THIS SEEMS IMPORTANT: ‘Major Crack in Government’s Defenses’: We May Finally Learn How the FBI Handled the Steele Dossier.

U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta has ruled that the FBI cannot issue a Glomar response when it comes to whatever verification attempts they may have used for the contents of the infamous Christopher Steele dossier. In other words, the FBI can no longer hide behind the “we can neither confirm nor deny” response in order to stonewall records requests regarding how they may have tried to determine the validity of the synopsis of the dossier that raised concerns President Donald Trump might be compromised by Russia, pee tapes and all.

National security lawyer Bradley P. Moss, whose tweet on the news you can see above, told Law&Crime that this is a “major crack in the Government’s legal defenses.”

“[Those defenses were] designed to conceal whether the FBI has taken any steps to verify the accuracy of the ‘salacious’ allegations outlined in that synopsis provided to then-President-elect Trump in January 2017,” Moss said. “Ironically, if it turns out that the FBI has undertaken such efforts and has verified any of the claims, thereby embarrassing President Trump politically, the president will have no one to blame for that revelation other than himself.”

Moss said what made this “largely possible” was Trump’s decision to declassify the Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff memos.

Which would at the very least seem to indicate that Trump knows the memos were BS, and is eager to let the cards fall where they may.

HEADLINE OF THE WEEK: Sex pigs halt traffic after laser attack on Pokémon teens.

OH: Pro-Trump Pentagon Analyst Was Stripped of His Security Clearance by Obama Holdovers. “After he blew the whistle on suspicious Stefan Harper contracts in the fall of 2016.”

That’s different because shut up.

THE CONSERVATIVE CONUNDRUM: When is more government regulation justified? My weekly column in the Daily Caller. (Note copious citations to Glenn Reynolds’ work. I only steal from the best).

Related: When Digital Platforms Become Censors.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Why the Left Hates Western Culture.

SCENES FROM RAHM EMANUEL’S CHICAGO: 15-year-old boy killed, 14-year-old wounded outside basketball tournament: ‘He got hit. He was trying to breathe.’

WELL, GOOD: Measles cases aren’t spiking, despite talk of an outbreak.

NEXT UP ON THE DNC-MSM DOXX LIST: The jurors on the Paul Manafort trial.

The list of media outlets requesting the jurors’ names includes CNN, AP, BuzzFeed, NBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Millennial Couple Bikes Near ISIS Territory to Prove ‘Humans Are Kind’ and Gets Killed.

“You read the papers and you’re led to believe that the world is a big, scary place,” Austin wrote.

“People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil.”

“I don’t buy it,” he continued. “Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own… By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind.”

However, Austin and Geoghegan’s dream trip came to a tragic and gruesome end when they got to Tajikistan, a ​weak state with a known terrorist threat that shares a border with Afghanistan, where ISIS and other terrorist groups are ​highly active. They were riding their bikes through the country on July 29 when a car rammed them, ​​according to CBS News. Five men got out of the car and stabbed the couple to death along with two other cyclists, one from Switzerland and the other from the Netherlands.

Two days later, ISIS released a video showing the same men sitting in front of the group’s black flag. They looked at the camera and vowed to kill “disbelievers,” ​according to The New York Times.

What an unnecessary, sad story.

CHANGE: FDA approves first generic EpiPen.

DOWN BUT NOT OUT: About 30,000 ISIS Fighters Still in Syria and Iraq, Inspector General Reports. “At the end of December, the U.S.-led coalition had estimated “less than 1,000 ISIS terrorists” remaining on the battlefields.”

That’s some discrepancy.

NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bans press from Queens town hall.

BLUE ON BLUE-ISH:

Was there ever some small chance the Left wouldn’t fund Collins’ Democratic opponent?

ANDREW KLAVAN ON THE CORRUPTION IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: It’s a Gay Scandal Too, You Know.

ROBERT REICH: How Trump’s War on Regulation Is Trickle-Down Economics.

As if either one of those is a bad thing.

SCIENCE MARCHES ON: Mathematicians solve age-old spaghetti mystery.

SELF-LOATHING SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter has gone to war with the developers who made the platform popular.

UCSB SEX MISCONDUCT CASE GETS CALIFORNIA REGENTS FOUND IN CONTEMPT OF COURT: UC Santa Barbara apparently thought the law didn’t apply to it. Turns out it did. Were I a California regent, I’d be furious that my subordinates’ lawlessness put my name on the bad side of a contempt proceeding.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR: When Antifa Chants ‘No America At All’

BRIDGET JOHNSON: Senate Dems Vow to Sue if They Don’t Get Requested Kavanaugh Documents. “McConnell said the best way to evaluate Supreme Court nominee would not be through the documents sought by Dems but by rooting through his 300 federal rulings.”

HARDBALL: U.S. Signals It Could Sanction China Over Iran Oil Imports.

Brian Hook, who has been appointed as special representative and chief of a new Iran Action Group at the State Department, said the U.S. would issue waivers from sanctions to countries that have made efforts to reduce their Iranian oil purchases.

India and South Korea are among Iran’s top oil customers. Both countries already have started to scale back imports and are hoping to obtain waivers to buy more time to replace Iranian crude.

But China repeatedly has said it has no plans to comply with a wave of U.S. sanctions that are due to be reimposed on Iran’s energy sector on Nov. 4. Some oil analysts expect China to increase Iranian imports instead, potentially undermining U.S. efforts to isolate Iran.

In a response to a question about China’s plan to continue importing Iranian oil at a State Department briefing on Thursday, Mr. Hook refused to rule out imposing secondary sanctions on Beijing as punishment.

I’d much rather trade than fight with China, but if they want to keep playing footsie with the Mullah’s Regime, well, that’s on them.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Jewish students say they must vocally oppose Israel or be marginalized. Is it anti-Semitism?

CARRIER ON THE MOVE: An aerial photo of the USS Stennis “conducting routine operations in the U.S. 3rd Fleet area of operations.”

STEALING YOU BLIND: The GAO finds that a quarter of federal employees suspended from their job had been suspended before. [UPDATE: Link is quirky. Here’s a direct link to the report.]

Shill alert: If you want to read more about the ways in which bureaucrats bilk you, my book Stealing You Blind is still available in Kindle and hardcover.