A BUREAUCRATIC COUP: Steele Testimony: FBI Coordinated Closely With State Department on Russia Probe. “

FORMER NFL GREAT BURGESS OWENS WINS UTAH GOP PRIMARY. “He’ll face incumbent Rep. Ben McAdams, a blue dog democrat who flipped the district in 2018 in a district won by President Trump. McAdams narrowly defeated then-Rep. Mia Love (R), an up-and-coming Republican.”

DAN RODRIGUEZ: Against the Hybrid In-Residence Approach at Law Schools. We’re talking about a similar model, in which I’ll be in the classroom, masked and behind a plexiglas screen, talking to 1/3 of the class — also masked and separated by 6 feet — while the remainder of the class (on a rotating basis) participates via Zoom. It’s not clear to me that this is better than all-online.

Related: How to Teach a Hybrid Law School Class.

COME SEE THE ANTISEMITISM INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: AOC Touts Support from Anti-Semitic Groups for Israel Letter.

AOC wasn’t a fluke. She was just an election cycle ahead of her party’s radical curve.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOT MUCH? Alex Berenson has a report from Texas: Basically, the numbers are up because lots of people with mild or no symptoms are being tested. Most are over it 3-5 days later on followup.

IT’S NOT “RESEARCH” UNLESS IT SUPPORTS THE CHOSEN NARRATIVE: Scholar forced to resign over study that found police shootings not biased against blacks. Between the sex abuse scandals and this absurd politicization of science, Michigan State should probably just be defunded. Anyway, I think the Department of Education needs to investigate this.

I WAS PROMISED JETS WITH FRICKEN LASER BEAMS: US Air Force delays timeline for testing a laser on a fighter jet.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: AOC Touts Support from Anti-Semitic Groups for Israel Letter. BDS leaders endorse anti-Israel letter from the ‘Squad.’

COPPERHEADS: A 2020 ODYSSEY.  Boston statue depicting a freed slave kneeling before Lincoln coming down. 

It took a while, but Lincoln was finally banned in Boston.

(Classical allusion in headline.)

CTRL-F NOT FOUND: “PROTEST.” Coronavirus updates: Fauci says new cases could hit 100,000 daily.

At least it’s mentioned here: California’s slide from coronavirus success to danger zone began Memorial Day. “The beckon of summer rituals followed — day trips to the beach, Memorial Day barbecues, graduation celebrations, Father’s Day gatherings. Around the same time, historic protests began, triggered by outrage over the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd while in police custody, which sparked unprecedented demonstrations across the nation, including in the streets of California.”

The thing about the protests is, it’s not just that they exposed people directly — they also sent the message that the powers that be didn’t really care, since they endorsed mass public gathering of the sort they’d previously discouraged. That caused a lot of people to give up in general, but hey, it’s not like the public health community has the self-discipline or commitment to skip an opportunity for politically correct virtue signaling.

COLD WAR II: China’s influence via WeChat is ‘flying under the radar’ of most Western democracies.

China’s WeChat, like most social networks, is a haven for disinformation and “fake news”. Less well-known, at least in the West, is its role in mobilising Chinese diaspora communities to support particular political policies or people.

These activities are coordinated through a system known as the United Front, a network of party and state agencies that are responsible for influencing purportedly independent groups outside the Chinese Communist Party.

At the very top, the United Front Work Department is led by China’s fourth most senior political leader, Wang Yang. President Xi Jinping and his family have been involved in United Front work for decades.

“Where United Front really works their biggest magic is actually on social media WeChat,” says Maree Ma, general manager of Vision Times, a leading Chinese-language Australian media outlet.

WeChat’s private groups are capped at 500 members, but according to Ma, there’s “hundreds” of United Front organisations in Australia, each of them with many of these groups.

Maybe Communist China-sourced software should get the Huawei treatment.

THIS WILL DO MORE FOR POOR PEOPLE, MINORITIES, AND WOMEN THAN ANY GOVERNMENT PROGRAM: Florida Just Passed the Most Sweeping Occupational Licensing Reform in History: The Occupational Freedom and Opportunity Act “will save thousands of Floridians both time and money for years to come,” says Gov. Ron DeSantis. “The bill fully repeals some of the state’s most unnecessary licensing laws, including those that previously governed interior designers, hair braiders, and boxing match timekeepers. It loosens the state’s cosmetology licensing laws to allow a wide range of hair and nail styling activities to take place outside of licensed salons—a particularly timely reform in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, as it will pave the way for stylists to make house calls. Dieticians and nutritionists will be able to work without fear of being targetted by sting operations and threatened with jail time simply for the supposed crime of giving out tips about healthy eating.”

This kind of thing needs to happen everywhere.

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: Black Lives Matter protests may have slowed overall spread of coronavirus in Denver and other cities, new study finds.

In accordance with the prophecy: WHO Scientists Confirm Coronavirus Only Spreads At Conservative Protests.

IT IS UNWISE TO ANGER THE GENERAL SECRETARY, COMRADE: Seattle Mayor Moves to Expel From Council Wacky Socialist Who Led Protest to Her House.

FLASHBACK: Time to put China on lockdown for its dishonesty amid coronavirus crisis.

There are many lessons to be learned from the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. But one is already clear: China needs to be isolated from the civilized world until its behavior improves. We are in the current situation, with deaths and economic devastation worldwide, because China handled this outbreak with its trademark mixture of dishonesty, incompetence and thuggery. Were China a more civilized nation, this outbreak would have been stopped early, and with far less harm, inside and outside of China.

As Marion Smith wrote in these pages on Sunday, China’s first response was to clamp down on reports of the then-new disease that had appeared in Wuhan. The brave doctor, Li Wenliang, who first reported the disease to fellow physicians was silenced by police. Chinese media reports of the disease were censored by the government. So were ordinary citizens reporting on social media.

According to U.S. intelligence agencies, China systematically deceived the world about the extent of the outbreak, lulling other nations into a false sense of security that delayed a response by weeks or even months.

As Smith writes: “Beijing denied until Jan. 20 that human to human transmission was occurring. Yet at the same time, Chinese officials and state-owned companies were urgently acquiring bulk medical supplies — especially personal protective equipment like masks and gloves — from Australia, Europe, and around the world. Put simply, Beijing hoarded the world’s life-saving resources while falsely claiming that people’s lives weren’t at risk.” . . .

A competent, honest response would have placed the world on notice much earlier. A China that cared about the rest of the world would have halted flights abroad while this disease was spreading, instead of allowing its citizens to spread willy-nilly around the globe. (As Brian Kennedy writes: “China seems to have taken the position that if they were to suffer the coronavirus, so too was the United States and the rest of the world. What else is to explain the continuation of flights from China to the United States at the rate of some 20,000 passengers a day, until President Trump wisely shut them down?”)

Just a reminder not to trust China. China is asshole.

THE BABYLON BEE STRIKES AGAIN:  Democrats Prepare To Celebrate Dependence Day.

I HAVE THIS THEORY, THAT IF YOU PUT A COLLECTOR IN GEORGE ORWELL’S GRAVE, YOU COULD POWER MOST OF EUROPE FROM HIS GYRATIONS:   California Legislature Votes to Strike ‘the State Shall Not Discriminate’ from Constitution, Opening the Door to Legalized Discrimination.

THEY’RE DRINKING THEIR OWN INK. NEVER DRINK YOUR OWN INK:  Official Dem Twitter account claims Trump’s Independence Day celebration at Mt. Rushmore ‘glorifying white supremacy’.

OVERDUE:  On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare.

THE TIME IS FRANKLY WELL PAST:  Time to Expose the Fraud That Launched BLM.

BEHOLD! MY FACE OF EXTREME SHOCK:  It Was Obama All Along .

UM…. BECAUSE WE DON’T LIVE IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN?  Why Defunding Cops And Disarming Americans Is Dumb .