Democrats — but I repeat myself — it’s only “dangerous” when the normals hit the streets. Democratic Party interest groups have violence privilege. “While all of this is unfolding, no one on the left is calling for calm. Quite the opposite, actually. The Huffington Post, one of the most influential publications on the left is demanding more.”

Well, whatever comes after the Tea Party on the right won’t be as polite. The media and the Democrats — and quite a few Republicans — have seen to that.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Microsoft shames US, world governments for ‘stockpiling’ vulnerabilities after massive ransomware attack.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Delta flight goes bad, but crew does good: When everyone does their job, and is polite and efficient, that’s not news. Except that, these days, it kind of is.

WELL, THIS SEEMS LIKE NEWS: Seth Rich, slain DNC staffer, had contact with WikiLeaks, say multiple sources.

The Democratic National Committee staffer who was gunned down on July 10 on a Washington, D.C., street just steps from his home had leaked thousands of internal emails to WikiLeaks, law enforcement sources told Fox News.

A federal investigator who reviewed an FBI forensic report detailing the contents of DNC staffer Seth Rich’s computer generated within 96 hours after his murder, said Rich made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time.

So this would seem to leave two possibilities: The DNC “hack” wasn’t a Russian operation at all, but an internal leak, blowing the post-November Hillary Russia narratove; or (2) There’s another trove of DNC emails out there that Wikileaks hasn’t released yet. I’m guessing it’s (1), but who knows?

PARTY OF THE PEOPLE: DNC Workers Sue Party Over ‘Starvation’ Wages, No Overtime.

WAPO: Trump acknowledges ‘facts’ shared with Russian envoys during White House meeting.

President Trump appeared to acknowledge Tuesday that he revealed highly classified information to Russia — a stunning confirmation of a Washington Post story and a move that contradicted his own White House team after it scrambled to deny the report.

Trump’s tweets tried to explain away the news, which emerged late Monday, that he had shared sensitive, “code-word” information with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador during a White House meeting last week, a disclosure that intelligence officials warned could jeopardize a crucial intelligence source on the Islamic State.

“As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety,” Trump wrote Tuesday morning. “Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism.”

I’ll try to unpack this.

Yesterday, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said the original WaPo report was false. That’s a complicated denial, because the thing which McMaster said was false — that Trump revealed “methods and sources” to the Russians — wasn’t in the original WaPo report.

So McMaster denied something nobody was reporting, which could have been obfuscation or could have been a misunderstanding of what was reported. We just don’t know. What we do know is that McMaster is on record saying that the President did not reveal the methods and sources which could endangered an intelligence operation and our spies on the ground.

Despite what WaPo implied today, Trump’s tweet did not contradict McMaster’s complicated denial. Trump says he shared anti-ISIS intel, minus the methods and sources, with Russia — as is his right. Whether or not that was wise depends on how you view the potential for combined U.S.-Russian anti-ISIS operations. “It’s complicated” would probably be a fair assessment.

So the short version is that the President did share “highly classified information” regarding ISIS and/or terrorism in general, but not in such a way to compromise either our intelligence gathering or our intelligence officers. And that last bit comes from no less than H.R. McMaster, who wrote the book (or at least one of the first books) on how careless and stupid politicians got us into Vietnam and doomed our war there.

Today’s WaPo followup (quoted and linked above) by Ashley Parker concludes that “Trump’s tweets undercut his administration’s frantic effort Monday night to contain the damaging report.” But if I’ve unpacked this correctly, then that conclusion doesn’t follow from what was reported yesterday, what was thoroughly denied by McMaster, and by what Trump tweeted this morning. The only way to reach Parker’s conclusion is to take McMaster’s denial of one specific item (“methods and sources”) as a blanket denial. But that’s not what he said.

However, the White House P.R. effort was conducted in its customarily chaotic way, which has allowed WaPo (and many others) to make claims and conclusions which the facts — if I’ve correctly understood them — don’t support.

BEND OVER TO SATISFY A FEW DOZEN LOUDMOUTH STUDENTS, AND WRECK YOUR UNIVERSITY AS THOUSANDS OF OTHERS REFUSE TO COME: Mizzou likely to cut hundreds of positions amid expected 7 percent enrollment drop. The normals don’t turn out and protest. They just quietly take their business, and money, and respect, elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the interim chancellor says Mizzou’s problem is that it needs to become “more forward-looking.” Well, I look forward to them concentrating on their educational mission and brushing “social justice” yammerers aside, but I rather doubt that’s what she meant.

SPACE: SpaceX Launches Super-Heavy Communications Satellite.

A WIN FOR FREE SPEECH: Fire Investigator, Crystal Eschert, Fired By Charlotte Over Pro-Law Enforcement Post, Sues, Is Now Gonna Be A Millionaire.

Charlotte, NC – A jury just sent the city of Charlotte a strong message: You can’t fire employees for saying things on Facebook you disagree with, and you can’t use those posts to justify an unlawful firing.

The jury found that the city of Charlotte was retaliating against Crystal Eschert when they fired her for a Facebook post that she made in the days following the shooting of Michael Brown. The jury awarded her $1.5 million. . . .

“White guy shot by police yesterday near Ferguson … Where is Obama? Where is Holder? Where is Al Sharpton? Where are Trayvon Martin’s parents? Where are all the white guys supporters? So is everyone MAKING it a racial issue? So tired it’s a racial thing. If you are a thug and worthless to society, it’s not race – You’re just a waste no matter what religion, race or sex you are.”

Somebody named Linda Havery later emailed then-police chief Rodney Monroe and Jon Hannan to complain about the Facebook post, according to Charlotte Observer. The e-mail complained that, even though the Facebook post was private, it “could cause unrest in the community.”

The city fired Eschert over the Facebook post, arguing that she could not do her job if she used words like, “thug.” . . .

Plus: “The complainant, ‘Linda Havery,’ doesn’t exist. This non-existent person somehow had access to Crystal Eschert’s friends-only Facebook page.”

DON SURBER: Trump Busts Warren Buffett Monopoly. “Buffett pocketed $3 a barrel from transporting 1 million barrels of oil a day on his railroad. Obama did not care about the environment or the danger of mile-long trains carrying crude oil. Obama was TCB — taking care of Buffett.”

WINNERS & LOSERS: Morgan Stanley Is Predicting Sears Will Die Soon, Making This Rival a Huge Winner.

After Sears CEO Eddie Lampert went on yet another blog-post rant on Monday, this time aimed at one of the dying retailer’s vendors, the company’s shares plunged as much as 14%. And on Sunday, Morgan Stanley wrote casually about the possibility of a Sears bankruptcy in 2017.

“[Sears] one- and two-year credit default swaps imply the market is pricing a high profitability of default over the next 12 to 24 months,” Morgan Stanley said in a note. “If Sears files for bankruptcy this year and subsequently liquidates, JCP could be a major beneficiary.”

That’s right, Morgan Stanley is already predicting who will come out the big winner from a likely Sears Chapter 11 filing and possible liquidation, and it’s J.C. Penney. That surely comes as a slight relief to J.C. Penney, whose stock has also been declining after posting a disastrous first quarter. Last year, after a 33-year hiatus, J.C Penney started selling home appliances again, making its business prepared to benefit should Sears die.

Given Penney’s ongoing troubles, even the death of Sears might not give them much more than a temporary stay.

LIKE LABOUR TO THE SLAUGHTER? Regional voting intentions show Tory tide rising across country.

For the first time in this election, YouGov reveals the voting intention picture in each British government office region. The fieldwork, conducted from April 24 to May 5, shows:

•The Conservative vote share is up, sometimes dramatically so, since the last general election in every region of the UK.
•Labour are down on their 2015 vote haul in every region of the UK except the South West and South East where they were already performing poorly.
•The Liberal Democrat vote share is up in most regions, but only by small margins.
•UKIP’s vote share is down seven to ten points in all regions except Scotland and London, where they were already performing poorly.

The results show Teresa May “pulling a Trump” by pulling voters away from Labour in traditionally Labour-friendly regions in Wales and the north of England. So if you think of this snap election as a referendum on the Brexit referendum, it looks as though British voters are more strongly in favor now than they were during the original referendum.

BOB ZUBRIN: NASA’s Lunar Orbiting Space Station Is Its Worst Idea Yet.

WELL, OKAY THEN: Feminist icon Gloria Steinem says lack of abortions caused climate change.

HMM: Private Investigator Says Murdered DNC Staffer Was Communicating with WikiLeaks Prior to Death. “The sources also say that they were told to ‘stand down’ on investigating the crime.”

REMEMBER, THIS “DEEP STATE” TALK IS JUST A PARANOID MYTH: Why the FBI might wage “war” on Trump — and how they would actually do it. “’The FBI is a tribal organization,’ Ben Wittes, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, tells me. ‘You screw with the FBI, you screw with the institution of the FBI, and … a lot of people are gonna be angry.’”

Maybe it’s a mistake to give so much unaccountable power to “tribal” organizations who wage vendettas over institutional interest.

Related: The Spy Revolt Against Trump Begins.

GOOD MORNING: Liz Sheld’s morning brief has everything from the hottest headlines to the latest presidential tweets.

ENDING THE DRUG WAR WOULD BE A BETTER IDEA: Rand Paul slams Jeff Sessions’ new drug sentencing policy as an “injustice” to minority communities.

THAT SHE’S BEING CHASTISED ISN’T NEWS. THAT SHE DID IT IS NEWS. THAT SHE DID IT AND STILL WON IS BIGGER NEWS. New Miss USA Chastised for Speaking Truth on Healthcare, Feminism.

Lefty shame-mobs are losing their power, and that’s one of Trump’s biggest accomplishments.

FAKE NEWS? ‘It didn’t happen’: H.R. McMaster calls WaPo’s Trump report ‘false’

But there might be more to the story and less to the denial than there seems to be at first glance.

Twitchy has the details.

TO BE HONEST, STORIES LIKE THIS ARE ENOUGH TO MAKE ME VOTE TRUMP 2020 NO MATTER WHAT HE DOES BETWEEN NOW AND THEN: SNL Cast Members ‘Sobbed’ Over Trump Victory, Had No Idea What to Write.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Reminder: The United States Code is not the law. “The law that is actually enacted by Congress and signed by the president can be found in the Statutes at Large, a giant chronological compilation of everything Congress has enacted, with subsequent amendments and repeals. The United States Code is a helpful edited collection that tries to reflect what the Statutes at Large actually add up to, but it is ‘prima facie’ evidence of law, not the law itself.”

AND IT WILL HAVE PASSENGERS ANGRY: Trump’s expected widening of laptop ban has European airlines worried.

Alain Bauer, president of the CNAPS, a French regulator of private-sector security agents, including those checking baggage and passengers in France’s airports, predicted “chaotic” scenes initially if the ban was instituted.

“Imagine the number of people who carry their laptops and tablets onto planes — not just adults, but also children,” he said.

Bauer added that the ban would slow passage through security checks as people try to negotiate a way of keeping their laptops.

I fail to see how a baggage compartment filled with lithium-ion batteries is any more safe than a passenger compartment filled with lithium-ion batteries.

TRUE: The President Is Not the Commander in Chief of the United States, Nor Its CEO.