WHICH BERNIE HAS DONE MORE FOR AMERICA? Now that’s an interesting question: Has Bernie Sanders, Democratic socialist senator, or Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, done more to improve America?

“Marcus, with Arthur Blank and Ken Langone, started a company in 1978 that today has more than 2,200 stores across all 50 states and in Canada. When those men were putting long, grinding hours into their startup in the late 1970s, Sanders was “working” for the American People’s Historical Society. There he made a 30-minute documentary about Eugene Debs, the perpetual Socialist Party presidential candidate whom he called “the great American trade unionist, socialist and revolutionary,” explains Issues & Insights.

Any bets on when the Washington Post or the New York Times will pursue the same question? Me, neither.

CHANGE: Trump Signs Bipartisan IRS Reform Bill.

KICK BACK TWICE AS HARD: Arizona Gov. Slam-Dunks Nike: ‘We Don’t Need to Suck Up to Companies’ That Denigrate Our History.

I WAS WITH ANDY NGO WHEN HE WAS ATTACKED: The photos aren’t pretty.

ROGER SIMON: American Presidential Elections Are Too Long and Destructive for the Country.

We’ve come a long way — and not in a good way — from around the time of the Kennedy-Nixon election, when the conventional wisdom was that the voters didn’t pay attention to an election until the World Series was over. But that was an era when the news was still measured out in tiny half-hour amounts at night on television. And before politics became a substitute religion for tens of millions of Americans.

AGAINST CONSERVATIVE PESSIMISM ABOUT FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS: Think campuses are unrecoverable? FIRE President Greg Lukianoff says you’re wrong, and lays out some simple steps colleges could take to turn the tide.

BRIAN MIN: Tucker Carlson on ‘Monstrous’ North Korean Regime: Leading a Country ‘Means Killing People.’

I MEAN, ISN’T THERE JUST AS MUCH “REALITY” TO BE PERCEIVED IN THE CIGAR STORE AS THERE IS ON MOUNT EVEREST? Twenty Things You Probably Didn’t Know about Marianne Williamson.

(Classical reference in headline.)

CONSPIRACY TO DEPRIVE PEOPLE OF CIVIL RIGHTS: Ted Cruz: It’s time for the DOJ to investigate Portland’s mayor for letting Antifa run wild.

Related: Hans Bader: Did Portland violate the First Amendment by selectively tolerating violence? “Police have no duty under the Constitution to protect the public at all. But if they do, they can’t selectively withhold protection from people with disfavored views, or selectively permit violence by a group they ideologically sympathize with. A federal appeals court made that clear in Dwares v. City of New York (1993). It allowed New York City police to be sued because they allowed flag burners to be attacked, when they likely would not have permitted such attacks on anyone else. Such viewpoint discrimination was forbidden by the First Amendment. In Portland, police did nothing as Antifa attacked people nearby.”

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s Teachers And Students Skip School For Survival.

School staff are resigning in droves. Legions of students and teachers are among the 4 million Venezuelans who have fled the country in recent years. Those still going to school in the country often find that classes have been canceled due to power outages, water shortages and other breakdowns.

Some school buildings are falling apart, have been taken over by homeless squatters or are used by pro-government militias for training, says Nancy Hernández, a founder and board member of FENASOPADRES, a national association of PTAs.

In 2016, the last year the Venezuelan government released enrollment figures, about 8.5 million Venezuelan children were attending K-12 schools. Now, that figure may have dropped to about 6.5 million, according to rough estimates provided by Hernández.

One independent education group in Aragua state, just west of Caracas, reported that at the start of the current school year more than half of all students were no longer going to classes.

In a TV interview in May, Education Minister Aristóbulo Istúriz acknowledged problems but blamed them on U.S. economic sanctions and pointed out that, in spite of the government’s challenges, public school remains free.

Just like medical care in Cuba: It’s free, if you can get it.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE EDITION: Instructors at Australian university told to teach creation myth instead of science.

THE POLITICIZATION OF EVERYTHING CONTINUES APACE: Nike’s decision to cancel ‘Betsy Ross flag’ shoe prompts backlash from Arizona governor. Nike was stupid to go along with this, and it’s already costing them real money. But the people running Nike will get the approval of their peers, and that’s what matters.

JIM TREACHER: The Border Agents Who Threatened AOC Must Be Named and Fired.

This is a very serious accusation. Border Patrol agents threatening a sitting member of Congress? This cannot stand. There must be an investigation. We must know who did this.

All Americans must stand up and demand the names of these agents, and we must know specifically what they did to threaten AOC. If our immigration system is so out of control that they think they can threaten a congresswoman, there must be accountability. These individuals must be held responsible for their shocking misbehavior. They cannot be allowed to hide behind their badges.

Is anybody following up on this bombshell allegation? Is anybody investigating this threat against a sitting member of Congress?

If not, why not?

And if it didn’t happen, why did AOC say it did?

To be fair, she says a lot of things.

CHANGE: Center for American Progress Puts ThinkProgress Up for Sale.

Launched 14 years ago during the height of the Bush administration, ThinkProgress made a name for itself over time as an unapologetically progressive source of news and a launching pad for several major progressive luminaries. But the site, which is editorially independent from CAP, has struggled in recent years as advertising revenues have dried up and traffic has dipped. According to internal documents previously reviewed by The Daily Beast, the site was facing a $3 million gulf between revenues and expenses in 2019, with $350,000 of it made up by a shortfall in ad revenue and nearly $180,000 of it coming from a drop in expected online contributions.

ThinkProgress has never been profitable. In the past, it has made up its shortfalls with contributions from CAP and CAP donors. Several ThinkProgress alums told The Daily Beast that they believed that CAP could continue covering the deficit but had concluded that the site was too much of an editorial headache and too big a financial drain for them to rationalize doing so.

Having the opposition party in power is usually good for partisan websites and news networks, but ThinkProgress could never seem to capitalize. I blame the site’s nasty tone.

KANGAROO COURT QUESTIONS: After Vilifying Its Basketball Star—How Much Did Yale Have to Pay? “Although Montague likely obtained a quite favorable settlement, this outcome is hardly a victory for him. Yale’s unfair handling of his case meant that he lost out on a chance to play in Yale’s first trip to the NCAA tournament in 44 years, which was capped off with a thrilling win over Baylor. And Yale’s manipulation of procedures cost him a chance at a pro career. In an ideal world, Yale would learn from this case and rework its procedures to ensure that no future student suffers from an experience like Montague’s. That, however, seems very unlikely.”

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: AOC Reports Migrants Forced to Drink Toilet Cocktails at Border. “A congressional delegation went to visit the border facilities yesterday. ‘Tense’ is how The Hill describes it. This is not the first congressional delegation to visit the border, but it’s the first time we’ve heard the kinds of reports that were delivered by #resistance politicians. Even the Doctors’ Caucus did not return with such reports. This was a stunt straight up, it was obvious what AOC et al. were going to “report” before she even entered Texas.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Anti-Trump Circus. “We are now in the fourth year of an anti-Trump mania, and about reaching the point of caricature. The Left should have learned something after the failed celebrity appeal to undermine the Electoral College, the initial articles of impeachment, the empty invocations of the Logan Act, the Emoluments Clause, and the 25th Amendment, the 22-month, $35 million Mueller investigation deflation, the periodic silly ‘bombshell’ announcements of perennially wrong and comical Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the pathetic palace coup attempt of Andrew McCabe, the assassination chic from the likes of Madonna, Snoop Dogg, or Kathy Griffin, or the deification of the slimy prophet Michael Avenatti. Not at all.”

WELL, THIS DOESN’T HELP THE NARRATIVE: El Salvador’s President Says His Country — Not Trump — Is Responsible For Migrant Deaths In Rio Grande.

COLLUSION: China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog.

Extraordinary evidence has emerged that the Metropolitan Police targeted a Chinese dissident in London following concerted pressure from Beijing. . . .

After being taken to a local police station for a breach of the peace the 52-year-old was subsequently arrested for conspiracy to commit a section 5 public order act offence. This is a more serious charge that then enabled officers to search his London home, seizing computers which Shao suspects may have been given to Chinese authorities before they were returned to him.

Police watchdog investigators then found evidence that the Met’s treatment of Shao, one of the last protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, was influenced by pressure from Beijing to ensure Xi was not “embarrassed” by protests during his visit.

Following Chinese pressure, documents show UK government officials, understood to be from the Home Office, also made “unusual requests” to the police about managing the state visit, an intervention that one officer described as “unprecedented”.

Investigators from the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) found proof that demands from Chinese officials, including its security service, may have informed the decision to arrest Shao for conspiracy. “There is evidence to indicate that these requests, together with their consideration of the ongoing risk to the CSV [Chinese state visit] and to Shao’s safety, thereby influenced the decision to arrest Shao for conspiracy,” stated an IPOC report.
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Speaking for the first time about the incident Shao, who escaped Hong Kong before its handover to China in 1997, told the Observer: “I expected so much more in a democratic country.”

Well, Britain’s only kinda one of those these days.

HMM: An Unlikely Solution to Germany’s East-West Divide.

Regional disparities have propelled populists elsewhere in Europe: In Italy, the League party has built a huge bastion of support in the north, and in Sweden, the Sweden Democrats enjoy widespread backing in the deep south. In Germany, though, regionalism is magnified by the political, social, and economic consequences of living as separate countries for more than four decades. In the weeks after European Parliament elections in May, #WirimOsten, or “Us in the east,” exploded on Twitter as East Germans endeavored to explain their region and its people.

In Massen, Hildebrandt took a seat at the head of the table to make her case for a quota. “We can’t just pretend that east and west don’t exist, that it’s all the same now—it’s just not true,” she said, gesturing emphatically over a cup of steaming coffee. “Where the power, money, and influence are—that’s where East Germans are massively underrepresented.”

The gap between east and west has narrowed over the past 30 years, and Angela Merkel, the country’s chancellor and arguably the most powerful woman in the world, is an East German. Yet with three key state elections in the east this fall, the region’s political disaffection has sparked a growing discussion on both sides of the divide to understand why the fault lines appear to be deepening. The quota is part of that debate.

An easier solution — and I think I might only be half-kidding about this — would be to split the country back in two. Reunification hasn’t exactly worked out as well as had been hoped.

CHANGE: Dunkin’ Donuts dumps store owners for hiring undocumented workers.

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL; SO IS THORIUM: How going small may fuel nuclear power’s comeback.