WINNING: Iran’s Entrenchment in Syria Set Back Months After Most Extensive Israeli Strike in Decades.

GOOD LORD: Nurse charged in death of ex-national security adviser H.R. McMaster’s father at Philadelphia senior care facility.

ADVENTURES IN PROGRESSIVE LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS: Michelle Goldberg: How the Online Left Fuels the Right.

What Goldberg essentially says is “instead of trying to silence conservatives, let’s be incredibly condescending to the point where we *might* be willing to debate some of those we consider to be sufficiently intelligent. And let’s throw in some largely irrelevant contempt for Israel too, because I need to virtue-signal my Progressive bona fides before I can mildly criticize Progressives.” Yep, columns like this will certainly stop the online left from fueling the right. Not. How about taking serious ideas seriously?

IF IT CAN’T BE REPRODUCED, IT’S NOT SCIENCE: Many studies’ results cannot be reproduced, scholars warn.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Mole in the Trump Campaign and Much, Much More. “I wonder who it is? Strassel wraps up her piece by urging the President to declassify all the documents associated with this investigation. I agree.”

LIGHT ATTACK EXPERIMENT: An experimental AT-6 light attack aircraft banks over the White Sands Missile Range.

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: I Was Kicked Off The Harry Potter Ride For Being Too Fat For The Seats.

One of the 20-something ride managers walked over and asked us all to step off because of a “safety” issue. We were ushered through a door to what looked like a backstage area where another 20-something employee rattled off a spiel about “safety” and “three clicks” and having to “try out a safety seat.” That’s when we all knew that I hadn’t actually made it onto the Hogwarts ride.

The four of us were taken to the beginning of the line where another 20-something informed us that for safety reasons, the restraint covering a rider’s chest must click down three times. She asked us to try out the test seat and my friends all looked over at me because I was obviously the fat one who caused our current predicament.

I took the bullet and pulled the restraint over my shoulders, pressing down as tightly as I could, my precious E-cups getting smashed into my chest and up around my neck. One click. That’s all I could manage.

“Lax safety standards” isn’t something most people look for in an amusement park.

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 1826: The Five Year Anniversary. And much praise to Prof. (now Dean!) Caron for his indefatigable coverage of this scandal, despite — shameful — pressure from many of his fellow tax professors to let it drop.

I REMEMBER WHEN PEOPLE THOUGHT MORE EDUCATION WOULD LEAD TO MORE TOLERANCE FOR DIFFERENT VIEWS: It Is Educated Voters Who Are Making Politics More Polarized. “In this view, the strength of a voter’s identity as a Democrat or Republican drives political engagement more than personal gain. Better educated voters more readily form ‘identity centric’ political commitments to their party of choice, which goes a long way toward explaining the strength of liberal convictions among more affluent Democrats.”

That reminds me of this on the behavior of college-educated voters from The Great Revolt:

In counties with far more than the national average of 29.8 percent of adults with bachelor’s degrees, Trump fared poorly. Of America’s one hundred most educated counties, he carried only nineteen — Romney had carried twenty-six in defeat and outpolled Trump in almost all of them by significant margins. Simply put, Americans who live their lives among a group of friends and neighbors with varied educational backgrounds preferred Trump more than Clinton or Romney, while college-educated Americans who live exclusively among other degree holders were less likely to support Trump, even if they were otherwise Republican.

Trump’s performance among college-educated voters who live in counties below the national average in education levels was right on the republican par — particularly in midsize and smaller counties in the Great Lakes swing states that determined the outcome of the election.

These voters did not face the kind of social pressure to oppose the lewd and coarse Trump that their college-educated peers did in the suburbs.

The enforced conformity of Democratic constituencies, from college-educated voters to black voters, is really amazing, and it’s something that I’d be looking for ways to break down if I were a GOP strategist.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: About That FBI ‘Source:’ Did the Bureau engage in outright spying against the 2016 Trump campaign?

The Department of Justice lost its latest battle with Congress Thursday when it allowed House Intelligence Committee members to view classified documents about a top-secret intelligence source that was part of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign. Even without official confirmation of that source’s name, the news so far holds some stunning implications.

Among them is that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation outright hid critical information from a congressional investigation. In a Thursday press conference, Speaker Paul Ryan bluntly noted that Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes’s request for details on this secret source was “wholly appropriate,” “completely within the scope” of the committee’s long-running FBI investigation, and “something that probably should have been answered a while ago.” Translation: The department knew full well it should have turned this material over to congressional investigators last year, but instead deliberately concealed it.

House investigators nonetheless sniffed out a name, and Mr. Nunes in recent weeks issued a letter and a subpoena demanding more details. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s response was to double down—accusing the House of “extortion” and delivering a speech in which he claimed that “declining to open the FBI’s files to review” is a constitutional “duty.” Justice asked the White House to back its stonewall. And it even began spinning that daddy of all superspook arguments—that revealing any detail about this particular asset could result in “loss of human lives.”

This is desperation, and it strongly suggests that whatever is in these files is going to prove very uncomfortable to the FBI.

The bureau already has some explaining to do. Thanks to the Washington Post’s unnamed law-enforcement leakers, we know Mr. Nunes’s request deals with a “top secret intelligence source” of the FBI and CIA, who is a U.S. citizen and who was involved in the Russia collusion probe. When government agencies refer to sources, they mean people who appear to be average citizens but use their profession or contacts to spy for the agency. Ergo, we might take this to mean that the FBI secretly had a person on the payroll who used his or her non-FBI credentials to interact in some capacity with the Trump campaign.

This would amount to spying, and it is hugely disconcerting. It would also be a major escalation from the electronic surveillance we already knew about, which was bad enough. Obama political appointees rampantly “unmasked” Trump campaign officials to monitor their conversations, while the FBI played dirty with its surveillance warrant against Carter Page, failing to tell the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that its supporting information came from the Hillary Clinton campaign. Now we find it may have also been rolling out human intelligence, John Le Carré style, to infiltrate the Trump campaign.

Which would lead to another big question for the FBI: When? The bureau has been doggedly sticking with its story that a tip in July 2016 about the drunken ramblings of George Papadopoulos launched its counterintelligence probe. Still, the players in this affair—the FBI, former Director Jim Comey, the Steele dossier authors—have been suspiciously vague on the key moments leading up to that launch date. When precisely was the Steele dossier delivered to the FBI? When precisely did the Papadopoulos information come in?

And to the point, when precisely was this human source operating? Because if it was prior to that infamous Papadopoulos tip, then the FBI isn’t being straight.

I don’t think the FBI is being straight. I’m speculating, of course, but I think it’s going to turn out that they were spying on Trump from surprisingly early on, and that they didn’t expect him to win, and that when he did win, the Russian “collusion” thing was hyped up as a smokescreen.

Flashback, March 2017: “Hypothesis: The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction.”

Plus: “But if they thought Hillary was sure to win, why bother spying on Trump? A sinister reason: To prosecute him — for something, anything they could discover — after he lost, so as to properly cow Hillary’s opposition. That might be true, but on the other hand, LBJ spied on Goldwater when his win was assured, and Nixon did the same vs. McGovern. Why would unthreatened incumbents spy on opponents they expect to lose? Maybe they do it for the same reason a dog licks himself: Because he can.”

Still just a hypothesis, but one that seems increasingly likely to be true. And if it is, the sinister reason also seems more likely to be true.

More: “Glenn Simpson, founder of the Fusion GPS research firm that hired former British agent Christopher Steele, told investigators that the FBI had shared the existence of ‘a human source from inside the Trump Organization’ in a September 2016 meeting with Steele.” (Bumped).

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: ‘No one wants to be last in line.’ Seizure of Venezuela oil assets may start wave.

The decision, which came amid the accelerating deterioration of Petroleos de Venezuela S.A.’s production capacity, could lead creditors to try to seize other Venezuelan assets abroad, including oil exports, to recover the more than $40 billion they claim they are owed.

“Creditors are now saying to themselves, ‘Look, we now have confirmation that you can go out and embargo PDVSA,’ and many of them are going to rush into court to ask for their own seizures,” said Antonio De La Cruz, executive director of Inter American Trends in Washington, D.C.

“We are at the start of a snowball” rolling downhill, added Russ Dallen, managing partner of Caracas Capital Markets, an investment bank in Miami. “Now that people have started to file lawsuits, we are going to see a run because no one wants to be the last in line.”

Plus: As inflation devastates Venezuela, artists make purses and paintings out of bills.

Coming soon: Everybody’s a trillionaire!

UNDERSTANDING THE UPHEAVAL: Matthew Continetti reviews Salena Zito & Brad Todd’s The Great Revolt.

GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK CHANGED THEIR RULES TO TAKE SIDES IN AN ELECTION. “Facebook declined to elaborate on its decision or to supply details of any ads cancelled, or ad revenue earned to date in the referendum campaign. However, several people familiar with the internet giants – and who are in regular contact with them – who spoke to The Irish Times on condition of anonymity on Wednesday, believe that Google and Facebook became fearful in the past week that if the referendum was defeated, they would be the subject of an avalanche of blame and further scrutiny of their role in election campaigns.”

MICHELLE MALKIN: Daniel Holtzclaw update: Innocence community in New York speaks out.

ANOTHER POINT IN TRUMP’S FAVOR: Turkey’s Erdogan tells Iran’s Rouhani that U.S. decision on nuclear deal wrong.

STEVE SALERNO: Is There Room in Diversity For White People?

And yet wholesome is not the word that comes to mind when one assesses the newest wrinkle in academia’s attempt to balance the scales: an all-out, unapologetic assault on ‘whiteness’ itself. Today’s college administrators increasingly frame diversity and inclusion as lessons that must be learned by whites alone—and they’re lessons that too often unfold as interventions that force whites to regard themselves less as full partners in diversity than an obstacle to be overcome so that other constituencies might thrive. (This flows from another favored academic trope, the concept of the zero-sum society, wherein white success necessarily comes at the expense of non-white failure.) Colleges require the injection of units—if not whole introductory courses—on diversity in major subject areas “from physics to forestry,” as the Atlantic put it, and syllabi confirm the prevailing view of whiteness as something of an anachronistic disease that, like cholera, has no place in modern life.

As I say, this seems like it creates a hostile educational environment on account of race. I’d like to see the Department of Education weigh in on this.

SHOCK AND AWE:

WELL, THE ELITES DIDN’T LIKE HIM UNTIL HE WAS SAFELY DEAD: Victor Davis Hanson: Truman May Have Been the Proto-Trump. “Truman swore. He had nightly drinks and played poker with cronies. And he shocked aides and the public with his vulgarity and crass attacks on political enemies. Truman mocked the widely respected Senator William Fulbright as ‘Half-bright.’ In the pre-Twitter age, Truman could not keep his mouth shut. When a reviewer for the Washington Post trashed Truman’s daughter’s concert performance, Truman physically threatened him.”

Related (from Ed): Nearly 70 years before Trump was accusing Ted Cruz’s dad with being involved in the JFK assassination, Truman had no problem with his own form of political character assassination, which likely helped him close the gap in the waning days of the 1948 election. As a New York Times headline screamed in late October of that year, “PRESIDENT LIKENS DEWEY TO HITLER AS FASCISTS’ TOOL; Says When Bigots, Profiteers Get Control of Country They Select ‘Front Man’ to Rule DICTATORSHIP STRESSED Truman Tells Chicago Audience a Republican Victory Will Threaten U.S. Liberty TRUMAN SAYS GOP PERILS U.S. LIBERTY.”

CHANGE: US Envoy Tells German Companies to Wind Down Operations in Iran ‘Immediately.’

WELL, GOOD: Fourth Circuit Rules That Suspicionless Forensic Searches of Electronic Devices at the Border Are Unconstitutional.

YOU DON’T SAY: When It Comes to Iran, Threats and Pressure Get Results.

Obama gave them billions and didn’t even get a lousy t-shirt:

This principle was best illustrated in a particularly testy moment during the final days of the 2015 nuclear negotiations. Western foreign ministers were trying to keep in place a U.N. conventional arms embargo on Iran, and they brought up the regime’s support for terrorism throughout the Middle East. Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, responded that he could bring American and European governments before The Hague for their support of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. “Never threaten an Iranian,” he said, according to multiple reports at the time.

With apologies to Zarif, threatening Iran’s regime has worked in the past and may be working again now. Just look at the reaction Tuesday evening from Iran’s largely powerless president, Hassan Rouhani, to President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear deal. Rouhani did not begin uranium enrichment or kick out inspectors. Instead he announced that Iran would remain a party to the agreement with Europe, and would begin negotiations on changes.

Rouhani, who lacks real political power, of course could be overruled. Other Iranian leaders have threatened to restart the nuclear program. What’s more, the Iranians will no doubt try to press America’s European allies for more concessions to an already weak nuclear bargain.

But if history is any guide, the Iranian regime won’t push too far if its leaders believe Trump’s threats are credible.

As we learned yesterday, it’s the Israelis they really have to worry about — and by backing out of the nuclear deal, Trump has let the Israelis off the leash.

TOM STEYER’S MOTHER’S DAY AD: All Young Republicans Are Charlottesville White Nationalists.