WELL, TO BE FAIR, THERE’S A LOT MORE TO PROBE: House Panel Turns Search for Trump Documents Into Clinton Probe.

MARK PULLIAM: A Demagogic Bully: The Southern Poverty Law Center demonizes respectable political opponents as “hate groups”—and keeps its coffers bulging. “Ironically, the SPLC not only overlooks most of the real hate groups in operation today, along with overtly race-based organizations, such as the pro-Latino National Council of La Raza and MEChA, but also labels moderates with whom it disagrees ‘extremists’ if they deviate from its rigid political agenda, which embraces open borders, LGBT rights, and other left-wing totems. The SPLC has branded Somali-born reformer Ayaan Hirsi Ali an “anti-Muslin extremist” for her opposition to female genital mutilation and other oppressive Islamic practices, and designated the respected Family Research Council as a ‘hate group’ for its opposition to same-sex marriage. Likewise, the organization deems mainstream immigration-reform advocates such as the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) as hate groups. British Muslim activist Maajid Nawaz—regarded by most observers as a human rights leader—is suing the SPLC for listing him as an extremist.”

WINNING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCING PEOPLE: Murkowski’s committee postponed confirmation vote for Trump nominees.

The committee led by Sen. Lisa Murkowski postponed a vote on six Trump administration nominees on Wednesday, the same day a Cabinet secretary allegedly threatened retribution against the Alaska Republican over her healthcare vote. . . .

Murkowski and other GOP senators have repeatedly criticized Democrats for trying to delay confirmations of Trump administration officials.

The six nominees who would have gotten a vote Thursday morning are Brenda Burman to be commissioner of reclamation at Interior; Susan Combs to be assistant secretary of the Interior for policy, management and budget; Doug Domenech to be assistant secretary of the Interior for insular affairs; Paul Dabbar to be undersecretary for science of the Department of Energy (DOE); David Jonas to be general counsel of the DOE; and Mark Wesley Menezes to be undersecretary of the DOE.

The group had a relatively easy confirmation hearing last week. Each nominee also needs a vote in the full Senate before being sworn in.

Both Zinke and Energy Secretary Rick Perry are the only Senate-confirmed officials at their agencies, more than six months after President Trump’s inauguration.

I’m not a fan of Murkowski’s.

TRUST YOUR LEADERS: Swedish Government In Crisis As Almost Everyone’s Personal Data Is Leaked.

Sweden is having a bad decade. But the next decade will probably be worse.

JUSTICE: College Students Falsely Accused Of Sexual Assault Have A Good Couple of Weeks.

DIVERSITY PROBLEM: My law school is as ideologically left as the average lawprof who teaches Feminist Legal Theory.

REMEMBER “LOVE TRUMPS HATE?” YEAH, ME NEITHER. Trump-supporting Drag Queen Faces Wrath of LGBT Community.

EDWARD LUTTWAK: Could The Trump Dynasty Last 16 Years?

In Washington DC, post-electoral stress disorder has generated a hysteria still amply manifest after eight months: the “Russian candidate” impeachment campaign implies that any contact with any Russian by anyone with any connection to Donald Trump was ipso facto treasonous. The quality press is doing its valiant best to pursue this story, but it is a bit much to claim “collusion” – a secret conspiracy – given that, during the election campaign, Trump very publicly called on the Russians to hack and leak Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. And it did not seem especially surprising when the latest target, Donald Trump Jr, promptly released all his emails to and from the Russians to confirm that he did indeed try to help his dad by finding dirt on the other guy. As for the other impeachment track underway, triggered by the ex-FBI director James Comey’s accusation of attempted obstruction of justice, Comey’s failure to accuse Trump until he was himself fired will make it easier for the Republicans who control the House to dismiss an otherwise plausible accusation as a naive error. . . .

But another reason is that the major cause of last November’s electoral outcome has remained mostly unexplored, even un­discovered. That is not due to intellectual laziness, but rather reflects the refusal of almost all commentators to contend with the political economy that determined the outcome of the election. Long-term processes of income redistribution from working people to everyone else, non-working welfare recipients as well as the very rich, had been evident for at least two decades. . . .

In the dramatic crescendo of the 2016 elections that gave Trump to the United States and the world, very possibly for sixteen years (the President’s re-election committee is already hard at work, while his daughter Ivanka Trump is duly apprenticed in the White House that, according to my sources, she means to occupy as America’s first female President), none of the countless campaign reporters and commentators is on record as having noticed the car “affordability” statistics distributed in June 2016 via www.thecarconnection.com. Derived from very reliable Federal Reserve data, they depicted the awful predicament of almost half of all American households. Had journalists studied the numbers and pondered even briefly their implications, they could have determined a priori that only two candidates could win the Presidential election – Sanders and Trump – because none of the others even recognized that there was problem if median American households had been impoverished to the point that they could no longer afford a new car. . . . The Clinton crowd even more than the candidate herself blamed the lethargy of the TV-watching, beer-drinking, gun-owning, church-going, and cigarette-smoking “deplorables”, who unaccountably failed to avail themselves of the wonderful opportunity to leave boring assembly-line jobs or downright dangerous coal-face or oil drilling jobs to become fashion designers, foreign-exchange traders, software engineers, or even political campaign operatives.

Read the whole thing.

EVERYTHING’S A RACKET NOWADAYS: The ‘Smoking Gun’ Emails That Show Advocates, Academics Coordinated To Boost $15 Minimum Wage.

AT AMAZON, Introducing Education Supplies.

Plus, Shop Amazon – Used Textbooks – Save up to 90%.

TO BE FAIR, THERE’S LOTS OF EMBARRRASSMENT TO GO AROUND: The most embarrassing thing about this CBS News puff piece isn’t that it proclaims that “Hillary Clinton lets her ‘guard down'” based on nothing more than that… … the Introduction to her new memoir makes the statement “Now I’m letting my guard down.”

TRIAL DATE SET IN KIM JONG NAM ASSASSINATION: The two women accused of murdering North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s half brother will come to trial on October 2.

Stay tuned.

LETTER TO ROD ROSENSTEIN FROM HOUSE JUDICIARY REQUESTING A SECOND SPECIAL COUNSEL.

MICK JAGGER GETS POLITICAL: The tune is England Lost. It features British rapper Skepta. It’s about discontent.

JAGGER:

“So am I politically optimistic? … No.”

The USA Today webpage with the article has music videos of England Lost and Gotta Get A Grip. Both by Mick Jagger.

GOOD QUESTION: Why Was Wife of DWS’s Swindler Staffer Allowed to Leave the Country?

In the Morning Jolt, Jim nicely outlines the increasingly bizarre story of a family of Pakistani information technologists who became House staffers under the auspices of Representative Debbie Wasserman Shultz (DWS) of Florida, the former head of the Democratic National Committee and a Clinton partisan. Over the years, family members were paid millions of dollars, and there are allegations of fraud, property theft, and potential swiping of information to which they had access on the House IT network.

The entire story merits attention and follow-up, working backwards from yesterday’s arrest of Imran Awan, DWS’s top IT staffer, whom she has gone to great lengths to protect despite the swirling investigation. Awan was bagged trying to flee to Lahore, Pakistan. According to the complaint filed in federal court in support of his arrest, Awan wired $283,000 in January from the Congressional Federal Credit Union to Faisalabad, Pakistan. He has been charged with bank fraud in a scheme involving mortgages on various properties owned by the Awan family.

The FBI has also reportedly searched his home, seizing computer hard drives that had been smashed to pieces. For now, I want to focus on a narrow part of the story. In early March, as Jim details, Imran’s wife, Hina Alvi, suddenly left the country for Lahore, by way of Doha, Qatar. Notwithstanding the return flight she booked for a date in September 2017, the FBI believes that she actually has no intention to return to the U.S. She had abruptly pulled the couple’s three daughters out of school without alerting the school’s staff, and brought them with her — along with lots of luggage and household goods — to Pakistan.

Hina had also been on the House payroll.

This whole story stinks.

COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: The Hill: Intelligence chairman accuses Obama aides of hundreds of unmasking requests.

NEXT STOP, YIKYAKTOWN: Twitter’s Stock Plummets On Report It Is Losing Money And Losing Users In The U.S.

QUESTION ASKED. Rep. Steve King: What Happened to Money Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s IT Consultant Wired to Pakistan?

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE STONED TO SUPPORT GAVIN NEWSOM, BUT IT HELPS: The cannabis candidate: Gavin Newsom dominates donations from a growing industry aiming for influence.

WISH YOU WEREN’T HERE. Roger Waters’ Jewish Problem Catches Eye of Award-Winning Filmmaker:

“I started traveling, meeting with different leaders throughout Europe. I didn’t know how bad the problem is with contemporary anti-Semitism there,” [award-winning filmmaker and New York Times bestselling author Ian Halperin] told the Observer. “There are less than 2 million Jews left in Europe, which is very alarming—a place where Jews have long been an integral part of society and whose valuable contributions to the culture are immeasurable.”

“During my research,” Halperin continued, “I came upon Roger Waters, and I couldn’t believe he was singling out Israel when there are so many truly egregious violators of human rights in the world. Why is he going after Israel? So, I began asking people what this guy has against Israel. To me, an attack on Israel is an attack against the Jewish people.”

Halperin met with psychologists who work with Holocaust survivors and their families. He described the effect of Waters’ floating pig bearing the Star of David as “unforgiveable” for survivors, comparing it to a scene in his film where a three-year-old Palestinian girl is “brainwashed” into believing Jews are pigs.

In preparation for the documentary, Halperin interviewed leaders in the South African anti-apartheid struggle. They found Waters’ comparison to Israel offensive and demeaning to their people’s suffering.

Waters is a self-admitted John Lennon worshiper, and during the 1970s, increasingly attempted to introduce the brutally direct and introspective lyric style of Plastic Ono Band, Lennon’s first proper solo album, into the swirling art rock atmosphere of Pink Floyd’s sound. Just as Lennon fixated upon the early death of his mother to write some of his most personal material in the last years of the Beatles and the start of his solo career, the death of Waters’ father at Anzio when Waters was five months old became Waters’ obsession during The Wall and The Final Cut, Waters’ last two albums with the Floyd.

In 1942’s Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart’s character famously tells Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa to flee the Nazis with Resistance leader Victor Laszlo, because in the midst of WWII, “the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

It was four decades between that film and the movie version of The Wall, the album that Time famously dubbed “the libretto for Me-Decade narcissism.” So much so that, based on the film version of the album, it seems as if Waters would much prefer to have his father back, even if it meant England not entering WWII. Given the implications of that, no wonder Waters is railing so strongly against Israel. Or as Mark Steyn once wrote, “The old joke — that the Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz — gets truer every week.”

OH, THAT CULTURE OF NARCISSISM. Study: A culture of “competitive victimhood” makes people less, not more, empathetic to others.

(Classical reference in headline.)

UNEXPECTEDLY. Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience, Again: Monthly active users in the U.S. fell, as did ad revenue.

Back in February, the Wall Street Journal reported that “Twitter Posts 10th Straight Quarter of Lower Revenue.”

But these things tend to happen when you go full-on SJW, and begin to ban controversial users – you know, the ones who generate clicks and links by being provocative. Or as Steve wrote a month ago, “I miss the old Twitter, too, before the company discouraged honest give-and-take by going Full SJW.”

(Via Small Dead Animals, which links to the above Bloomberg article under the headline “#TweetsUp.”)

Heh, indeed.™

STEP ONE: STOP READING THE NEW YORK TIMES. How to Improve Resilience in Midlife.