ON KAMALA GASLIGHTING: Michael Shellenberger nails it in 59 seconds. Doubt I could say it any better.

WAS CHICAGO A RADICAL BUST? Folks who expected or hoped for violence to mark those pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention were sorely disappointed. Organizers predictions of hordes of demonstrators were belied by the fact they only ordered six outdoor potties before the action began, according to Richard Pollock.

Pollock goes on to note that: “the low turnout was especially interesting because Cook County, which includes Chicago, has more Palestinian residents than any other county in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.  More than 23,000 live in the Chicago metropolitan area, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

“Only about a dozen miles away from downtown Chicago is one of the largest Palestinian communities called Bridgeview, Illinois. It is an enclave popularly known as “Little Palestine.” Its downtown includes hookahs, Muslim restaurants and many Palestinian-owned local shops as well as a major mosque.

“It seems as if organizers could have bussed in local residents to supplement their rallies.  But clearly, few local Palestinians and Muslims were interested in traveling to nearby Chicago.”

Alternative explanation: Why demonstrate and risk getting injured when you know the Democrats were sufficiently cowed before the the DNC ever convened?

FREE SPEECH ISN’T ENOUGH: To rescue the American academic community from itself, that is, according to Hillsdale Professor Wilfred McClay, writing in City Journal. Yes, winning legal and other battles to protect and reinvigorate the First Amendment on college campuses is vital, but there is much more to this struggle:

“But the restoration of free speech, as well as the ethos that supports its flourishing, is not the full cure to what ails higher education in America. Yes, a university is a community of inquiry. But it also is something more than that: a community of shared memory, the chief instrument by which the achievements of the past are transmitted to the present as a body of knowledge upon which future knowledge can be built.

“Without the prior existence of that body of shared knowledge to build upon, the concept of progress is empty. This is what it means to be a civilization: a social formation in which such transmission takes place continuously and reliably, forming the basis of a rich and enduring common life.”

So much wisdom in that statement, and more from McClay in an invaluable look at the basics of what the restoration of Western civilization entails.

JESUS IS A CAPITALIST: Silicon entrepreneur and evangelical social media influencer Rod Martin is circulating his 2021 Facebook column with that arresting title. Martin knows his scripture and his economics, so his essay is sure to anger a bunch a folks across the ideological and spiritual spectrums.

SURVEY FINDS PUBLIC OPPOSES JUDICIAL ETHICS ‘REFORM:’ Big majority of American voters aren’t buying President Joe Biden’s far-reaching judicial ethics reform proposal, according to a new survey for First Liberty Institute by Mason-Dixon.

HARRIS, HOUSING, OPEN BORDERS: It may seem at first glance to be an unexpected connection — the cost of housing and the rate of legal and illegal immigration into the U.S. — but it is nevertheless quite real and damaging, according to Wintery Knight.

Among much else, Wintery Knight points out Canada’s experience in this area:

“The same thing happened in Canada, after nine years of Justin Trudeau. He let in MILLIONS of illegal immigrants and refugees – people who pay less in taxes than they collect in benefits. And you can bet they need somewhere to live.

“Unfortunately, Trudeau’s anti-business policies have killed the home construction industry. Demand went up, supply went down. Now the average price of a single-family home in Canada is up to $801,600 CAD. ($593,406.75 USD) And if that were not bad enough, the massive influx of unskilled immigrants has caused health care costs to skyrocket – up to $17, 713 CAD for a two-parent family with two children. Demand is going up, but supply is going down, as many Canadian doctors leave to work in countries that pay more, and tax less.”

THE ALICE COOPER YOU DON’T KNOW: If politics is downstream from culture, then you know where that puts cultural icons like heavy metal/hard rock icon Alice Cooper. Heavy metal isn’t the musical force it was back in the 70s, but Cooper still sells beaucoup albums and his presence can be as startling as it ever was.

But did you know Alice Cooper — former drug/booze/sex addict — is today an articulate follower of Jesus Christ? Regardless of your own views on faith, or heavy metal for that matter, this (lengthy, 30 minute) interview with Pastor Greg Laurie offers an unusually deep, candid and inspiring look at what it was like then backstage and how radically things are different today for Alice Cooper.

Do not miss his account of his bottom — alone with a fifth of whiskey, a huge rock of cocaine and a pistol — and why it proved to be the great turning point in Alice Cooper’s incredible life.

And the fact that Cooper is today a Christian just might also be an indicator of huge cultural and political shifts to come. Feel free to just skip right on through the deluge of Democratic fund-raising appeals, too!

DNC, RNC RATINGS UP: The Democrats’ gathering in Chicago drew slightly more viewers than the GOP assembly in Milwaukee this year, but Axios shows the Nielsen ratings back to 2008. The highest rated year for each party’s national convention? You will very likely be surprised by one, but not the other.

JUST FACTS: In today’s email alert from James Agresti’s superb research group:

“VP Kamala Harris claims that ‘Donald Trump’s abortion bans unleashed a health care crisis for women across our nation.’

“IN FACT, maternal mortality dropped by 32% in the year Roe was overturned, and women who have abortions are 45% to 191% more likely to die young than those who deliver their children. Correlation ≠ causation, but many abortions harm women, all laws limiting abortion have exceptions to protect women’s lives, and nearly all abortions kill humans.”

JEWS AT DNC FEARFUL: The new normal for Jews in the Democratic Party became clear during the Chicago proceedings. Jewish delegates had to meet secretly and away from the convention. Richard Pollock has more.

BIDEN’S MIDDLE FINGER FOR ISRAEL: The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz digs into the Biden DNC farewell speech and exposes the multiple misrepresentations, half-truths and outright lies that lurk just beneath the surface of the platitudes about always supporting Israel.

LIES, DAMN LIES & STATISTICS: About those surveys showing Harris leading Trump by 1-4 points nationally, pollster John McLaughlin explains how the data is being manipulated to produce the desired results.

TRIBUTE TO ADAM ANDRZEJEWSKI: It’s been a tough day, my friends, but my obit for Adam Andrzejewski is live on The Epoch Times. Please give it a read and share it. His great and effective labors on behalf of liberty deserve to be known far and wide.

ADAM ANDRZEJEWSKI, RIP: Open the Books founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski, 55, passed away over the weekend. Further details of the cause and for his funeral services are pending.

Adam is one of the most admirable men I have known in my nearly 50 years in politics and journalism. Through his organization, Open the Books, Adam did more in the past decade and a half than any other person I can think of to make American government transparent and accountable. America has lost a true patriot. I have lost a great friend.

When news of Adam’s passing reached earlier this evening, I was reminded of a tribute I did for him and Open the Books for PJMedia last year. Re-reading it tonight is almost jarring because he always seemed to be in great health, full of energy and enthusiasm. He was training to run in the Chicago Marathon in October.

Open the Books, which Adam was inspired to start by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), the main force behind passage of the Federal Financial Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) that resulted in creation of USASpending.gov, will go on and continue to be a major force for open and accountable government. And Adam will be remembered every step of the way.

GOOGLE CENSORS ISSUES & INSIGHTS: What happens when you don’t adhere to the Left’s accepted party line on climate change? You get censored and you may also get demonetized. That’s what Google did to Issues & Insights for publishing a superb editorial that features, among much else worth reading, the following paragraph:

“From choosing carbon dioxide as the villain because it’s a convenient ‘leverage point’ for assuming ‘control over a society,’ as noted by retired Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology professor Richard Lindzen, to the effort to smear skeptics as ‘deniers,’ the entire global warming enterprise has been a Trojan horse hauled into society by fanatics who are more than willing to lie about ‘the science’ to advance their anti-capitalist, anti-freedom political agenda.”

How about letting readers read and make up their own minds, Google? Isn’t that the essence of being a free individual?

HILL GOP AIDES MORE OPEN TO DATING DEMS: Ask a bunch of congressional staffers if they would consider dating somebody from the opposite party and you might well expect to get a resounding no. But the latest CNCT Capitol Pulse survey found GOP aides significantly more open to the idea than the Democrats.

WHAT TO EXPECT AT THE DNC: If anybody is likely to have a special insight into what is being planned by the Far Left for next week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, it’s Richard Pollock, the former associate of the Chicago 8 and trainer of their riotous troops in the Alinsky playbook. His assessment here is comprehensive and instructive.

HOW THE POTEMKIN PROTECTIVE PRESS SHIELDS HARRIS: It’s been more than three weeks since Vice-President Kamala Harris answered media questions. Here’s how she will be insulated from genuine journalism through Election Day; it’s all there in my latest PJMedia analysis. And don’t miss Glenn’s role on what would be an historic journalism event.

REAL WOMAN? We hear a lot these days about “social media influencers.” Taylor Alesia Compton is one such person. As an adolescent, she attracted several million followers but, after several years enjoying that status, Compton realized being famous and maintaining one’s personal integrity can be, shall we say, challenging.

That realization led last year to a spiritual regeneration, as well as an accompanying redefinition of herself and her role in the world. Compton returned to the Internet earlier this year as “The Bible Chick.” She doesn’t have nearly as many followers, but her demeanor and observations suggest somebody who is quite secure in their own skin.

Now, she is dispensing her analyses of current social, cultural and political issues, including this one on HillFaith this morning on “What a Real Woman Looks Like.” I can hear already the sneers and insults from the secular totalitarians, dismissing Compton as a throwback to the 50s. But maybe that misses the mark, so I wonder what think you, Instapunditeers?

THE EMPTY PANT SUIT IN THE OVAL OFFICE? Remember when then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said of Obamacare that Congress would have to pass before taxpayers could actually find out what the law contained? Something about the Kamala Harris campaign today reminds the Issues & Insights guys of that Pelosi quote.

IF IRAN ATTACKS TODAY: The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz explains the significance of Tisha B’ Av, a dark day indeed in the long history of the Jewish people.

STILL READ AT HARVARD: C.S. Lewis, that is, and by a then-convinced atheist student Jordan. It was Lewis on subjectivism that opened her eyes, as she explains this morning on HillFaith.

JUST THE BEGINNING: The government of the District of Columbia is behind this “Trans Kids” camp on Capitol Hill.

HERE COMES A RANKED CHOICE BLITZ: Haven’t heard of “ranked choice” voting? That’s where you get to rank your preferred candidates rather than being only able to choose one of them. The Federalist’s Morgan Washburn reports the liberal funding the push for ranked choice voting is making a determined effort to attract GOP support.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! As a San Francisco prosecutor, Kamala Harris declined to prosecute Catholic priests child sexual abuses cases investigated by her predecessor, according to The Lid, quoting Peter Schweitzer and others.