THIS IS WHY THE DEEP STATE HAD TO GET ASSANGE: Do Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham know that when they talk to British intel they aren’t conversing with friends? The Last Refuge sorts out the leads, the rabbit holes and false fronts.

LOOKS LIKE CAPITAL RESEARCH CENTER’S (CRC) “NO SAFE SPACES” IS A HIT: The documentary film starring Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager “opened in its first theater this past Friday in Phoenix, AZ, and shot to near record-breaking box office. Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, Indiewire, and Fox News covered the film’s gross of $45,000 on only one screen, becoming the second-largest opening weekend at the box office on a single screen for a documentary of all time, behind only Michael Moore’s Sicko released in 2007,” according to CRC.

Kudos to CRC’s Scott Walter, Kristen Eastlick and Joseph Klein for the success of their “Dangerous Documentaries” productions, which require a tremendous amount of creativity, persistence and managerial skills to produce.

A BIG FIRST AMENDMENT WIN IN MISSOURI: It took five years, but unpaid volunteer Ron Calzone’s right to express his views on public policy issues to Show Me state officials without first filing as a lobbyist was finally upheld. Institute for Free Speech explains why you should be elated by this even if you don’t live in Missouri.

RIGHT BETTER PAY SERIOUS ATTENTION TO KANYE WEST CONVERSION: Something unexpected is going on here that just might be hugely significant for the future of American politics.

IF YOU KNOW WHO ‘SAMMY SOIL’ IS, YOU ARE ONE OF THE FEW: Sammy Soil is the name of the mascot for the Department of Agriculture to promote its Natural Resources Conservation Program. He’s one of 18 mascots costing more than $250,000. The mascots are part of the $1.4 billion federal bureaucrats spend annually on SWAG, which Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) wants to end.

CONSERVATIVES SHOULD LOVE THAT THE WASHINGTON NATIONALS WON THE WORLD SERIES: This is likely the only time I will ever approvingly quote two Washington Post writers. The game is baseball, but the lessons are especially applicable for those on the Right in politics.

HERE’S WHY EVANGELICALS ARE TRUMP’S STRONGEST SUPPORTERS: They vote for him to be their president, not their pastor. OK, there’s more to it, but that’s the core of the situation.

MOLECULAR BIOLOGIST THROWS CAUTION FLAG ON GENE-EDITING: Anjeanette Roberts sees immense human benefit to be gained from gene-editing (think, for example, of disease prevention), but a recent failed experiment in China illustrates why this is a field where haste could well make for something far more painful than mere waste.

IF YOU THINK GRAHAM’S RESOLUTION WAS A GOOD IDEA: Sally Zelikovsky, writing for The American Thinker, has a bunch more solid ideas on how Senate Republicans “should handle impeachment.” As she says, “for once, before it’s too late, let’s outsmart the smarty pants on the left.”

THIS IS WHAT THEY DO WHEN THEY THINK WE’RE NOT LOOKING: David Marcus of The Federalist is a conservative journo who is quite adept with the English language. That makes him the perfect byline for a report on how mainstream media types act in their natural habitat of Gotham City.

Here’s a sample: “By the end of the half hour, I can honestly say I had experienced the smarmiest, most self-congratulatory, dishonest, and squirm-inducing discussion I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing in person. It was like watching Bill Clinton and Stormy Daniels discuss their unyielding dedication to chastity.”

Marcus’ prose is a delight, but the folks he’s writing about … not so much. Read the whole thing, but you might want to keep a large bottle of Pepto-Bismol handy.

BARR/DURHAM PROBE NOW A CRIMINAL INQUIRY: Sundance on The Last Refuge explains what may well be the beginning of the end for any number of folks who have been spinning tall tales since November 2016.

AND YOU THOUGHT MITCH MCCONNELL WAS JUST A BORING ESTABLISHMENT GUY: Well, it’s time you met Hemp Man Mitch because Hemp could be the next big deal. Roll Call details a “potential field of dreams.”

10 QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT TRUMP’S SYRIA WITHDRAWAL: For starters, why is Trump wrong to reverse Obama’s decision in 2014 to ally the U.S. with a Marxist outfit that’s been at war with Turkey since Reagan was in the White House?

SO THAT’S HOW WARREN PAYS FOR HER PLANS! Color printers are wonderful inventions. Babylon Bee explains it all.

WILL MARK ZUCKERBERG BE ASKED WHY FACEBOOK KILLED DENEEN BORELLI’S VOICE? Don’t hold your breath, but Facebook’s silencing of a black conservative woman should be front and center in today’s hearing.

IT’S RACIST TO CALL TRUMP’S IMPEACHMENT A “LYNCHING,” BUT NOT WHEN DEMOCRATS SAID THAT ABOUT CLINTON IN 1998: You aren’t surprised, right?

IF CHINA DOESN’T WORRY YOU, THIS FILM WILL CHANGE THAT: Issues & Insights effectively lays out the case for why every American should see this new film that debuted recently on One America News. Former Trump campaign counselor and White House senior adviser Steve Bannon is the executive producer of “The Claws of the Red Dragon,” from NTD Television (which is corporately related to The Epoch Times newspaper for which I cover Congress).

WHY DO ONLY ONE IN THREE YOUNG ADULTS FEEL ‘DEEPLY CARED-FOR BY THOSE AROUND  ME’? HillFaith reports another survey — of more than 16,000 people aged 18-35 in 25 countries — on emerging issues that Glenn presciently raised in “The Social Media Upheaval.”

Growing isolation and loneliness is not just a problem in the U.S., though our affluence and secularized culture likely heightens it here. I posit the current debate in Congress as an opening skirmish in a larger debate about social media and suggest that understanding an even deeper root of the problem points to the enduring solution.

HOUSE GOP TO SEEK SCHIFF CENSURE VOTE TODAY: Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Az.) will seek a vote later today on his resolution censuring House Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) for a variety of egregious sins, not the least of which being his self-described “fable” about the Trump Ukraine call. Democrats will waste no time tabling the motion, but the Republicans will have made a point, maybe.

FOUR WAYS PELOSI’S IMPEACHMENT FAILS HILLARY’S WATERGATE TESTS: There was a time a little more than a year ago when Clinton actually had some sensible observations about her role in the 1974 Watergate impeachment, the one against her husband in 1998 and the mockery now hurtling to its denouement.

SASSE MAKES SENATE DEMS VOTE ON BETO’S RADICAL JIHAD AGAINST CHURCH TAX-EXEMPTION: Don’t be surprised if all six Senate Democrats running for their party’s 2020 presidential nomination are nowhere to be seen on the Senate floor Monday, thanks to Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.). And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who on Thursday invoked a Senate rule to fast-track something the Dems would rather avoid.

Sasse introduced a resolution that declares “any effort by the government to condition the receipt of the protections of the Constitution of the United States and the laws of the United States, including an exemption from taxation, on the public policy positions of an organization, is an affront to the spirit and letter of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”

The Nebraska Republican was reacting to former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s promise to withdraw the federal tax exemptions of all churches, synagogues and mosques that oppose same-sex marriage. Today, the jihad targets religious tax exemptions; sooner or later, they’ll want to tell us how to vote. If they let us vote.

DEMS HAVE CHAMPAGNE SPENDING TASTE, WATERED DOWN BEER BUDGETS: Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Brian Riedl looked at the numbers for the many new spending programs like Medicare for All and free college and found a gross imbalance: $40 trillion to spend, but less than $4 trillion in new taxes on the wealthy. No, I didn’t just do a forehead slap.

YES, THOSE ‘STAR CHAMBER’ ANALOGIES APPLY TO PELOSI’S IMPEACHMENT PROCESS: It’s not an exact parallel but it’s getting closer, and it’s no good thing for America.

DID CNN LET WARREN PLANT HER CONTRIBUTOR IN AUDIENCE? Well, well, it turns out, according to the Washington Free Beacon’s Alex Griswold that the guy asking Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) the setup question about same-sex marriage during CNN’s LGBT Town Hall was a maxxed-out donor to her 2018 Senate campaign.

CNN’s Chris Cuomo said nothing about that important fact when he introduced Morgan Cox of Dallas to ask Warren what she would say to somebody who told her they believe marriage is only between one man and one woman. Warren’s snarky response went viral, of course. But maybe Cuomo honestly didn’t know that detail. Odds are good somebody at CNN knew beforehand because, surely, they background questioners.

WHY IS THE WEST SILENT ABOUT BLACK SLAVERY IN NORTHERN AFRICA? Dr. Charles Jacobs of the American Anti-Slavery Group claims Black Africans are being sold into chattel slavery every day, but hardly anybody in the West even notices, much less protests. It’s happening predominantly in five Muslim nations in Northern Africa, which Jacobs argues is not coincidental to the silence in the West.