MEET IGGY DANCHENKO, THE STEELE DOSSIER’S ‘PRIMARY SUBSOURCE:’ Paul Sperry of RealCearInvestigations has a stunningly detailed description of Danchenko, a Russian in the U.S. on a work visa, and his long connections to Christopher Steele, as well as the significant role played by the Brookings Institution’s Strobe Talbot, in funneling the Steele Dossier to the State Department.

Bottomline: The Democratic side of the Washington Establishment was up to its collective neck in the effort to discredit Donald Trump and elect Hillary Clinton as President. When that effort blew up on election day, the discrediting campaign became both an attempt to subvert Trump’s presidency and a defensive coverup of the whole rotten, subversive  conspiracy.

Sperry’s fine work should be read in conjunction with the Julie Kelly piece for American Greatness that Glenn linked late yesterday that comprehensively lays out the Brookings role in the conspiracy.

WERE INTELLIGENT DESIGN ADVOCATES CANARIES IN THE CANCEL CULTURE COALMINE? Evolution News’ David Klinghoffer points to the parallels between former New York Timesman Bari Weiss and what’s been known among ID scientists for a long time.

I HANG MY HEAD IN DESPAIR FOR MY PROFESSION: So I’m reading along in Roll Call reporter Jennifer Shutt’s story today on House passage of four spending bills that have little or no chance of passage in the Senate. It’s all the usual legislative blah-blah about billions in this bill, more billions in that one, amendments accepted, amendments defeated, growing concerns, etc. etc.

Then I read the last sentence: “There’s also broad frustration about the Trump administration’s decision to send federal officers, dressed in military-style uniforms, to Portland and Chicago to confront mostly peaceful protestors.” (Emphasis added).

How does such a falsehood make it into a news report presented as a credible, factual account of events on Capitol Hill? Perhaps (and it’s so faint a possibility as to be nearly invisible) Shutt has been too busy to watch any of the countless videos of sustained, organized and increasingly lethal Antifa/BLM violence directed against federal officers and property in Portland and Chicago.

But why didn’t one of her editors catch that glaring error? Has nobody on Roll Call’s copy desk seen the violence? It’s hard not to conclude that this is a disgusting illustration of left-wing narrative presented as credible news journalism. Worst of all, it’s likely the approach she learned in j-school.

I’m old enough to remember when writing a falsehood like that in a story draft more than once would get you canned because every news organization realized its most precious asset was its credibility with readers.

PORTLAND MAYOR CALLED OUT FOR FAKING TEAR-GAS INCIDENT: Uh-oh, the Rose City’s most righteous liberal may not be.

HOW REVERSE RACISM SPREADS OUTWARD FROM CAMPUS: Racial preferences launched in the 1970s for Black and Hispanic students seeking admission to elite schools like Harvard have put more minority kids in the classrooms, but that’s just the beginning of a destructive cycle for everybody involved.

Writing for RealClearPolitics, Linda Chavez points to the next step in the story:

“But blacks do not necessarily benefit, either, from the widespread adoption of racial preferences in admissions on their behalf. As Richard H. Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., pointed out in their comprehensive study of the effect of racial preferences in college admissions on black student performance, “Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It,” schools using racial preferences end up admitting students who often place in the lower rankings of their class and struggle to finish college or pass professional exams.

“In turn, these students struggle more even after they graduate, failing to advance in their chosen careers if their college grades are subpar, which becomes proof for some not that preferences fail to achieve their goal, but that systemic racism follows blacks into the professional world, requiring yet more racial preferences in hiring and promotion.”

That in a nutshell is how legally sanctioned racial discrimination spreads from campus to government to corporate boardrooms. Once the official steps are taken away from the conviction that all men are equal to the fable that some are more equal than others, corruption spreads.

Or, to put it another way, if you begin with a fundamentally flawed understanding of the problem — think “systemic racism” or “Big Government” — your solutions won’t work, and you will be trapped in an endless cycle of failure that continually reinforces the original misconception.

GOP CONGRESSMAN SAYS IT’S TIME TO RE-OPEN THE CAPITOL TO PUBLIC: Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill) says Democrats aren’t planning to allow the public to resume visiting Capitol Hill before the November election. Davis says that ought to happen today. Also staff. And, most importantly, all representatives to be physically present in the House chamber when voting.

Davis is the ranking Republican on the House Administration Committee, which oversees the daily operations of the lower chamber and has oversight of federal elections.

AND ANOTHER MSM FABLE BITES THE DUST: Christopher Bedford, formerly of the Daily Caller News Foundation and more recently with The Federalist, finally gets The Atlantic to admit its recent piece, How I Became a Police Abolitionist, was based on, shall we say, its author’s creative skills rather than hard facts.

Again I ask, when do MSM outlets like The Atlantic (the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, et. al.) apologize to readers for repeatedly presenting lies as truth?

ON THE DEATH OF PORTLAND: There was a time when Portland, Oregon, was known as “The Rose City,” a civilized, pleasant and prosperous place to live in the American Northwest. In its heyday, Portland had an annual rose festival and it even had an annual Indy car race!

But no more. As the Issues & Insights gang points out today, the city has become Mecca for every bomb-throwing, liberty crushing, lunatic Left-wing group:

“This is part of a pattern of how the Left works: Destroy the rule of law, the backbone of our free republic. Intimidate ordinary citizens into silence. Then support and elevate rule by power of unelected street thugs in Antifa and BLM. The meek may inherit the earth, but they won’t get the big cities.

“None of what we’re seeing should be viewed as a surprise or some sort of accident. Far from it. The city’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, and Portland’s far-left city council, have not only permitted the violence, but enabled and encouraged it – just as mayors in Seattle, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles have done.”

Now, people and businesses are fleeing Portland. At least for now, they still have some place to go to escape the Hell the Left has brought into their lives. But, as Ronald Reagan so often warned, what happens when there is nowhere left to escape to?

IF IT’S THIS BAD IN OKLAHOMA: What would you do if you got the email Jenni White describes regarding your child’s enrollment in a tax-supported college?

THE LONG, SORDID HISTORY OF SCAM SCIENCE: A much-needed refresher, courtesy of Robert Wright and the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER).

NYC’S BLM STREET DEFACED THREE TIMES IN A WEEK: But can you guess where you won’t read much about it, if at all?

WHY DOES MSM IGNORE CHINA’S GENOCIDE? Hans Bader, writing on Liberty Unyielding, brings together the evidence that the Chinese Communist Party is systematically oppressing three million people, using torture and concentration camps. Yet when was the last time the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, NBC or CBS did any investigative reporting on this horrendous abuse of human rights?

WHY ‘CRITICAL THEORY’ IS A DISASTROUS, UNBIBLICAL WORLDVIEW: It’s long, at an hour, but theoretical chemist Dr. Neil Shenvi and journalist Allie Beth Stuckey cover a lot of important ground and do so in an accessible manner for those of us who aren’t PhDs. And the arguments and analyses are compelling, regardless of one’s faith perspective, or absence thereof.

SILENCE WILL NOT WIN THE CULTURE WAR: It shouldn’t have to be said, but The Federalist’s Emily Jashinsky says it quite well.

ODDS ON BIDEN DISAVOWING UAW SUPPORT? Probably somewhere between Slim and None, as they say. But the National Right to Work Committee’s Mark Mix is a sly one and his challenge could be important in Michigan and Wisconsin, come November.

CAN YOU SPELL ‘GULF OF TONKIN?’ Two U.S. carriers are back in the South China Sea. Great power wars can begin with miscalculations in such confrontations.

AND YOU CAN KEEP YOUR GAS-POWERED AUTO: Joe Biden promises as part of his Green New Deal program 100 percent zero-emissions vehicles — i.e. electrics, though they really aren’t ZEVs — by whenever. The Issues & Insights crew wonders about “the cost of all this? Who knows. Aside from the $2 trillion price tag that Biden put on his entire Green New Deal plan, he hasn’t broken down his EV mandate scheme. But Sen. Chuck Schumer has already proposed a cash-for-clunkers plan, which would cost $454 billion over a decade.”

I just pity the hapless federal bureaucrat who tries to tell my son he can no longer drive his 95 Mustang Cobra SVT restoration on the street. Few sounds in this world are sweeter than an American small-block at full song.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY? Is porn just harmless entertainment? Colson Center offers three concrete reasons to conclude otherwise.

SOROS SPENDING $220M TO ELECT MORE LOONIES TO LOCAL PROSECUTOR JOBS: Oh boy, just what America needs, more Soros-backed DAs like the one in St. Louis who seized the McCloskeys’ firearms.

DEEP TROUBLE IN THE CASTLE ON THE MALL: A thorough ideological disinfectant scouring is clearly needed at the Smithsonian.

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT: Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer and Kevin McCarthy will make out like bandits when they retire, thanks to the taxpayers funding their incredibly lucrative congressional pensions.

EARMARKS WERE BANNED IN 2011. CONGRESS SETS NEW EARMARK RECORD IN 2020: Yes, you read that correctly. Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) publishes the 28th edition of its Congressional Pigbook.

MORE EVIDENCE TRIAL LAWYERS VIEW COVID AS A LITIGATION BONANZA: Covid-related workplace lawsuits doubled between April and June. The actual numbers may seem small — 60 cases in April to 122 in June — but check out the parallel increase in advertising. It’s part of a familiar gameplan, according to the Institute for Legal Reform’s Oriana Senator.

QUIET REVOLUTION SPARKED BY JANUS GOES ON: It gets little coverage, but Benito Casanova’s Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court is the latest step in the war against public sector unionism made possible by the landmark 2018 decision.

READ THIS INSTEAD OF ‘WHITE FRAGILITY:’ Mark Hemingway, Book Editor of The Federalist, provides a lengthy but absolutely essential guide to navigating the perilous paths created by the Left’s army of purveyors of Critical Race Theory and, in the words of liberal Matt Taibbi, “Hitlerian race theory. Along the way, Hemingway provides handy definitions of such terms as “do the work” and the “Kafka Trap.”