TURNABOUT: ANTIFA should have to play by the same rules as everyone else on social media. Suspend now.

CYBERSECURITY: U.S. states demand better access to secrets about election cyber threats.

Switching back to paper ballots seems like less of a hassle. More secure, too.

SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Social Distortion’s Mike Ness Accused of Punching Pro-Trump Fan at Concert.

THIS SEEMS IMPORTANT: ‘Major Crack in Government’s Defenses’: We May Finally Learn How the FBI Handled the Steele Dossier.

U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta has ruled that the FBI cannot issue a Glomar response when it comes to whatever verification attempts they may have used for the contents of the infamous Christopher Steele dossier. In other words, the FBI can no longer hide behind the “we can neither confirm nor deny” response in order to stonewall records requests regarding how they may have tried to determine the validity of the synopsis of the dossier that raised concerns President Donald Trump might be compromised by Russia, pee tapes and all.

National security lawyer Bradley P. Moss, whose tweet on the news you can see above, told Law&Crime that this is a “major crack in the Government’s legal defenses.”

“[Those defenses were] designed to conceal whether the FBI has taken any steps to verify the accuracy of the ‘salacious’ allegations outlined in that synopsis provided to then-President-elect Trump in January 2017,” Moss said. “Ironically, if it turns out that the FBI has undertaken such efforts and has verified any of the claims, thereby embarrassing President Trump politically, the president will have no one to blame for that revelation other than himself.”

Moss said what made this “largely possible” was Trump’s decision to declassify the Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff memos.

Which would at the very least seem to indicate that Trump knows the memos were BS, and is eager to let the cards fall where they may.

OH: Pro-Trump Pentagon Analyst Was Stripped of His Security Clearance by Obama Holdovers. “After he blew the whistle on suspicious Stefan Harper contracts in the fall of 2016.”

That’s different because shut up.

SCENES FROM RAHM EMANUEL’S CHICAGO: 15-year-old boy killed, 14-year-old wounded outside basketball tournament: ‘He got hit. He was trying to breathe.’

UNEXPECTEDLY: Millennial Couple Bikes Near ISIS Territory to Prove ‘Humans Are Kind’ and Gets Killed.

“You read the papers and you’re led to believe that the world is a big, scary place,” Austin wrote.

“People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil.”

“I don’t buy it,” he continued. “Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own… By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind.”

However, Austin and Geoghegan’s dream trip came to a tragic and gruesome end when they got to Tajikistan, a ​weak state with a known terrorist threat that shares a border with Afghanistan, where ISIS and other terrorist groups are ​highly active. They were riding their bikes through the country on July 29 when a car rammed them, ​​according to CBS News. Five men got out of the car and stabbed the couple to death along with two other cyclists, one from Switzerland and the other from the Netherlands.

Two days later, ISIS released a video showing the same men sitting in front of the group’s black flag. They looked at the camera and vowed to kill “disbelievers,” ​according to The New York Times.

What an unnecessary, sad story.

DOWN BUT NOT OUT: About 30,000 ISIS Fighters Still in Syria and Iraq, Inspector General Reports. “At the end of December, the U.S.-led coalition had estimated “less than 1,000 ISIS terrorists” remaining on the battlefields.”

That’s some discrepancy.

BLUE ON BLUE-ISH:

Was there ever some small chance the Left wouldn’t fund Collins’ Democratic opponent?

ROBERT REICH: How Trump’s War on Regulation Is Trickle-Down Economics.

As if either one of those is a bad thing.

SELF-LOATHING SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter has gone to war with the developers who made the platform popular.

BRIDGET JOHNSON: Senate Dems Vow to Sue if They Don’t Get Requested Kavanaugh Documents. “McConnell said the best way to evaluate Supreme Court nominee would not be through the documents sought by Dems but by rooting through his 300 federal rulings.”

HARDBALL: U.S. Signals It Could Sanction China Over Iran Oil Imports.

Brian Hook, who has been appointed as special representative and chief of a new Iran Action Group at the State Department, said the U.S. would issue waivers from sanctions to countries that have made efforts to reduce their Iranian oil purchases.

India and South Korea are among Iran’s top oil customers. Both countries already have started to scale back imports and are hoping to obtain waivers to buy more time to replace Iranian crude.

But China repeatedly has said it has no plans to comply with a wave of U.S. sanctions that are due to be reimposed on Iran’s energy sector on Nov. 4. Some oil analysts expect China to increase Iranian imports instead, potentially undermining U.S. efforts to isolate Iran.

In a response to a question about China’s plan to continue importing Iranian oil at a State Department briefing on Thursday, Mr. Hook refused to rule out imposing secondary sanctions on Beijing as punishment.

I’d much rather trade than fight with China, but if they want to keep playing footsie with the Mullah’s Regime, well, that’s on them.

MICHAEL WALSH: The Shame of the Church.

Even in a faith founded upon the notion that there is no such thing as an unforgivable sin, should the penitent be sincere, what has been occurring in the church over the past 70 years or so would surely test the mercy of Christ himself.

No need to go over the nauseating details. The Church—and clearly not just in Pennsylvania—has descended into a nest of predatory perverts, largely but not exclusively homosexual, but child-molesters all. Even worse, its upper administrative reaches, the bishops, have conducted a cover-up under the guise of “compassion” and “protecting the Church,” denying, obfuscating, and lying about the extent of the problem—even as some of them were charter members of the racket. Their sanctimony is even more sickening than the sins they concealed, if such a thing is possible.

Sexual peccadilloes have always been part of every human institution, including the Catholic Church. The priapic cleric has been a staple of creative pornography since Rabelais and de Sade, and the list of sins attributable to the popes alone would make a harlot blush. Such tales of dissipation and license fueled the animosity against the Church, especially in France, and the French Revolution’s violent destruction of the ancient regime was as much directed against the Church as it was against the monarchy. To this day, laïcité is one of the French Republic’s guiding principles, and it’s no accident that into the Gallic spiritual void left by ostracized Christianity has rushed recrudescent Islam. Satan, like Nature, abhors a vacuum.

Read the whole thing.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Brennan, Manafort and Much, Much More. “Twelve senior intelligence officials issued a statement late yesterday butt-hurting (I just made that verb up) about Trump’s decision to yank the security clearance from MSNBC star and Twitter celebrity John Brennan.”

It’s a good verb, Liz.

HMM: SEC Probes Tesla Over Model 3 Production Disclosures. “The investigation began before Elon Musk’s tweets about taking the auto maker private.”

Securities regulators last year subpoenaed a parts supplier for Tesla as they looked at whether the auto maker misled investors about Model 3 car production problems, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Both issues are being handled by the SEC’s San Francisco office, one of the people said.

The Wall Street Journal reported in October that the Tesla assembly plant’s body shop wasn’t fully installed until around September and that major portions of the Model 3 were being hand built weeks after Mr. Musk announced production had begun in July 2017. As production started, he claimed about 1,600 cars would be made in the third quarter of 2017 before reaching 20,000 in December. Those forecasts were far below what he predicted roughly a year earlier, when he said as many 200,000 Model 3s would be made in the second half of 2017.

Instead, Tesla made 2,700 Model 3s during 2017. The sedan, priced to start at $35,000, is designed to propel the luxury electric-car maker into the mainstream.

Model 3 production has ramped up in recent months after long delays, but it’s still unclear by exactly how much, or if corners were cut to get the cars out the factory door without actually being ready for retail sale.

RELEASE THE TAPES! Who Was Top Gun In This Epic F-35 vs. F-22 Stealth Fighter Showdown?

An F-35 vs. F-22 dogfight pitted two Lockheed Martin (LMT) stealth aircraft against each other in Norway on Wednesday, but the winner is a mystery.

Norwegian Air Force Major Morten Hanche, who flew one of the F-35s, told Reuters that the dogfights were good practice as the F-35 has been able to overpower non-stealth aircraft.

However, he played coy on who won the F-35 vs. F-22 matchup, where two of the most advanced U.S. fighter jets faced off against each other.

“The F-22 is a very formidable opponent,” Hanche said.

So who won? I’m dying to know.

CHANGE: This Bill In Congress Could Bring Top Marijuana Companies To The U.S.

While more states are legalizing cannabis, the uncertainty at the federal level has kept some marijuana companies and their partners on the sidelines.

In January, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the laissez-faire Obama-era guidance that enabled many states to move forward with some form of pot legalization.

But a sharp backlash followed and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Cory Gardner introduced the STATES Act, which would ensure that “each State has the right to determine for itself the best approach to marijuana within its borders,” according to a one-page description.

“The U.S. has had a history of, ‘When we can’t agree, let’s just allocate the authority to the state, and if they say it’s OK, it’s OK,’ ” Canopy Growth CEO Bruce Linton said at MJBizCon in Toronto on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. “That would be an outcome which would allow us to move ahead.”

Federalism — an idea so crazy it just might work.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Swamped in Inflation, Venezuela Will Cut Five Zeros From Currency.

“I imagine if we keep like this we’re going to have to do the same thing in December,” said Ms. Nowak, who has been forced to raise prices in her cafe at least 40 times this year.

Slashing zeros from Venezuela’s inflation-cursed currency, the bolívar, is the tent-pole of a set of economic changes by President Nicolás Maduro as he tries to right his country’s capsized economy. The five-digit inflation has earned Venezuela comparisons to the hyperinflation of Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany from the International Monetary Fund.

The newly minted currency, which will be known as the “sovereign bolívar,” will be rolled out on Monday. In addition, the president has ordered measures that his United Socialist Party has been loath to consider in the past: An increase in gas prices for some drivers and a modest ease in the currency controls that have made dollars inaccessible to most Venezuelans for years.

Madura knocked three zeros off the currency as recently as March of this year.

TODD BENSMAN: Texas Juvenile Jihadi Shows Why We Need State-Level Terrorism Statutes. “The Lone Star State and 16 others have work to do.”

SCRAPPLEFACE: Trump Silences Ex-CIA Boss, Times Op-Ed Claims.

POLL: Majority of Millennial Women Do Not Identify as Feminist. “There is a whole country full of regular people that the media doesn’t even know is there.”

Sergeant Schultzism isn’t a pretty look for those who profess to be our eyes and ears.

BUZZKILL: Hiker Lost in Wilderness Survived by Eating Bees.

NOBODY IS WOKE ENOUGH: ‘Queer Eye’ Star Jonathan Van Ness Under Fire After Saying ‘Not All Republicans Are Racist.’

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Grotesque Grand Jury Report on Abusive Priests: Questions and Answers.