CHRISTIAN TOTO: Celebrities Love Free Speech! (If It Hurts Trump.)

To date, “If it hurts Trump” assumes a fact not in evidence. Quite the opposite, in fact.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Two national anthem singers take knees at NFL games.

ROBERT SPENCER: Why Trump Shouldn’t Have Signed the Resolution Condemning ‘Hate Groups.’

NEWS YOU CAN USE? NFLArrest.com has an interactive chart for tracking all your favorite pro-level crimes and misdemeanors.

I’m embarrassed to find my Denver Broncos getting arrested so often.

NAME THAT PARTY: Texas lawmaker spent $51K on online psychic.

Rep. Dawnna Dukes is due to face misdemeanor corruption charges at an Oct. 16 trial. She is accused of giving a taxpayer-funded raise to a legislative aide to cover gas money for shuttling her daughter back and forth from school.

The Travis County prosecutors’ court filing this week is intended to inform Dukes’ attorneys of allegations against her that will be asserted at trial. She’s not facing charges pertaining to the allegations included in the filing.

“Under Texas law, the state is required to give notice to the defendant of any evidence, not arising from the same transaction as that on trial, that the state might attempt to introduce to prove motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, absence of mistake, or lack of accident,” District Attorney Margaret Moore said in a statement to the Austin American-Statesman .

Dukes’ attorney, Dane Ball, declined to comment on the allegations.

The Travis County district attorney’s office alleges in the filing that Dukes paid for the psychic from December 2014 to January 2016, totaling nearly $1,000 a week. She apparently used her own money for the payments; the court document doesn’t indicate public funds were used. The district attorney’s office didn’t return a call Thursday seeking clarification.

Authorities contend she was noticeably impaired on one occasion while performing legislative duties at the Capitol. She showed up late to a House appropriations committee hearing on March 29 and at one point said, “I know I’m talking a lot. I’m full of morphine and will be headed out of here soon.”

Not once in a ten-paragraph report did the AP find the space to mention Dukes’ party affiliation — D-Austin.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Trump Won Because Whites Can’t Stand Obama’s ‘Good Negro Government.’

Coates used to represent the far left of progressive thought, but now he’s the mainstream.

HE SAYS THAT LIKE IT’S A GOOD THING: The NFL Won’t Forget September 24, 2017 Anytime Soon.

Someday soon they’ll wish they could forget it.

BLUE ON BLUE: A rude awakening for tech giants.

The European Union has assessed a major fine against Google.

In addition, the leaders of the European Union want to assess a large tax on the revenues of Amazon, Facebook and Google.
…
When liberal politicians — who are motivated by the need to gather funds through taxes in order to support their constituencies — see an untapped source of revenue, they want to attack it.

This is especially true when the source is both vulnerable and naïve, politically speaking.

And now comes Washington.

Since Facebook, Amazon and Google have such total dominance of their markets, it is likely they will soon be in the crosshairs of Washington.
…
They have not deigned to be involved in politics, except to lecture at politicians from a stance of superiority. One of the effects of this isolation is that followers of FAANG have a special disdain for conservatives.

Now, they are being unceremoniously thrust into the messy world of real politics. It is not going well for them.

The left, which FAANG embraces so earnestly, is about to teach those companies a lesson on the politics of Europe.

Microsoft learned two decades ago that being a progressive corporation was no protection from progressive politicians.

For all the recent talk on the Right about siccing the DOJ’s antitrust division on Google and Facebook, for now at least the right approach might be just to sit back and watch as another Lefty civil war breaks out.

BILL KILLER: Rand Paul’s do-or-die health care demands.

Cut the Affordable Care Act spending way back. He says that “only a significant reassessment of this trillion-dollar spending regime would get my support.” The problem with this demand is that if you have deep cuts in health care spending you will push away other moderate Republicans, and not just Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.

Scrap way more Affordable Care Act regulations. He says that states should “have to opt into ACA regulations,” rather than having to opt out. The problem with this demand is that it only appeals to conservatives. You’d get Ted Cruz on board but still lose other moderate Republicans.

Expand association health plans, which would let small businesses and individuals band together to buy health insurance. The problem with this demand is that Republican leaders have already determined they can’t do this through the budget reconciliation rules.

Baby steps, Senator.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: The North Koreans couldn’t have developed their nuclear weapons all by themselves.

It’s now two weeks since we learned that British intelligence has concluded that the North Koreans couldn’t have developed their nuclear weapons all by themselves. According to the Telegraph, “North Korean scientists are people of some ability, but clearly they’re not doing it entirely in a vacuum,” said one government minister. The two main suspects, according to the Brits, are the Iranians and the Russians.

This is not exactly breaking news. For years, I have written about the Nork/Iranian joint nuclear venture, and a long version of the story written by Gordon Chang appeared in 2015, suggesting that Iran had outsourced part of its nuclear program to Pyongyang.

Read the whole thing.

HMM: Kushner used private email to conduct White House business.

HARDBALL: Iran Shuts Kurdistan Border, Erdogan Threatens to Invade: ‘Troops Could Arrive One Night.’

Iraq’s Kurds will go ahead with a referendum on independence on Monday because their partnership with Baghdad has failed, Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani said on Sunday, shrugging off international opposition to the vote.

In response, the Iraqi government asked the autonomous Kurdish region to hand over control of its international border posts, its international airports and called on foreign countries to stop importing Kurdish crude oil.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said it did not recognize the referendum and would view its outcome regarding a future Kurdistan as null and void, adding that the Iraqi Kurdish government was threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and the whole region.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is threatening a military intervention in Iraq in response to the Iraqi Kurdish region’s referendum on independence from Baghdad.

This is going to be much more difficult than it would have been if President Bush had gotten behind an independent Iraqi Kurdistan back in 2003.

WELL, GOOD: Marriott Refuses to Cancel Convention for Anti-Sharia Group.

AXIS OF EVIL: Iran’s New Ballistic Missile Looks a Lot Like a Modified North Korean One.

Needless to say, the demonstration of the Khorramshahr has added a certain weight to calls in the United States to pull out of or otherwise reconsider the future of the JCPOA. Critics of pulling out of the arrangement say that it could only hasten Iran’s development of both newer and more advanced ballistic missiles, as well as a nuclear weapon.

However, Khorramshahr may prompt additional concerns that Iran may already be working along both of these lines with help from North Korea and other allies. Observers were quick to point out that the missile shares a number of similarities, especially in its apparent engine configuration, with the North Korean BM-25 Musudan, also known as the Hwasong-10.

Iran claims that the new missile is an entirely domestic effort, but it makes similar statements about almost every weapon system it unveils, even those that are clearly derived from foreign designs. Its existing Shahab-3 medium range ballistic missiles are a known derivative of North Korea’s earlier Hwasong-7.

I’m so old I can remember when suggesting that Iran and North Korea cooperated as a terror axis was the punchline to unfunny jokes told by comedians and network news reporters.

RIGHT ON SCHEDULE: The NFL Protests Are Patriotic.

Protest is patriotic. Protest has played a critically important role in elevating the voices of the most vulnerable in our nation. Protest in America has been essential to ending war, to demanding equal rights, to ending unfair practices that keep citizens marginalized. If we quell protest in the name of patriotism, we are not patriots. We are tyrants.

Would there have been a Civil Rights Act without the Birmingham protests? When Bull Connor unleashed his fire hoses and dogs on the schoolchildren taking to the streets, racial disparities and the violence facing people because of the color of their skin became the issues of the times. With savage images of the brutal attack in the news every day, President John Kennedy had little choice but to push for a Civil Rights Act that demanded equal services and equal rights.

Protests in Selma, Alabama, changed the trajectory of this nation and catapulted the Voting Rights Act into being. Soon after images of Bloody Sunday flooded television sets, President Johnson presented to Congress the Voting Rights Act, which would remove barriers to voting like literacy tests. If you think these protests were irrelevant, consider Johnson’s words to Congress: “[A]t times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom … So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.”

And so it is now for multimillionaire athletes showboating at taxpayer-subsidized football stadiums for the ultra-high-definition videocameras of multibillion-dollar media complexes.

UPDATE (from the comments): “We must remove the Confederate flag because it is racist. Now the standard of the northern armies that ended slavery, is racist.”

Racism is whatever the Party requires it to be, comrade.

DETERRENCE: U.S. Flies Unprecedented Show of Force North of DMZ.

The Pentagon said B-1B bombers from Guam, along with F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea on Saturday. The U.S. characterized the flights as extending farther north of the Demilitarized Zone, than any U.S. fighter or bomber had gone off the North Korean coast in the 21st century.

B-1 bombers are no longer part of the U.S. nuclear force, but they are capable of dropping large numbers of conventional bombs.

U.S. Pacific Command would not be more specific about many years it had been since U.S. bombers and fighters had flown that far north of the DMZ, but a spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Dave Benham, noted that this century “encompasses the period North Korea has been testing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.”

Non-proliferation is dead in Northeast Asia, and Chinese support for North Korea helped to kill it. You have to wonder if the possibility of a nuclear-armed Taiwan, South Korea, and/or Japan would change Beijing’s attitude.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: The NFLOL, Healthcare on Life Support and Much, Much More.

HOWIE CARR: The Liberal Media Hated the NFL – Until Yesterday.

“Get that son of a bitch off the field right now!” the president imagined one of his fellow billionaires bellowing. “Out! He’s fired! He’s fired!”

Which would be the owner’s right, obviously. And surely a huge percentage of what used to be the NFL fan base is fed up with the endless PC posturing, both on the field and in the ESPN studios and on the sports pages.

The NFL’s appeal has faded, but not just among the deplor­ables. There’s a reason they are called “soccer moms,” after all. They wouldn’t dream of letting Junior put on shoulder pads. A football field is the furthest thing from a snowflake’s safe space.

But now the lemmings of the left feel compelled to defend something they loathed a mere 48 hours ago, because if Trump likes something, it must be bad. And vice versa.

It’s different now because shut up.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: In Venezuela, they were teachers and doctors. To buy food, they became prostitutes.

It’s a mystery how this sad state of affairs came into being.

TED CRUZ: ‘Graham and Cassidy Don’t Have My Vote, And They Don’t Have Mike Lee’s Either.’

STEPHEN KRUISER: What is a “Republican” anymore?

Good question, although I suspect you’d get a better answer in places like Texas, Utah, or Ohio than in Washington, D.C.

OH: Iran Tests New Ballistic Missile, State Media Reports.

It has enough range to reach Israel and enough payload for a nuke.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Left-Wing Causes, Like Frankenstein’s Monster, Have Escaped Their Chains.

Three strange incidents occurred in recent weeks. Nancy Pelosi was “shouted down by immigration activists for trying to strike Dreamers deal with Trump.” Hillary Clinton’s book received disappointing reviews from the left, and former FBI director James Comey was heckled at Howard University. “Go home Comey, you’re not our homey.” The audience was turning on its performers. All were signs the once reliable Blue Model is misfiring.

Time magazine … offer a brutal assessment concerning the direction of the Democratic Party. One rallying cry from the Left is that Clinton lost because she … wasn’t left wing enough. Every time the party has gone this way in national elections, they’ve lost in a landslide. … to win back the House, to redraw congressional maps favorable to the Left—you need to rebuild the party apparatuses in the rural areas, which have all but disintegrated.

In a classic case of the law of unintended consequences, identity politics is undermining globalism instead of being its tool.

Read the whole thing, in which Richard refrains from so much as a single, well-deserved “I told you so.”

WELL, YES: School choice is crucial for African-American students’ success.

Here’s what I need to say to them, to the people of this nation, to people of color — I am involved in the school choice movement because the future of my life and your life depends upon it. Starting the state’s first charter school was one of the most significant accomplishments of my life. Because of our willingness to look beyond traditional divisions and leave beyond our tendency to only work with those with whom we are comfortable, our children of color are closing the achievement gap. African-American students in charter schools are scoring 4% higher on reading tests than those in traditional public schools and Florida charter school students are more likely to attend college. Hispanic students do 12% better than their peers at traditional public schools. These are but two of the many indicators that point to increased success for students of color because their families were empowered to find schools that better met the needs of their children.

Far too many people and organizations, like the NAACP, refuse to acknowledge this. Their recent recommendations to curb charter schools, reduce their numbers and their independence, are wrong, and they expect falsely that all people of color should follow their lead because the color of your skin should dictate who you believe. I have worked a lifetime to change this misperception, to help people see that good policies for our kids do not have a color.

“They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.”

OH THANK GOODNESS: Graham Says Friendship with McCain Won’t be Hurt By ‘No’ Vote on Health Bill.