ROGER SIMON: Will Someone Please Review Dinesh D’Souza’s New Movie?

Fortunately, Roger has. Read the whole thing to make sense of the disparity between Ø critics’ approval versus an 88% audience score that D’Souza’s Death of a Nation has at Rotten Tomatoes.

TOLERANCE DOESN’T MEAN WHAT YOU AND I THINK IT DOES. AT LEAST NOT AT UVA: For one thing, it is absolutely verboten to be connected in any form or fashion with the Trump administration. LifeZette’s Elizabeth M. Economou has the details of what happened at the Miller Center at Thomas Jefferson’s school when it hired former Trump congressional liason Marc Short. I guess we can say this incident adds a new chapter to the history of virulent academic McCarthyism.

MICHAEL WALSH: In Minnesota, a Muslim ‘Backlash’ Warning.

Spoiler: The backlash never comes.

GREAT SCOT! ALEXANDER FLEMING, DISCOVERER OF PENICILLIN, WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1881: The story is that just after returning to his laboratory after a month-long vacation, he saw that one of his staphylococcus-containing petri dishes had gotten moldy. Upon closer inspection, lo and behold, he saw the area adjacent to the mold was bacteria free.

Fleming was modest about his discovery, saying that sometimes one finds what one is not looking for. But it would be wrong to believe that the good doctor was just a lucky guy who happened to run across the moldy bread that revolutionized medical science—à la Jed Clampett discovering oil on the Beverly Hillbillies. Fleming already had a reputation as dogged and meticulous researcher (if occasionally an untidy one). And he was looking for a method to eradicate harmful staphylococcus. When he looked at that petri dish, he had a fighting chance of recognizing what he was looking at. The rest of us … not so much.

THEY SAY THAT LIKE IT’S A BAD THING: Hardline U.S. ‘gundamentalists’ pressure NRA from within.

Its rise has rattled the NRA leadership and threatens the association’s ability to hold on to moderate supporters and to make compromises that might help fend off tougher gun control measures, according to some of the two dozen gun-rights activists, policy experts and gun-control advocates interviewed for this story.

“Generally, they have a disproportionately huge amount of power in the gun-rights movement,” said Richard Feldman, a former NRA lobbyist.

The NRA has faced divisions before. An internal revolt at the 1977 meeting in Cincinnati turned the polite, sport-shooting organization into a bare-knuckled political lobby that today claims five million members and is closely aligned with the Republican Party, funding pro-gun politicians. The NRA, which spent $30 million to support Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, is often viewed by gun-control advocates as implacably opposed to tighter gun laws.

The NRA leadership has put up obstacles to Kraut’s election, both with bylaws that make it harder for candidates not put forward by the nominating committee to get elected to the board, and by enlisting a senior member to campaign against him.

Positions on both sides of the gun control debate are hardening, but only one has the Constitution on its side.

NIALL FERGUSON: Chill. Donald Trump doesn’t mean democracy’s done.

I dunno. Whenever Democrats are out of power, it’s a sign of deep structural problems with our system.

COMBAT ENGINEER BRIDGING OPERATION: To combat a California fire. A good action photo of the California Army National Guard in action.

MIKE PENCE’S CYBERSECURITY SPEECH — ANNOTATED: Long article but worth the read.

PAULA BOLYARD PRESENTS: A quick and dirty guide to Ohio election fraud.

YID WITH LID: New “The Diary Of Anne Frank” Production Is Not About ICE And Illegals.

Read the whole thing.

SEE THE CRIMINALITY INHERENT IN THE SOCIALISM: Brazil’s Workers Party launches jailed Lula for president.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Mark Pulliam: Cronyism 101 at the University of Texas. “The Burnt Orange Mafia at the University of Texas–the inner circle of overpaid administrators, influence-wielding donors, supplicant vendors, and political hacks who approve UT’s inflated budget in exchange for preferential admission for their (and supporters’) unqualified children–want to raise ‘protection money’ to ensure friendly treatment in the upcoming legislative session.”

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Drone Strike on Maduro and Much, Much More. “I’ll go out on a limb and say there are probably plenty of people who have it in for Maduro, who has starved and murdered his people.”

SOME DARE CALL IT CONSPIRACY (BUT THEY ARE OUT TO LUNCH): Duke Historian Nancy Maclean’s Wacky Conspiracy Theory. It’s not that the pro-immigration, free-trading libertarian Koch Brothers have real differences with the nationalist, protectionist Trump; it’s all just a smokescreen to distract you while your rights are eviscerated, claims MacLean.

IT’S NOT ALWAYS GOOD TO BE THE KING: China’s new woes unravel Xi’s personality cult.

Extraordinary veneration of Xi and promotion of his glorification led David Bandurski, co-director of the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong, who translated part of the article, to call it “China’s new science of sycophantology.”

Apparently, all praise of Xi now turns out to be not only sycophantic, but also false or even counterproductive.

Beijing is thus faced with a big dilemma. If the trade war escalates, then it will certainly greatly damage China’s economy and Xi’s ambition. The fundamental factor behind the country’s emergence as a major power is its impressive economic growth over the past four decades.

Such an economic performance is also the ultimate reason behind Xi’s overt ambition of transforming it into a global power and leader. His failure to maintain high economic growth and to achieve the “Chinese dream” that he has ardently championed will make many within the Party and wider society question his unalloyed power and indefinite rule.

If he blinks first and makes concessions, his country will also suffer, though perhaps less severely. But the greater damage will likely come to his reputation, as any concession to Trump could make the Chinese perceive their supreme leader is weak and outplayed.

A problem with one-man rule is that there’s only one man to the blame, and no easy or nice way to get rid of him.

COMPANIES FLOCK TO COLUMBUS, OHIO TO TEST MARKET PRODUCTS:  It’s a pretty good cross-section of America.  John Fund writes that we should think of Tuesday’s special election for Ohio’s twelfth congressional district (which includes parts of Columbus) that way. Though it leans Republican, it may be a useful barometer for measuring the mood of the electorate.

PAUL BEDARD: Weekly Trump Report Card: Chaos promised, chaos delivered, and it works.

HEY, #METOO! Yes, the U.S. Military Loves Shotguns.