WE FINALLY FOUND THAT COLLUSION: Financial Bounty Hunters Testify: Clinton Foundation Operated As Foreign Agent.

The Clinton Foundation “began acting as an agent of foreign governments ‘early in its life’ and throughout its existence. As such, the foundation should’ve registered under FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act),” he said. “Ultimately, the Foundation and its auditors conceded in formal submissions that it did operate as a (foreign) agent, therefore the foundation is not entitled to its 501c3 tax-exempt privileges as outlined in IRS 170 (c)2.”

Doyle, who was also outlining a litany of violations by the foundation, noted that currently there are approximately 1.75 million nonprofits in the United States that annually generate nearly 2 trillion dollars, which is 9 percent of the U.S. GDP.

“Who’s minding the store, looking out for the donors and minding the rule of law,” said Doyle.

“On that note, we followed the money so we made extensive spreadsheets of their revenues and expenses, we analyzed their income statements and we did a macro-review of all the donors, which is a very (jumbled) sort of foundation,” said Doyle. “Less than 1/10th of one percent of the donors gave 80 percent of the money. So we follow the money.”

Read the whole, damning thing.

I’M SURE THE STUDENTS WILL BE CRUSHED: UNC faculty threaten not to teach over Confed statue. “University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill faculty members are threatening not to teach during the first week of the spring semester if the school approves a proposal to house in a new $5 million building a Confederate statue torn down by protesters.”

Lefties are so desperate to recapture the moral high ground of the 1960s civil rights era, but with so little to work with they risk looking ridiculous. And by “risk looking ridiculous,” I mean, they definitely look ridiculous.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Wiped, Like With a Cloth and Much, Much More. “Wow. Is anyone at the federal agencies concerned about the RUSSIAN money that flowed into the Clinton Foundation prior to the Uranium One sale? Anyone? Bueller?”

WE DON’T HAVE A REVENUE PROBLEM, WE HAVE AN OVERSPENDING PROBLEM: Feds Collect Record Taxes Through November; Still Run $305.4B Deficit.

MARK PULLIAM: Kavanaugh: Too Soon to Be Reading Tea Leaves.

ALL IN THE FAMILY: Maxine Waters’ Campaign Debt to Daughter Jumps $90,000.

More accurately, the Waters campaign steered an additional $90,000 to her daughter.

THEY REALLY AREN’T BRINGING MUCH TO THE TABLE: Michael Barone: Parties need to up their game.

Two weeks ago in this space, I asked what was to blame for the weakness of the heads of government here and in Western Europe. Institutional failure, voter fecklessness, leaders’ personal weaknesses, or some combination of all three?

This week, let’s look at one of those institutions — political parties. How have they contributed to current woes? How can they perform better?

There are those who would ask, what would you expect from parties? They’re nasty, grubby institutions, selfish, and inward-looking, in which intellectual dishonesty is the norm. Why not be done with them, and have a virtuous nonpartisan democracy?

One quick reply: When and where has anyone had an electoral democracy like that? The framers of the Constitution loathed parties and were wholly unpersuaded by the case Edmund Burke was making for them on the other side of the Atlantic.

But in the 1790s, they quickly formed parties because of disagreements over serious issues like how to finance the federal government and whether to back Britain or France in their world war.

Political parties do provide a certain stability to politics, and they have also have incentives to respond to evolving events and emerging issues. But they have been doing a rotten job of both recently in many prominent democracies.

For parties to work, they have to be run by people with self-discipline and a sense of the national interest. Those people are harder to find than they used to be, and they were never easy to find.

ZUCK ON IT: ‘They threw us under the bus at every opportunity’: Facebook fact-checkers say its mission to weed out fake news was a PR stunt. To be fair, the whole “fake news on Facebook swung the election” claim was also a PR stunt, to distract from what a miserable candidate Hillary was.

“WHAT ARE YOU REBELLING AGAINST?” “HOW MUCH MONEY HAVE YOU GOT?” Far-left extremists are raising money on Patreon to “inspire insurrection.”

Far Left Watch has done a good job of collating what violence-inspiring lefties are getting away with on Patreon, so you’ll want to click over. But first, this:

Patreon is back in the news following another round of what appears to be an ideological purge from their platform. In the last few days the accounts for Milo Yiannopoulos, Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad), and James Allsup were all terminated. These individuals all have different belief systems and principals and have been vocal critics of each other but their common denominator is a very vocal and effective critique of the far-left and their creeping authoritarianism.

Following the termination of these accounts, many people speculated that Patreon was selectively enforcing their Community Guidelines in order to target right-of-center influencers.

But of course.

IF TRUMP WERE A DEMOCRAT, WE’D BE SEEING COMPARISONS TO JFK NOW: Russia Pulls Nuclear Bombers from Venezuela After Pressure from U.S.

CNN ELECTION ANALYST ON DEMS’ 2020 RACE: “I am not sure it’s the time to nominate a white man.”

I’m not sure I understand – everyone says that Robert O’Rourke is the early Democratic frontrunner.

YEAH, PRETTY MUCH: Harrington: Flynn’s ‘Only Crime’ Was ‘Going to Work for a Republican President.’ It’s a case of “show me the man and I will find you the crime.”

WELL, IT’S A GOOD THING SHE DOESN’T HAVE TO FACE THE VOTERS UNTIL… EVER: Melania Trump’s poll numbers plummet.

OH: German journalist Billy Six ‘charged with espionage’ in Venezuela.

Venezuelan rights group Espacio Público says Mr Six, who writes for right-wing newspaper Junge Freiheit, has been charged with espionage and rebellion.

Relatives say he was arrested more than three weeks ago while reporting on Venezuela’s economic crisis and the mass migration it has triggered.

Diplomatic officials have reportedly not been allowed to see him.

Six did not make Time magazine’s Person of the Year list, despite being a journalist imprisoned by a brutal regime on questionable charges.

CHANGE: Number of Streaming Shows Overtakes Basic Cable, Broadcast for First Time.

Streaming services snatched their biggest piece of the TV pie ever in 2018.

According to FX’s annual report on the number of scripted originals on TV, the number of streaming shows has surpassed the number of basic cable and broadcast shows for the first time ever. Out of 495 scripted originals that aired in 2018, 160 of them did so on a streaming platform. That is compared to 146 on broadcast and 144 on basic cable. Pay cable accounted for the remaining 45 shows.

Streaming shows also saw the biggest increase year-to-year, growing from 117 last year. Broadcast dipped slightly, dropping from 153 in 2017. Basic cable saw a more sharp decline, compared to the 175 shows that aired on basic cable the previous year. Pay cable was up slightly from 42.

On a percentage basis, streaming shows now account for approximately one third of all scripted originals, with approximately 32%. Broadcast made up 30% and basic cable 29%, with pay cable making up 9%.

Bad news for the networks.

UGH: Fentanyl now America’s deadliest drug, federal health officials say.

It’s the first time the synthetic opioid has been the nation’s deadliest drug. From 2012 to 2015, heroin topped the list.

On average, in each year from 2013 to 2016, the rate of overdose deaths from Fentanyl increased by about 113 percent a year. The report said fentanyl was responsible for 29 percent of all overdose deaths in 2016, up from just 4 percent in 2011.

Overall, more than 63,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2016, according to the report, which was prepared by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s an average of 174 deaths a day.

Whatever happened to just quietly drinking your troubles away?

MATT MARGOLIS: Why Allegations of Campaign Finance Violations Won’t Bring Down Trump. “Obama is guilty of worse, and nothing happened to him.”

Double standards, Matt. Double. Standards.

2018: A Surfeit of Empathy and an Absence of Compassion.

DOWNLOAD IT WHILE IT’S HOT: Constitutional Hardball Yes, Asymmetric Not so Much. In which I demur from the academic consensus that the Republicans have been shattering constitutional norms while the innocent Democrats have been quiescent.

ADVENTURES IN SELF-DELUSION: “Amy Schumer: I’m Not Going To Look ‘Super-F***able’ Anymore.”

Maybe she is confusing “super-f***able” with looking “easy.”

(Eyebleach sold separately).

DAVID HOGG HARDEST HIT: Panel Investigating Parkland Fla. HS. Shooting Says Teachers Need Guns.

BEST THESIS ADVISOR EVER. Okay, I don’t advise people on their theses, but I also don’t know who to call to hire mercenaries, though I suppose I know some people who do.

MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN: KFC is now selling a log that smells like fried chicken.