THE IRS NEEDS A STIFF DOSE OF REFORM AND ACCOUNTABILITY: IRS Dodges Oversight, Refuses To Measure Economic Impact Of Its Rules.

BRENDAN O’NEILL: The Misogyny of #MeToo: The rage against Katie Roiphe exposes feminism’s hatred of women. “The outpouring of hatred for Roiphe has been astonishing, even by the low standards of Twitter debate and 21st-century virtual intolerance. Guardian feminist Jessica Valenti swiftly did to Roiphe what she accuses men of doing to female journalists: tried to silence her. . . . We are now starting to see that #MeToo is not a pro-woman movement at all. It is a highly politicised campaign driven by, and benefiting, well-connected women in culture and the media, who must maintain their alleged victim status at all costs because it is leverage for them in terms both of their career and their moral authority in public discussion. This is why they respond with such unforgiving, misogynistic fury to any woman who questions them.”

Feminism isn’t a liberation movement. It’s a self-herding device for lefty women. The angry mob isn’t an unfortunate side effect, it’s the whole point.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela pill shortage triggers rise in teenage pregnancies.

In downtown Barquisimeto, Margaret Khawan’s pharmacy is looking a bit empty these days.

What products she does have she has spaced out along the shelves to make them look a bit fuller.

Ms Khawan has not had any deliveries of contraceptive pills for a year.

Every day people come looking for them and every day she has to turn them away. People are having to adapt.

“It used to be just men buying condoms but women are buying them too now because there’s nothing else,” she says. “The price of condoms has gone up 200%.”

Across town, Darnellys Rodríguez is living the consequences of these shortages.

I’m reminded of the Soviet Union, where abortion was widespread in part because condoms were scarce.

SAVING HOLLYWOOD FROM THE CHINESE BOX OFFICE:

The rise of moviegoers in China has created an incentive for Hollywood to make movies that appeal to Chinese audiences as well as Western ones. There are so many entertainment options now, and marketing costs have become so astronomical, that Hollywood has decided to play it safe and focus on large, well-established franchises for movies and sequels. Put all this together and you get a lot of movies like the latest Transformers installment, which dominated the Chinese box office but barely registered in the U.S.

Now the news is that the latest Star Wars movie fell flat in China. Its opening weekend haul there was barely half of what the previous installment garnered a couple years ago. I fear eventually this means that future Star Wars movies will look a lot more like Transformers movies (less talk, more boom), and in the long run everything will become some version of robot dinosaurs fighting or a “Wolf Warrior” sequel.

Also, to be blunt, Hollywood just sucks.

AFGHANISTAN: Perpetual War Without Success or End.

In February 2012, after returning from my second combat deployment to Afghanistan, I published an 84-page analysis of the U.S. war effort in which I concluded, “despite what our senior defense leaders say in public, the military surge failed to reduce the insurgency, and with the drawdown in full swing, our future efforts are virtually certain to likewise fail.” The past six years have regrettably confirmed my assessment as accurate.

Despite the overly optimistic claims of every U.S. commander since 2005, the continued degradation in the Afghan government, the unrepentant corruption, and the undisguisable reemergence of the Taliban cannot be disguised. The so-called Afghan “unity” government continues to fragment, as President Ashraf Ghani dismissed a regional governor in Balkh Province, but Mohammad Atta Noor refuses to leave.

Ghani has thus far been unable to enforce his order. As the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has routinely testified, the Afghan government remains hopelessly corrupt, the Afghan military of limited ability, and the Taliban insurgency expands its territorial influence and control.

We must put a stop to the endless, and unnecessary, bleeding of our troops and U.S. taxpayers’ money, and recognize that our attempts to externally force a military solution on the political problems plaguing Afghanistan will never succeed.

Read the whole thing.

Winning in Afghanistan would require a level of violence we haven’t applied since World War II, and even then I’m not sure we would achieve anything lasting.

AUTHOR OF ANONYMOUS LIST THAT RUINED CAREERS now worried that losing anonymity might ruin her career.

BUT I HAD BEEN TOLD THAT SNOWFALLS WERE A THING OF THE… NEVER MIND: Those viral pictures of snow in the Sahara are real.

TRUST THE EXPERTS: Records show psych prof who ‘diagnosed’ Trump lacks license.

AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases, Updated Hourly.

Plus, new Kindle Daily Deals.

And, today’s Digital Deals.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Feds Used Dossier for Trump Snoop Warrant and Much, Much More.

There’s a lot to cover this morning, including “Senators work to salvage awful Iran deal.”

QUESTION ASKED (AGAIN): Was the DNC/Clinton campaign-funded dossier used to obtain Trump FISA warrant?

Sara Carter:

A large portion of the evidence presented in the salacious 35-page dossier put together by former British spy Christopher Steele, has either been proven wrong or remains unsubstantiated. However, the FBI gained approval nevertheless to surveil members of Trump’s campaign and “it’s outrageous and clearly should be thoroughly investigated,” said a senior law enforcement source, with knowledge of the process.

Multiple sources told this reporter that the dossier was used along with other evidence to obtain the warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as FISC. The sources also stressed that there will be more information in the coming week regarding systemic “FISA abuse.”

“(The dossier) certainly played a role in obtaining the warrant,” added another senior U.S. official, with knowledge of the dossier. “Congress needs to look at the FBI officials who were handling this case and see what, if anything, was verified in the dossier. I think an important question is whether the FBI payed anything to the source for the dossier.”

FBI officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

Maybe they were too busy making sure their stories jibe with Diane Feinstein’s posted testimony.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: 10 Takeaways From Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS Senate Testimony.

BYRON YORK: Yes, Congress has seen Trump-Russia secret court surveillance documents. Now what?

One of the most contentious issues surrounding the Trump dossier is the question of whether the FBI used unverified material from the dossier — a Clinton campaign opposition research product — to apply for permission to spy on Americans. Investigators from both House and Senate have long wanted to see any FISA applications (that is, spying requests filed with the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court) that dealt with the Trump-Russia affair.

Now, they have seen them.

Sources on both Capitol Hill and in the executive branch have confirmed that representatives of four committees — the House Intelligence Committee, Senate Intelligence Committee, House Judiciary Committee, and Senate Judiciary Committee — have had the opportunity to examine FISA documents in a secure room at the Justice Department. They were not allowed to take the documents out of the room or to copy them, but they could make notes. They thus know the answer to the was-the-dossier-used-for-spying question.

So what is the answer? For the moment, it’s classified. (Just for the record: I don’t know it.) There might be articles and commentary written on the assumption that the FBI did or did not use the dossier material with the FISA court, but right now it appears the information has not leaked, and those articles and commentary are based on assumptions rather than hard information.

The challenge for House and Senate investigators is to get the information to the public. One option is to ask the executive branch to declassify it. The problem is that simply getting the information out of the FBI and Justice Department has been like pulling teeth. Another option is to have the president himself declassify it. The problem is that it is probably a good idea for President Trump to stay out of a congressional investigative process that focuses on his campaign. Yet another option is for Congress to exercise its little-known authority to declassify. The problem is that it is a long and complicated process.

Well, I expect parts of it will leak, and they’ll be the parts that support the press’s preferred narrative. But that’s just me, and I’ve grown cynical over the years.

CUE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: IRS Needs Funding for GOP Tax Overhaul, Report Says.

The tax agency needs to update forms, create new definitions, write regulations and field questions from taxpayers, which tend to increase when Congress passes new laws. That will be challenging for the IRS, which is planning to answer just 60% of taxpayer calls during the tax-filing season and has cut its training budget by 75% since 2009, said Nina Olson, the national taxpayer advocate.

“We have already seen confusion about withholding changes, confusion about the deductibility of prepaid property taxes, and confusion about whether states can allow taxpayers to make charitable contributions in lieu of taxes as a way of permitting their residents to claim larger tax deductions,” Ms. Olson said as she released her annual report Wednesday on challenges facing taxpayers and the IRS. “With more funding, strong leadership, and a closer working relationship with Congress, I am convinced the IRS can do the job well.”

It’s far from clear, however, whether Congress will provide the IRS with additional money to implement the new tax system.

Maybe the IRS could find some extra money by disbanding its SWAT team and getting its agents to pay their taxes.

Until then, cry me a river.

WELL, HE’S RIGHT: Seal calls out Oprah Winfrey for hypocrisy, calls her ‘part of the problem.’

In a fiery Instagram post Wednesday, Seal republished a pair of photos of Winfrey with disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, including one in which she appears to be kissing the producer’s cheek. Overlayed on the photos, in all-caps, is the text: “When you have been part of the problem for decades, but suddenly they all think you are the solution.”

Seal added a sarcastic comment to the right of the photographs that suggested Winfrey knew Weinstein was mistreating women.

Everyone knew.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. U.S. Needs More ‘Idiot Control,’ Not Gun Control, Kennedy Says.

BRUCE BAWER: Oprah, Hollywood Heroine?

But don’t miss the 100-proof chaser: How She Could Win.

FAKE NEWS: No, Media. Trump is Not Kicking El Salvador Immigrants to the Curb.

Mary Chastain has the facts which the media would never let get in the way of a good story.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Higher Education Is Drowning In BS.

ONE-PARTY STATE: Wave of Republican Congressional Retirements in California.

With this wave of GOP retirements in Congress, Democrats have got to be fired up for massive gains in the November elections. This is more than tsunami territory, as far as I can see. This is going to be an earthquake with world shattering implications. Worlds are colliding!

Roll Call called it in September, “House Retirement Tide Is Coming.”

Ed Royce of Buena Park announced he was retiring on Monday. And now today we have the news of Darrell Issa’s retirement. These two aren’t noobs. They’re powerful GOP congressional veterans. Plus, Royce has a huge war chest of over $3 million in the bank, and Issa’s independently wealthy — so campaign finance isn’t the issue. It’s two things: (1) Donald Trump’s iconoclastic presidency has shaken up American politics and many Republicans will be the target of ire as surrogates for all kinds of voter disenchantment with politics, and (2) California’s formerly solid Republican majority in Orange County is history.

If memory serves, George W. Bush in 2002 was the only postwar President whose House majority gained seats in an off-year election — and that was coming on the heels of an expertly waged Afghanistan offensive in the months after 9/11.

THAT’S A FEATURE, NOT A BUG: Google’s New ‘Fact-Checker’ Is Partisan Garbage.

David Harsanyi:

Luckily for us, there are methods available to analyze the veracity of Google’s project. One way, for example, is to take a “reviewed claim” made against The Federalist, the site I happen to know best, and contrast it to the coverage of other sites.

Consider the case of a woman named Eileen Wellstone. Out of many thousands of pieces published by The Federalist over the past four years, a single one mentions the name Eileen Wellstone. That article, detailing the sordid history of Bill Clinton, mentions her name exactly once: “Another woman, Eileen Wellstone, claimed Clinton raped her while he was at Oxford University in the late 1960s.”

For some reason, in this “reviewed claim” against The Federalist, Google sends the reader to a Snopes fact-check that argues that Clinton wasn’t expelled from Oxford over this alleged rape — a point I concede sounds completely accurate and is also an assertion that no one has ever made in this publication.

So the question is, does Google tag every article that relays accusations of sexual misconduct or rape as “unproven,” or just the ones against Bill Clinton? Or is the mention of Wellstone specifically worthy of a claim? The Wellstone case has not only been cited in all types of publications (and not in efforts to debunk it, either; 1,2,3,4,5, and so on) but by The Washington Post’s own fact-checker.

In a 2016 article detailing allegations against Bill Clinton that might be brought up by then-candidate Donald Trump, WaPo notes, “Eileen Wellstone says she was assaulted by Clinton when he was a student at Oxford University in 1969.” There is virtually no difference between that statement and the one published in The Federalist.

Yes, but The Washington Post doesn’t require Google’s supervision because reasons.

IF I WERE HIS ATTORNEY, I’D ADVISE HIM TO SAY NO: Trump refuses to commit to Mueller interview.

Mueller, whose investigation is hopelessly compromised, should resign. Failing that, I don’t think anyone should walk into an interview that’s probably designed to produce a process charge.

WELL, YOU KNOW, HE AND TRUMP ARE FRIENDS: WaPo: Michael Wolff did Trump a big favor.

STEVEN PINKER: Here’s how political correctness winds up creating its own antagonists.