IS GINA HASPEL THE NEXT SPYGATE DOMINO TO FALL? Did you know the current CIA Director is a loyalist to former CIA Director John Brennan? Did you know the current CIA Director was the agency’s London station chief in 2016? Did you know that put the current CIA Director at the command center of the U.S. government’s spying on the Trump campaign?

No wonder former Bush administration senior Pentagon appointee Jed Babbin — who knows those things and much more about Operation Crossfire Hurricane — says “Haspel’s longstanding loyalty to Brennan ranks her among the two or three worst personnel choices made by President Trump.”

Go here at The American Spectator and, as Glenn famously said, just keep scrolling.

BILL BUCKLEY “MEETS” AOC: The woman doing AOC is a bit exaggerated, but the WFB guy nails it. My former colleagues at the Daily Caller are clearly having too much fun.

DEMOCRATS’ EQUALITY ACT GUARANTEES ANYTHING BUT: Philosopher Nancy Pearcey looks at a particular aspect — legal protection for transgender people — of the bill that passed the House May 17 with support by all 228 Democrats and 8 Republicans. Her conclusions won’t be popular with the professional advocates who dominate the LGBT community.

“Transgender activists insist the only acceptable way to treat gender dysphoria is with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery. But is it really good practice to turn children into life-long medical patients?

“We are talking about powerful drugs that have negative side effects and surgeries that amputate healthy body parts. And in most cases, they are not necessary: Studies show that 80 to 95 percent of children come to accept their biological sex as their hormones change during puberty.”

Pearcey has much more. Read the whole thing.

SHOULD MITCH MCCONNELL BE TOASTED OR ROASTED? The Senate Majority Leader has often been an object of ridicule among conservatives, but Jonathan S. Tobin argues in The Federalist today that the Right should be thankful the Kentucky Republican is where he is at this moment in history. Hmmm. Not sure what my take is on this issue. What’s yours?

THOSE WHO ARE IGNORANT OF HISTORY, ETC. ETC.: People who follow things like curriculum development in America’s elementary and secondary schools, as well as its colleges and universities, have warned for decades about the declining quality of history courses. Sadly, that’s not an issue with much mass impact.

But John Daniel Davidson has some data that brings home in a vivid manner the results of the decline over time — far fewer Americans are visiting civil war battlefields, which means they aren’t thinking and talking about the issues that produced that conflict at the heart of the American experience.

“The danger here is not just that Civil War battlefields will eventually lie fallow for lack of visitors, but that we will unlearn the painful lessons of our past. To some extent, we’ve already started down that path,” Davidson writes. Think of the growing number of racially segregated programs and facilities on elite campuses. Trust me, nothing good will come of this trend.

ABOUT THE ANY-MEANS-ALL FALLACY OF THE LEFT: It’s a commonplace argument from advocates on the Left and in the Mainstream Media, especially among those seeking to force everybody to pay for benefits awarded to a few on the basis of group identity.

Consider Chad Felix Greene’s description in The Federalist today of a recent claim by LBGT advocates concerning a Catholic hospital refusal to perform a certain procedure:

“It is preposterous to jump from a surgeon working in a Catholic hospital refusing to perform an elective hysterectomy on a perfectly healthy female body to arguing that an emergency room worker would deny life-saving care to a transgender person in a car accident. But LGBT people and media constantly conflate the two.”

The occasion for Greene’s analysis is the Trump administration’s proposed rule recognizing sex biologically rather than the Obama administration’s previous “gender identity.” Greene’s point has application across virtually the entire social issue horizon.

CHINA WANTS WAR WITH THE U.S.? No, this is not about trade war, this is about China being “prepared to fight a protracted war” against America. The Washington Free Beacon’s Bill Gertz — who, by the way, is likely the best informed, most honest journalist writing anywhere about China — quotes a knowledgeable Chinese expert on the four-minute video placed on a state-approved video-sharing service.

“This is not a joke from the CCP because they are really embedding a kind of a message in this video to prepare to confront the U.S.,” said the expert, dissident Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui.

Wengui said the video may be part of the Chinese regime’s preparation for an assault on Taiwan, a confrontation with the U.S. military in the disputed South China Sea or a new crackdown on individual freedoms in Hong Kong.

YES, IT’S MEMORIAL DAY BUT SOMETHING ELSE VIP HAPPENED (TWO DAYS SHORT OF) 100 YEARS AGO TODAY: It happened on an island off the coast of Africa and it involved a rising star among British astronomers. And it proved the accuracy of a famous equation. Salim Mansur has the story on American Thinker.

BUTTIGIEG ABOUT TO HIT TWO BIG OBSTACLES: One of those obstacles was the third president of the country and the other was the seventh. Pete Buttigieg wants to erase both of them from their status as founders of the modern Democratic Party. This could be a problem for South Bend’s absentee mayor.

He claims that’s all he’s advocating but where does it end once we start down the road of Stalinist revisionism of history? Take apart the Jefferson Memorial stone by stone? Burn Jackson’s Hermitage to the ground?

TIME TO ADMIT THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION FAILED? Great prose ought to inform and inspire. Noelle Mering’s post today in The Federalist asking “Is Sexual Autonomy Worth the Cost to Human Lives” does both. I offer some brief thoughts on it as well in “Abortion, Sex and Working on Capitol Hill” on HillFaith.

KRISTINA BAUM IS RUNNING THE RACE OF HER LIFE: And all the while dealing with hostile journalists covering Congress. This young lady is tough, humble and full of faith.

HERE’S HOW CORY AND MARK BECAME SUCH BOSOM BUDDIES: Kyle Sammin of The Federalist remembers when the Facebook boss pledged $100 million to fix Newark’s public schools. And that’s just the beginning.

ALL RUSSIA-HOAX ROADS LEAD BACK TO HILLARY: Maybe instead of the Steele Dossier, it should be called Sydney’s Dossier?

WARNER’S TOUGH CHINA STANCE EXPOSES BIDEN WEAKNESS: Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) is the ranking minority members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, so he has received countless classified briefings over the years concerning China. In a speech at the Brookings Institution, he acknowledged that those briefings changed his mind about the Asian giant.

The China Warner now sees isn’t the same China former Vice President Joe Biden talked about earlier this month during a campaign stop in Iowa, the China Biden says isn’t a competitor for the U.S. Warner didn’t mention Biden by name at Brookings, but then he didn’t have to. Seems clear to a lot of people that Joe screwed up.

IT’S TIME TO PROSECUTE SOME RUSSIA HOAXERS: Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton views Durham appointment as a positive, but tells The Epoch Times: “How much more investigating is needed here? We just need decision-making on prosecutions.”

KEEP A TIGHT HOLD ON YOUR RIGHT TO WORK: It takes a close reading to see how they do it, but 140 congressional Democrats have found a way to nullify Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. Mark Mix of the National Right to Work Committee and Mike Watson of the Capital Research Center explain the small type.

CHECK OUT ‘ARCHITECTS OF WOKE’ AND ITS EXPOSE OF SLAVOJ ZIZEK: This is episode two of the Capital Research Center’s (CRC) fine Dangerous Documentaries series.

Zizek is a Marxist rock star, at least on campus and in the MSM. Scott Walter, CRC’s president, is the executive producer and the result makes clear there is a very dark side to the rock star.

IS THERE NO CEILING ON KRUGMAN’S LUNACY? Apparently not, judging by his latest tweet blasting President Donald Trump for giving Tiger Woods the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

HARVARD KEYNOTER FAVORED JAIL FOR CHRISTIANS, JEWS: Yes, you read that right. This HillFaith post on the event is addressed primarily to the most influential and overlooked group in Washington, D.C., the 20,000 aides working for senators, representatives and congressional committees, because sooner or later they will all have to make a decision about whether to join the Intolerance Brigades.

But the information about the speaker, the survey data and the issue analysis ought to be of interest to everybody who cares about the First Amendment. And yes, you can call me a First Amendment Fanatic if you like. We all should be.

THIS IS ONE OF THE WORST EXAMPLES OF NEWSROOM FASCISM: I’ve never met now-former Baltimore TV local news anchor Mary Bubala, but I am outraged as an American and a journalist over her firing for a question that clearly wasn’t remotely related to the fact the city’s two most recent (corrupt) mayors were both Black and women.

Note in particular that Loyola University of Maryland Professor Karsonya Wise Whitehead claimed to know Bubala was asking a racist question because she knows Bubala’s heart. Either this kind of totalitarian rationalization ends or liberty isn’t long for anybody in this country except those with approved opinions.

HAVE YOU HEARD OF ‘MEDICAL KIDNAPPINGS’ BY SWAT TEAMS: I hate to admit it but I had not before reading Michael Volpe’s superb expose today for The Daily Caller. Essentially, it’s the use by the state of its police power to take a child from his or her parents because they won’t allow a medical treatment the state judges to be required, even if there is doubt about the accuracy of diagnosis.

The problem is especially apparent in Arizona, according to experts and activists quoted by Volpe, but a federal law pushed by former Vice-President Walter Mondale is the root, via generous federal funding it provides that amounts to an incentive for the raids. For the record, I am NOT an anti-vaxxer and neither is Volpe.

WHY DO LIBERALS GET SO MUCH EXACTLY BACKWARDS? Retired American Baptist minister Oliver Thomas writes in USAToday that the Christian church will become extinct if it doesn’t immediately reject the traditional view that scripture is inspired by God, and then admit that the Bible is wrong on sex, especially homosexuality.

But Glenn Stanton looks at the data in The Federalist and observes: “Yes, many churches are hemorrhaging members, and have been since the early 1970s. But anyone who studies these things carefully will tell you this is happening almost exclusively in the more politically and theologically liberal mainline churches. These are the same churches that are doing exactly what Thomas calls for: rejecting the credibility and authority of Scripture.”

And here’s the kicker, according to Stanton: “Research conducted jointly at Columbia University and the University of California at Los Angeles by scholars who are not shy about supporting gay politics found that gay- and lesbian-identified people are 2.5 times more likely to attend churches that took a more conservative view on Christianity (including homosexuality) than the so-called “welcoming and affirming” congregations that celebrate it.”

Go here for the rest of Stanton’s comprehensive refutation of the conventional liberal wisdom about same-sex relationships and conservative Christians.

Reagan was so right: “Our liberal friends know so many things that just aren’t so.”

WHAT MUELLER’S BIGGEST OMISSION MEANS: It’s not news that Special Counsel Robert Mueller included nothing about the Steele Dossier’s Russian sources or its indirect funding by Hillary Clinton. But there remains much to be grasped fully regarding the significance of Mueller’s omission, according to Margot Cleveland in The Federalist.

“Even though Mueller was authorized, as he put it in the special counsel report, to investigate ‘the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,’ the report is silent of efforts to investigate Russia’s role in feeding Steele misinformation,” Cleveland writes.

But then she raises a deeply interesting possibility: “Or did Mueller investigate this question? It’s possible, maybe even likely, given this acknowledgement in the special counsel report: ‘From its inception, the Office recognized that its investigation could identify foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information relevant to the FBI’s broader national security mission.’”

One suspects that Mueller’s reputation — and those of a host of other worthies — will be irretrievably damaged before Attorney General William Barr and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham are finished.

WHAT THEY SAY WHEN THEY THINK NOBODY IS WATCHING: Training sessions for campaign workers and political activists are excellent advance indicators of where their leaders hope to take the rest of us. So a recent poll by the National Democratic Training Academy run by AFSCME and others deserves attention.

Among the multiple candidates included in the poll? Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, Patrick Howley of Big League Politics reports. And a separate poll by the same group says “we’re polling Top Democrats from your area to determine possible support for a Hillary Clinton 2020 Presidential Ticket.”

I SAY, WE SAY, YOU SAY: A bunch of folks watching the Billboard Awards show had a lot to say about Lauren Daigle’s cross-over hit single, “You Say.” Maybe there’s hope for popular culture yet.