VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: ‘USA Today’ Takes on ‘The Babylon Bee,’ Brian Stelter Takes a Leak.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: Did USA Today really go from publishing news to recycling Chevy Chase gags from 1975?

Answer: Our fact-checkers rate this as COMPLETELY 100% FACTUALLY TRUE.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

• Brian Stelter is dumber and/or more dishonest than you thought.
• Meet the black man who’s had enough of BLM.
• Senator Kirsten Gillibrand needs a timeout.

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Military Snipers Could Soon Be Using ‘Guided’ Bullets. “EXACTO, or Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance bullets turns .50 caliber bullets into guided rounds capable of zeroing in on a target. Although DARPA is mum on how it does this, other sites report that the technology involves optical sensors in the nose of the bullet and fins capable of adjusting the bullet’s flight path in the tail. The optical sensor apparently homes in on a spot illuminated by a laser designator. The guidance system is similar to laser-guided weapons such as the Maverick and Hellfire laser-guided missiles. The bullet is even capable of making some remarkably sharp course corrections.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Santa Clara University lecturer: White supremacy is behind climate change. Is there anything it can’t do?

SEEN ON FACEBOOK:

The Journolist never died; it just moved to Slack.

MAKE THEM PAY: Judge denies motion to dismiss defamation lawsuit over HuffPost story involving Brett Kavanaugh. “Gulfport professor and advocate Derrick Evans’ lawsuit was filed in August 2019 in U.S. District Court in Gulfport against HuffPost.com and its former journalist, Ashley Feinberg. The lawsuit said HuffPost and Feinberg repeatedly defamed Evans and friend Douglas Kennedy to a nationwide audience in September 2018 by falsely asserting they helped arrange the purchase and delivery of cocaine at Georgetown Prep that resulted in the April 1984 death of David Kennedy, Douglas’ brother and the son of the late U.S. attorney general and senator, Robert F. Kennedy.”

Huffpo wants it heard in New York, where the courts are notoriously friendly to media defendants. Instead, it’s going ahead in Mississippi, where the plaintiff lives. Well, that’s where the reputational injury took place.

YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO SUPPORT THE POLICE ANYMORE, THEY CLAIM: Winthrop University will hire prof who threatened to expose ‘White K-12’ teachers who express ‘pro-police’ rhetoric.

AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour.

Plus, Best Selling Products – Updated Every Hour.

Also, Shop Amazon Outlet – Clearance, Markdowns and Overstock Deals.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Amy Coney Barrett Is Making Liberal Heads Explode and It’s GLORIOUS. “The idea that the Democrats can suddenly stop on a dime and cease being the vile creatures they’ve become especially since 2017 seems a little far-fetched to me. These people are proud of their aberrant behavior. They are already in tantrum mode and that’s not going to get any better between now and the beginning of the hearing.”

FASTER? PLEASE! Republicans Prepare for Accelerated Supreme Court Confirmation.

MICHAEL BARONE: Who’s Violating “Norms” These Days?

Norms, we are told, matter. Violating norms, recklessly disregarding norms — these are charges on which President Trump is often arraigned in the court of public opinion.

The indictment starts with his annoying habit of inventing insulting nicknames for his opponents and critics. You can add to the list as you will and perhaps come up with enough material just there to consume the 700-plus word limit of a newspaper column.

But Trump hasn’t been the only one disregarding norms of late. Consider the question of whether and when the president and Senate should fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The historical precedent is clear, as set out by National Review’s Dan McLaughlin. When a vacancy occurs in a presidential year and the opposition party has a majority in the Senate, the president can nominate, but the nominee is almost never confirmed. There have been 10 such vacancies in the history of the republic. Presidents made pre-Election Day nominations in six cases, but only one nominee was confirmed before the election. That was in 1888.

Presidents whose parties had Senate majorities selected nominees in election years 19 times, and 17 of those nominees were confirmed. The two rejections came together in 1968, when President Lyndon Johnson’s nominee for chief justice, Abe Fortas, and his nominee to replace Fortas as associate justice were blocked by a bipartisan filibuster.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell thus was following precedent when he blocked consideration of President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat, and now, he is following precedent again by promising a floor vote on Trump’s nominee to fill Ginsburg’s seat.

Democrats are the ones being inconsistent here. If you think a president’s nominee is entitled to a vote from an opposition Senate, then a fortiori, you must think the nominee is entitled to a vote from the party’s Senate.

Then again, you may not think such flip-flopping violates a norm. But Democrats’ threat to pack the Supreme Court with additional justices if they win the presidency and a Senate majority certainly does.

Also the threat to admit DC and Puerto Rico as states so as to lock up the Senate.

THE CURE IS WORSE THAN THE DISEASE: Military suicides up as much as 20% in COVID era.

VITAMIN D UPDATE: More On Vitamin D And SARS-CoV-2.

WILL TRUMP BE OVERCONFIDENT TUESDAY NIGHT? Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff has watched a few presidential debates in his day and he notes that incumbents tend not to do well in the first contest of the quadrennial campaigns.

Mirengoff doesn’t suggest Trump will stumble for that reason but he does see some significant potential problems from a related factor, namely, OrangeManBad’s reliance on rhetoric, presence and (selected) facts to make his case.

Mirengoff, his Powerline colleagues John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson, and Glenn here at Instapundit are the three guys I have followed longer than anybody else in Blogdom, and I especially pay attention to Paul’s analysis before significant events like presidential debates.

WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL: The FBI’s Bad Intelligence: The bureau relied on a suspected Russian agent for its 2016 wiretaps.

t was worse than we thought. We’re referring to the FBI’s 2016 investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia, as new documents this week reveal.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham on Thursday released newly declassified FBI documents that contain this stunner: The bureau relied on a suspected Russian agent for the information it used to obtain a secret surveillance warrant against former Trump adviser Carter Page.

Four years into accusations about Russia-Trump collusion, we finally learn that Russia’s main conduit for disinformation may have been America’s FBI. Vladimir Putin must be howling with laughter.

While the Democrats and NeverTrumpers were accusing Trump of being Putin’s tool, actually it was the Resistance that was Putin’s tool all along. Plus:

Here’s the kicker: The FBI identified Mr. Danchenko as Mr. Steele’s source in December 2016, when senior bureau officials also became aware of the prior FBI investigation. The FBI’s realization that it was being fed potential Russian disinformation should have put an immediate halt to the Page probe, if not the entire collusion investigation.

nstead and incredibly, the FBI failed to disclose this information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in all three of its subsequent renewal applications against Mr. Page. U.S. Attorney John Durham first brought the Danchenko information to Attorney General Bill Barr’s attention and said its public release would not interfere with his investigation.

In related news Thursday, the Justice Department disclosed more FBI text messages and notes in the tainted Michael Flynn case. These also reflect horribly on the James Comey-era FBI. Agents (names redacted) express dismay and disdain in the messages for the broader collusion investigation (code-named Crossfire Hurricane) and for the probe of Mr. Flynn.

In October 2016 internal messages, agents refer to the “Crossfire Road Show” and one says: “I’m tell [sic] man, if this thing ever gets FOIA’d, there are going to be some tough questions asked.” Another responds that the problem is “a scope way outside the boundaries of logic,” to which an agent says one team member is engaged in “rabbit holes and conspiracy theories.”

Agents questioned the use of national security letters (subpoenas that don’t require judicial permission) to get Mr. Flynn’s financial records. One series of messages is from Jan. 5, 2017, the same day Mr. Comey briefed Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Susan Rice on the Flynn/Trump investigations.

“[W]hat’s the word on how [Obama’s] briefing went?” asks one agent. “Don’t know, but people here are scrambling for info to support certain things and it’s a mad house.” A few days later, an FBI employee reports that they “all went and purchased professional liability insurance” over concerns about DOJ/FBI leaks and that “the new AG might have some questions.”

Justice also released a recent government interview of William Barnett, an FBI official who worked on the Crossfire investigation, and later for Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mr. Barnett said the Flynn investigation was so “problematic” that in February 2017 he asked to be removed, for fear it would “result in an IG investigation.” He said he only reluctantly joined the Mueller team, hoping to protect against “group think.” He found a “get TRUMP” attitude among its members, and that one Mueller prosecutor in particular was “obsessed with Flynn” and “had an agenda.”

The process, he said, was upside down, with investigators treated as a “speed bump” by attorneys who “wanted to be part of something ‘big.’” These “all stars” called the shots, and “there was a lack of letting the evidence lead the investigation.” He closed the interview by saying he believed the Mueller team brought a charge that Mr. Flynn lied to the FBI as another “means to ‘get TRUMP.’”
***

All of this underscores that the great scandal of 2016 wasn’t Russian collusion. It was the unleashing of America’s premier law enforcement agency against a presidential campaign based on Russian disinformation midwifed and financed by the Clinton campaign. The public is finally getting the truth about the FBI’s malfeasance, and Messrs. Barr and Durham deserve credit for exposing it.

So it’s exposed. Now who will be punished for an abuse of federal authority designed to overturn a national election?

UPGRADES: USS Carl Vinson Preparing for First F-35C, ‘Advanced Carrier Air Wing’ Deployment. “Next year, the most advanced carrier air wing in history will sail to the Pacific aboard USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70). Last week, the Carrier Air Wing 2 took the first steps in getting its new F-35C Joint Strike Fighters and CMV-22B Ospreys integrated into the air wing and aboard the carrier.”

AMY CONEY BARRETT, NEW FEMINIST ICON: Feminism is changing, and Barrett’s replacement of Ruth Bader Ginsburg will show how. “In a 2019 conversation at the Notre Dame Club of Washington D.C., Barrett was asked how, while raising so many children, two of whom were adopted from Haiti and one who has special needs, she has been able to balance family life with her demanding profession. Her response was as telling as Feinstein’s 2017 remark. Barrett immediately praises her husband.”

That headline’s gotta set some heads exploding. Also the husband-praise.

DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: Ocasio-Cortez’s Snub of Rabin Event Is Harbinger of Democrats.

The progressive avatar faced a small Twitterati chorus castigating her for agreeing to grace the memorial event with her presence. On Twitter — where else? — Ms. Ocasio-Cortez vowed to reexamine the issue, which initially she evidently knew too little about.

On Friday she responded to a Twitter tirade by Alex Kane, a freelance journalist and contributor to the leftist magazine Jewish Currents. Here’s the first tweet:

“So @AOC is doing a memorial event for Yitzhak Rabin. In the US Rabin is viewed as a liberal peacemaker but Palestinians remember him for his brutal rule suppressing Palestinian protest during the First Intifada, as someone who reportedly ordered the breaking of Palestinian bones.”

And here is AOC’s answer:

“Hey there – this event and my involvement was presented to my team differently from how it’s now being promoted. Thanks for pointing it out. Taking a look into this now.”

Wait, so the organizers of an event honoring a former General, who was assassinated because of tireless, though unsuccessful pursuit of ending a century-long war, forgot to mention his “brutal rule”? Well, by all means, let’s take another look.

On Saturday a spokesperson for Ms. Ocasio- Cortez, a member in good standing of the august House of Representatives, heeded a tweet of a self-described observer of “Israel/Palestine” and “civil liberties.” And just like that, Rabin was canceled.

AOC majored in international relations at Boston University.

NYT EXONERATES TRUMP:

KAROL MARKOWICZ: Face facts, Gov. Cuomo: Your lockdowns cause deaths, too.

HE’S GOT A MILLION OF ‘EM: Gavin Newsom’s Brilliant Plan to Create More Energy Shortages.

REMINDER: Antifa Is Not Fighting For Freedom, But For Communist Revolution.