POSTMODERN PROBLEMS: Chocolate Interferes With THC Testing, Making It Hard to Measure the Potency of Edibles.

CHANGE: GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson to resign at end of year.

OH, COME ON: FBI studies two broken cameras outside cell where Epstein died.

The two cameras were within view of the Manhattan jail cell where he was found dead on Aug. 10. A source earlier told Reuters two jail guards failed to follow a procedure overnight to make separate checks on all prisoners every 30 minutes.

He had been taken off suicide watch prior to his death.

The cameras were sent to Quantico, Virginia, site of a major FBI crime lab where agents and forensic scientists analyze evidence.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that at least one camera in the hallway outside Epstein’s cell had footage that was unusable. The newspaper said there was other usable footage captured in the area.

The country’s in the very best of hands.

THE BEST THING TO HAPPEN TO MY LIVER SINCE I STARTED TAKING N.A.C.: Democratic debate stage to shrink barring last-minute shock.

Ahead of Wednesday night’s deadline to qualify for the ABC News debate in Houston on Sept. 12, only 10 candidates have met both the polling and fundraising thresholds, according to POLITICO’s tracking of the process. Unlike the first two debates, if 10 or fewer candidates qualify, they will all appear together on one night.

If this holds, it would mark the first time in the still-fledgling Democratic race that all the top candidates debated together. The large field and random assignments had, thus far, prevented Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts from appearing with former Vice President Joe Biden or Sen. Kamala Harris of California.

For a time, it appeared billionaire self-funder Tom Steyer would disrupt that. He crossed the fundraising threshold — 130,000 unique donors — two weeks ago, and he sits on the precipice of the polling threshold, having earned 2 percent in three surveys by pollsters approved by the Democratic National Committee.

But the fourth poll — which would make Steyer the 11th qualified candidate and result in the debate being split over two nights — has been elusive.

For a short while it looked like Steyer might be the Dem’s golden boy, but he can’t even buy a podium at the debate.

BRING IT ON: ‘Damning’ DOJ Inspector General Report on Comey Expected to Be Released as Soon as Thursday.

BREAKING: Trump Administration Decides Children of US Military Born Overseas No Longer Automatically Citizens.

TO BE FAIR, MOST SOVIET EDUCATORS PROBABLY ONLY PRETENDED TO BE COMMUNISTS: My Childhood Schooling In The Soviet Union Was Better Than My Kids’ In U.S. Public Schools Today.

THIS SHOULDN’T REQUIRE EXPLAINING TO ANYONE BUT JOURNALISTS: Why Journalists’ Old Tweets Are Fair Game for Trump.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE. MOVE ALONG. Federal Agents Search Home of United Auto Workers President.

Federal agents searched the home of United Auto Workers President Gary Jones, and the home of the union’s previous president, according to an FBI spokeswoman, widening a multiyear criminal investigation into alleged corruption in the UAW’s top ranks.

The FBI also executed a search warrant at the California home of former UAW President Dennis Williams, who had led the union before Mr. Jones.

The searches mark a significant elevation of the federal probe, which already has resulted in charges against nine people.

Federal prosecutors are investigating allegations of bribes, kickbacks and other financial misconduct among union officials in their dealings with the car companies and during the bargaining process dating as far back to 2009.

In addition to Mr. Jones’s home, FBI agents also searched the UAW’s regional office in Missouri, where Mr. Jones had worked before being elected the union’s president.

Developing…

BRYAN PRESTON: Judge Jeanine Drops Bold New Book: ‘Radicals, Resistance and Revenge.’

WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT EXPERTS? Google defends tracking cookies—some experts aren’t buying it.

BACKGROUNDER: Deconstructing Google’s excuses on tracking protection.

THE AFGHAN MESS: How To Get Out Without Creating Another. “Reality is, no army in history has successfully controlled all of Afghanistan — not Alexander the Great, not Genghis Khan, not the British, not the Russians, not the Americans.”

Not even the Afghans.

WSJ: Democrats’ Emerging Tax Idea: Look Beyond Income, Target Wealth. “Lawmakers and 2020 candidates offer a range of options focused on capturing some of the trillions of dollars in assets belonging to the nation’s richest.”

For the richest Americans, Democrats want to shift toward taxing their wealth, instead of just their salaries and the income their assets generate. The personal income tax indirectly touches wealth, but only when assets are sold and become income.

At the end of 2017, U.S. households had $3.8 trillion in unrealized gains in stocks and investment funds, plus more in real estate, private businesses and artwork, according to the Economic Innovation Group, a nonprofit focused on bringing investment to low-income areas. Most of the value of estates over $100 million consists of unrealized gains, said a 2013 Federal Reserve study. Much has never been touched by individual income taxes and may never be.

Democrats are eager to tap that mountain of wealth to finance priorities such as expanding health-insurance coverage, combating climate change and aiding low-income households. Their ideas range from new rules on inherited assets, to a plan by Sen. Ron Wyden for annual taxes on unrealized gains, to a proposal from Sen. Elizabeth Warren to tax wealth itself.

A century ago, progressives promised the income tax would only affect the top one percent, too.

WATCH THE SENATE: Republicans See Senate as ‘Firewall’ in Preventing Liberal Armageddon in 2020.

VIDEO: Bernie Punches Speed Bag, Speed Bag Punches Back. “I’ve watched this clip approximately a million and six times already, and it still hasn’t gotten old.”

BORIS THE BOLD: Outrage as U.K. leader Boris Johnson moves to suspend Parliament ahead of Brexit deadline.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Wednesday that a usual suspension of parliament would be extended until October 14, just two weeks before the U.K. is set to leave the European Union. The move enraged lawmakers, including many from Johnson’s own Conservative Party, who will have far less time to try and stop him delivering a “Brexit” without any agreement in place with the EU.

MPs will return to London later than in recent years, giving pro-EU lawmakers less time than expected to thwart Johnson’s Brexit plans before the U.K. is due to leave the bloc on October 31.

This is a real panic piece from CBS News, but what is Johnson supposed to do — acquiesce to those out to stop the thing he was elected to achieve?

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? California lawmakers advance measure allowing medical marijuana on K-12 campuses.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Baby Bedbug Bret Stephens Edition. “The only people more tedious than the ones who complain on social media are those who complain about social media. Those who complain about social media on social media are a special sort of bottom-feeding class. It’s always done with a garbage ‘above the fray’ attitude and the implication that the whiner is off to a moral high plane to revel in newfound emotional superiority.”

MARK FALCOFF: Why America Shouldn’t Be Too Concerned About Venezuela. “The United States would be ill-advised to become excessively concerned with the course of Venezuelan politics. To be sure, other Latin American countries are upset about the migrants fleeing from Maduro. But then let them gather together in their many, many regional organizations (UNASUR, the Latin American Parliament, MERCOSUR, etc., etc., etc.) and work out a ‘regional solution’ of the type they were always urging us to pursue in the past. The United States should assume a position of non-alignment in this matter, much as the Latins were happy to do with regard to our security concerns during the long years of the Cold War.”

I’m not much concerned beyond my enjoyment of a good cautionary tale.

WHAT A WAY TO GO: U.S. To “Drown The World” In Oil.

Because so much drilling in the U.S. is concentrated in a few areas, individual U.S. states on their own tower over the rest of the world. If Texas were a country, it would account for the most new oil and gas production in the world. Between 2020 and 2029, Texas could account for 28 percent of all additional output, Global Witness says.

Canada and Pennsylvania tie for second and third with 7 percent each. Then comes New Mexico at 5 percent of the growth and North Dakota at 4 percent. Oklahoma, Brazil, Colorado, Russia and Ohio are all tied at 3 percent a piece.

In other words, 7 out of the top 10 sources of new oil and gas production globally over the next decade are U.S. states.

“If things don’t change, by the end of the next decade, new oil and gas fields in the US will produce more than twice what Saudi Arabia produces today,” Global Witness said in its report.

Global Witness says that like it’s a bad thing, but I call it “winning.”

CHANGE: Maddow’s TV Ratings Fall Again As Hannity, Carlson Remain On Top. “It was the second straight month that Maddow failed to finish in the top three, something she had previously accomplished every month dating back to October 2018.”

THE ATLANTIC: Angering China Can Now Get You Fired. “The pressure on Hong Kong executives to suppress dissent could go global.”

By harassing these specific firms, Beijing’s leaders are clearly sending a wider message to all business in Hong Kong, both local and international: Support the crackdown, or suffer the consequences. A recent commentary in the Global Times made that threat explicit. “Companies should not become accomplices of the rioters. Moreover, they need to see themselves as an important symbol of maintaining a stable and prosperous society,” it read. Otherwise, “behavior that hurts Chinese people’s feelings are always eventually uncovered by netizens, and the companies guilty of such behavior are criticized or boycotted.”

For now, the pressure on these companies to act against democracy advocates has been limited to Hong Kong. Yet the businesses in Beijing’s crosshairs are also global, with employees and operations around the world. (Even MTR operates rail services in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Sweden.) It is not such a big leap to fear staff working for these firms outside of Hong Kong could also be vulnerable if they express favor toward the protest movement.

“Kowtow” isn’t a Chinese word because the emperors played nice, but it seems like if Beijing thought they could afford to really crack down on Hong Kong, they’d have done so already. Or maybe Xi just isn’t desperate enough yet to try anything really rash.

BLUE ON BLUE: Mayor Pete Breaks the Wrong Glass Ceiling for Some Lesbians.

THIS SEEMS TO BE THE CONSENSUS. CAN’T WAIT TO SEE IT. Dave Chappelle’s Netflix Special Is the PC Culture’s Worst Nightmare.

BLAME AMERICA FIRST: Beto Blames U.S. for Guatemala Drought ‘Caused Not by God Nor by Mother Nature.’