WELL, WE KNOW WHO RUNS THE COMPANY: Apple-backed Southern Poverty Law Center wracked in turmoil, called a ‘con’ for ‘bilking gullible liberals.’

COLLUSION: US Embassy pressed Ukraine to drop probe of George Soros group during 2016 election.

MATT TAIBBI: As the Mueller Probe Ends, New Russiagate Myths Begin: Donald Trump couldn’t have asked for a juicier 2020 campaign issue.

In other words, it was Mueller, not Barr, who concluded there was no underlying crime, so if the next stage of this madness is haggling over an obstruction charge, that would likely entail calling for a prosecution of Trump for obstructing an investigation into what even Mueller deemed non-crime.

After all the insistence that we put our trust in St. Mueller because he “knows all,” the new story suddenly is that Mueller all along didn’t know and didn’t try to know. The Atlantic’s take was, “Mueller, a career G-man, is fundamentally legally conservative,” which means “he has a narrow view of his own role.”

Therefore, despite the fact that Mueller didn’t determine he had evidence for a charge, we can “infer his conclusions by reviewing how he marshaled the evidence for and against guilt.”

This meant we should read between the lines of what Mueller ended up “saying,” so we can divine (I use that religious word on purpose) his true meaning. By not delivering the desired goods, Mueller is now being described as “The God that failed Democrats,” by Edward Luce of the Financial Times, who makes the shockingly belated observation that the Democrats putting all their hopes in the “magic bullet” of the Mueller investigation “postponed the harder, less glamorous work the party needs to be doing.” . . .

Members of the media like Matthews spent two years speaking of Mueller in mythical tones, hyping him as the savior who was pushing those “walls” that were forever said to be “closing in” on Trump. Mueller, it was repeatedly said, was helping bring about “the beginning of the end.”

Over and over, audiences were told the investigation had hit a “turning point,” after which Trump would either resign or be impeached, because as Brian Williams put it, summarizing a guest’s take, “Donald Trump is done.”

This manipulative brand of news programming preyed upon the emotional devastation of liberal audiences, particularly the older people who watch cable. It told them the horror they felt over Trump’s election would be alleviated in short order. The median age of the CNN viewer is 60 and MSNBC’s is 65, and these people were urged for years to place their trust in Santa BOB, who knew all and whose investigation would surely lead to impeachment and “the end.”

All you had to do was keep turning in, because the good news could come any minute now! The bombshell is coming! Never mind that this is causing our profits to soar. Don’t wonder about our motives, even though outlets like MSNBC saw a 62 percent bump in viewership in the first full year of Russiagate coverage. Just keep tuning in. The walls are closing in!

That was bad enough, but now that the Mueller dream seems to have died, news organizations are acting like they didn’t hype Mueller as savior.

It’s almost like you can’t believe anything they say.

YOU MIGHT THINK THIS WOULD BE OBVIOUS TO LAWMAKERS SWORN TO UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION, BUT NO: Colorado’s Dave Kopel to U.S. Senate committee: “Red Flag” laws must fully respect due process.

Colorado constitutional scholar David Kopel today testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary on the implementation of “Red Flag” gun confiscation laws in the states. Several U.S. senators, including Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, are exploring the idea of giving federal grants to states to implement such laws. Kopel is research director at the Independence Institute*, a free market think tank in Denver, and adjunct professor of constitutional law at Denver University’s Sturm College of Law.

“My testimony will urge that funding be given only to states that fully respect due process. Which definitely does not include Colorado’s HB 1177,” said Kopel.

House Bill 1177 is the Colorado version of a “Red Flag” law, rapidly making its way through the legislature. The bill would establish an Extreme Risk Protection Order, or “ERPO,” system to allow police to seize guns from those considered a threat to themselves or others, based on claims from police, roommates, and ex-spouses and other former romantic partners, among others.

“One crazy ex” is becoming the new standard of justice in Colorado.

PEW POLL FINDS AMERICANS OVERWHELMINGLY REJECT RACE AS A FACTOR IN COLLEGE ADMISSIONS: I should have written about this three weeks ago, but I got too busy. But here’s the bottom line: 73% of adults say that race should not be a factor in college admissions. On the other hand 19% say it should be a minor factor and 7% say it should be a major factor.

When you break it down by race, you get this: Whites: 78% not a factor, 18% minor factor, and 4% major factor; Blacks: 62% not a factor, 20% minor factor, and 18% major factor; Hispanics: 65% not a factor, 22% minor factor, 11% major factor; Asians: 59% not a factor, 27% minor factor, 14% major factor.

This is consistent with past history. As Paul Sniderman and Thomas Piazza wrote in 1993 in The Scar of Race, “[The affirmative action agenda] is politically controversial precisely because most Americans do not disagree about it.” When the poll question is halfway clear, the answers are pretty consistent.

Before Grutter v. Bollinger was decided in 2003, I wrote an article entitled Strict Scrutiny, Public Opinion, and Affirmative Act on Campus: Should the Courts Find a Narrowly Tailored Solution to a Compelling Need in a Policy Most Americans Oppose? First, it argued (uncontroversially, I think) that when the public favors discriminatory laws, the public’s view should carry no weight at all in a court’s analysis. As every law student knows, strict scrutiny holds that a racially discriminatory law or policy can only be justified by a compelling purpose, and the law or policy must be narrowly tailored to serve that purpose. But next, it argued, a court should not be able to find a compelling purpose if the public favors race neutrality instead. If the public finds the reason for discrimination, how can a court find it compelling?

Obviously, my argument failed to convince Justice O’Connor.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Andrew McCarthy: How long has Mueller known there was no Trump-Russia collusion? “I put it at no later than the end of 2017. I suspect it was in the early autumn.”

UPDATE: Ouch.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: SPLC Won’t Say If President Was Paid On Way Out The Door.

FLASHBACK: A rape epidemic — by women?

HMM: A mysterious syndrome that makes marijuana users violently ill is starting to worry doctors.

For nearly a decade, the Australian woman had experienced sudden and severe episodes of nausea and vomiting in connection to using the drug. Before that, she’d smoked safely for years with no symptoms. In 2004, a team of emergency room physicians in the country detailed Mrs. X’s experience anonymously alongside a handful of similar cases that happened in the same region that year. In nearly all of them, patients described an illness that cropped up suddenly, often after decades of normal marijuana use. Piping hot baths were their only relief. The Australian physicians dubbed it “cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome,” or CHS.

Although the Australians’ report raised some red flags locally, most experts continued to believe that cases like Mrs. X’s were rare across the globe. Until a spate of similar reports begin to crop up elsewhere.

Now, several recent studies from emergency room physicians across Europe and the US are beginning to suggest that CHS could be a lot more common than previously thought.

I think if I felt this way after enjoying a scotch or martini, I’d give up the sauce after a lot less time than ten years.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: Make No Mistake: The Mueller Investigation Was All About Flynn.

By the time he was made head of DIA, Flynn had a real problem with the intelligence community, first because he had marginalized them, and for another reason: Flynn was determined to do a full-scale analysis of the (many) secret missions that had not been carried out over the years, and he wanted an accounting of the considerable funds allocated for them.

So there were many high-ranking intelligence officials who were out to get Flynn. You can see them at work long before there was a hint of Russiagate, when the target was not yet Donald Trump. But then things got worse for the IC, when Flynn was named to head DIA. By then, the FBI was fully engaged in the anti-Flynn campaign, paying people like Stefan Halper to surveil Flynn’s behavior in Great Britain. This produced the fanciful accusation (impossible, for anyone who knew the general) that Flynn had flirted with a good-looking Russian historian. This may have been the start of the “collusion” allegations.

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

IT’S MORE OF A JIHAD, REALLY, BUT IT’S DEFINITELY SOME SORT OF RELIGIOUS WAR: Blacklisting Chick-fil-A: In San Antonio, a popular fast-food chain becomes the target of a progressive crusade.

OH YOU SWEET AND PRECIOUS SUMMER CHILD. THAT WASN’T RUDE. IF YOU WANT RUDE, WE CAN BE MUCH, MUCH WORSE:  Representative Full Stop.

AMERICA’S PAPER OF RECORD HITS ONE OUT OF THE BALLPARK AGAIN:  Republicans Accused Of Colluding With Reality To Defeat Green New Deal.

AND IF YOU HAVEN’T YET SEEN THIS YOU — LOOKS SERIOUSLY INTO YOUR EYES — MUST. YOU JUST MUST. MIKE LEE IS MY NEW POLITICAL CRUSH: Mike Lee’s Velicraptor Machine Gun Speech.

TEFLON PRESIDENTS ARE SO LAST CENTURY. WE GOT US A TAR BABY PRESIDENT.  OH, PLEASE, DO THROW US IN THAT BRIAR PATCH:  Trump Haters Are Already Having a Horrible Week.

LISTEN, THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: IF YOUR SCHADENB*NER LASTS OVER FOUR DAYS, YOU MUST CALL ANY LIBERAL WHO HASN’T BLOCKED YOU AND LAUGH LIKE AN HYENA:  House veto override fails; the wall is going ahead.

SO VERY MUCH THIS:  Don’t Pay Attention to the News That You Hear…

DON’T KNOW. I KNOW IT’S HILARIOUS AND IT REALLY UPSETS ALL THE LEFTIES I KNOW:  Is this cultural appropriation?

I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED I TELL YOU THAT SNOPES IS UNTRUTHFUL AND BIASED. SHOCKED. THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: My day with Snopes.

THE DINGY LADY HITS BOTTOM, BUYS EXCAVATOR:  Less than full disclosure from the New York Times.

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE! GET BACK IN LINE, PEASANT!  Privilege And The Chicago Way: All Charges Against Jussie Smollett Dropped

THOSE AREN’T ASYLUM SEEKERS. WE HAVE CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE THEY’RE IN FACT INVADERS, RECRUITED BY THE FORCES OF INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM:  No Crisis: Asylum Seekers Overwhelming Border Patrol Resources.  Let’s use the truthful designations, shall we? Letting the left subvert the language is giving up the battle before we engage it.

BUT THEY ONLY WANTED TO KNOW IF TRUMP WEIGHED AS MUCH AS A DUCK!  Mueller Report Spinning Up Trump Derangement Syndrome.

OF COURSE THEY DO:  Media ignore Trump’s Executive Order on Campus Free Speech.