AN INTERVIEW WITH CONRAD BLACK: “I don’t think the Democrats will win the House. I think what will happen is that the President will… order the release by the Justice Department, relatively close to the midterm elections, of everything to do with the collusion investigation, to reveal in its ghastly infirmity the absolute vacuity of that argument, the falsity, the malice and the defamatory destructiveness of the entire argument that he or anyone closely associated with him ever colluded with a foreign power to rig an American election. Just administer a bone-crushing defeat to the Democrats, and their echo chamber in the national media.”

WHY TRUMP IS MORE POPULAR THAN EVER:

There was, I like fondly to imagine, a different course that might have been taken here. It is just possible, I suppose, that members of my profession could have exercised their reasoning faculties to decide what in the administration was good, what was bad, what was unremarkable or indistinguishable from what any modern president would do, what was painfully idiotic, what was, perhaps, evil. We chose not to exercise this responsibility. Instead we decided to indulge in our live-action roleplaying fantasies about being brave selfless journos taking on a mean demagogue because we love the Constitution so much.

Trump’s singular gift is his ability to reveal our ruling class, sector by sector, as being not simply incompetent, and not merely evil, but — most damagingly — utterly ridiculous.

THIS WILL END WELL: “Yoga Should Address Social Justice, So I Want to Open My Own Studio… I recognize that yoga in the Western world can be culturally appropriative, and I’ve had many an existential crisis about whether I, as a black southern American woman, should even be doing yoga, let alone thinking about teaching it.”

Plus much more, as John Hawkins proffers additional examples of “Why Liberals Are More Likely to Be Unhappy People.”

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Nun raped me and had my baby: Torment of schoolboy victim revealed in shock abuse scandal.

OPEN THREAD: Thread Away.

THE 21st CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT THE WAY I HAD HOPED: It’s a Theyby! Is it possible to raise your child entirely without gender from birth? Some parents are trying.

As Ross Douthat tweets, “So mysterious where Jordan Peterson’s appeal comes from.”

As of the time of this post, Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life is back to #1 most read on Amazon.

FASTER, PLEASE: Cancer docs say ‘superblood’ may work against deadly malignancies.

IT’S NOT LIKE WE DIDN’T KNOW THIS, BUT THE HONESTY IS REFRESHING:

NOBODY EVER ACTUALLY CARED ABOUT THEM; THEY WERE A USEFUL TOOL ONCE, AND NOW THEY’RE USELESS: Arab Leaders Abandon the Palestinians: Facing threats from Iran and Turkey, they want peace—and to strangle Hamas. “But the American protection on which Arabs rely cannot be taken for granted, as President Trump’s apparent determination to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria in the near term demonstrates. Under these circumstances, Israel’s unmatched access to Washington makes Jerusalem even more important to Arab calculations. Perhaps only Israel can keep the U.S. engaged in the region.”

BLOWBACK: Men Like Trump More After Stormy Daniels Accusations, Poll Shows.

From the comments: “We have a President who has sex with porn stars and wants a space army. I love this guy.”

CONNECTICUT: Esty seat not a toss-up, but fierce race expected.

AN UNDERSTANDABLE REACTION: After YouTube HQ Shooting, Witness Says, ‘I Didn’t Have a Gun on Me, But I Wish I Did.’

REALCLEARDEFENSE: Break and Remake the U.S. Navy Surface Fleet. “So Adm. Phil Davidson, the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, has come out in favor of longer, more rigorous training before aspiring surface warfare officers step aboard their first ships. Good, and not a moment too soon. But let’s ask why it took a series of shipboard disasters to jolt the U.S. Navy into reforming the training regimen. Also worth probing is whether problems with seamanship, navigation and combat proficiency can be truly fixed without seismic change.”

AT AMAZON, save on Small Appliances.

Plus, deals on Safety and Security.

DISPATCHES FROM DEEP WITHIN THE TENTACLES OF THE MSM: Kurt Eichenwald Emails Ben Shapiro . . . And It’s Wild.

And it gets worse: Here Are The Direct Messages Between Parkland Student Kyle Kashuv And Eichenwald.

As Benny Johnson of the Daily Caller tweets, “Eichenwald carried on a very long, bizarre DM conversation with [Kashuv] and regularly referred to himself as a victim in the entire situation.”

NIALL FERGUSON IN THE BOSTON GLOBE: Enough With The Hating On White Men.

“Masculinity, not ideology, drives extremist groups,” was another recent headline that caught my eye, this time in The Washington Post.

Got it.

I have had to listen to a variation on this theme rather too much in recent weeks. Last month I organized a small conference of historians who I knew shared my interest in trying to apply historical knowledge to contemporary policy problems. Five of the people I invited to give papers were women, but none was able to attend. I should have tried harder to find other female speakers, no doubt. But my failure to do so elicited a disproportionately vitriolic response.

Under a headline that included the words “Too white and too male,” The New York Times published photographs of all the speakers, as if to shame them for having participated. Around a dozen academics — male as well as female — took to social media to call the conference a “StanfordSausageFest.” . . .

I was raised to believe in the equal rights of all people, regardless of sex, race, creed, or any other difference. That the human past was characterized by discrimination of many kinds is not news to me. But does it really constitute progress if the proponents of diversity resort to the behavior that was previously the preserve of sexists and racists?

Publishing the names and mugshots of conference speakers is the kind of thing anti-Semites once did to condemn the “over-representation” of Jewish people in academia. Terms such as “SausageFest” belong not in civil academic discourse but on urinal walls.

What we see here is the sexism of the anti-sexists; the racism of the anti-racists. In this “Through the Looking Glass” world, diversity means ideological homogeneity. “The whitesplaining of history is over,” declared another heated article by Satia last week. Hideous Newspeak terms such as “whitesplaining” and “mansplaining” are symptoms of the degeneration of the humanities in the modern university. Never mind the facts and reason, so the argument runs, all we need to know — if we don’t like what we hear — are the sex and race of the author.

Well, that’s how racists think, and academia is a cesspit of racism. Plus:

The process of indoctrination starts early. My six-year-old son stunned his parents the other day when we asked what he had been studying at school. He replied that they had been finding out about the life of Martin Luther King Jr. “What did you learn?” I asked. “That most white people are bad,” he replied.

This is America in 2018.

You want more Trump? This is how you get more Trump.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Value and Limitations of a Cardiac Calcium Scan. My doc isn’t very into these. We talked a few years ago and he said if the scan was bad, he’d tell me to take statins, quit smoking, eat a good diet, and exercise. But I don’t smoke, and I already do the other stuff, so no real point.

THIS NEW JERSEY COUNTY WON’T BECOME A SANCTUARY PLACE: At least not if Sheriff Fred W. Brown of Hunterdon County has any say in it. He told LifeZette’s Michelle Blood Hunterdon “is not going to be a sanctuary county as long as I’m sheriff.” He’s one of the 400 sheriffs from across the country who signed a letter last week telling Congress to get with it and support tougher immigration enforcement. The ranks of such folks in law enforcement are growing steadily as the consequences of sanctuary dysfunction spread.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: ESPN’s AM “WokeCenter” Debuts To Worst Ratings Ever.

‘MULTIPLE PATIENTS’ HOSPITALIZED AFTER REPORTED YOUTUBE HQ SHOOTING IN SAN BRUNO, CA OFFICIALS SAY.

PJM’s Hot Mic is doing regular updates on the incident.

HOW MANY CONTAINERIZED RUSSIAN WMDS SIT IN U.S. PORTS RIGHT NOW? No, that’s not simply a click-bait question. Mary Fanning and Alan Jones connect dots on Uranium One deal, Clinton Foundation influence-peddling, Russian intelligence and a certain powerful Iraqi family. You really need to read what they found, which just went live on LifeZette.

HMM: Uber Settles With Family of Woman Killed by Self-Driving Car: We may never find out the details of what actually happened.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: The Sinclair Broadcast Group Is Trying to Control Your Mind, or Something.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON THE NEW LAST REFUGE OF SCOUNDRELS:

Harvey Weinstein assumed that fighting the NRA and Trump would compensate for assaulting and harassing women. Steven Colbert thought that he could use gross homophobic slurs and avoid criticism because he was doing so to attack a despised Trump who holds the nation’s nuclear codes. Christina Garcia believes that as a Latina representative of her “community,” she is exempt from the very charges she often levels against others, and she assumes that using profanity, drinking in her office, and slurring gays are the exemptions given to one who is an “advocate.”

Political correctness is now the new last refuge of a scoundrel.

No wonder Connecticut Democrat Elizabeth Esty assumed that the right clichés, being a proponent for gun control, and a (D) after her name would allow her to ride out her scandals.