From the right: A Growing Mystery in Saudi Arabia

Seven women and three men, all well-known advocates for women’s rights, were arrested last week by Saudi Arabia’s internal security agency and are being held in secret locations without access to counsel. They’ve been charged with “using human rights as a pretext to violate the country’s systems.” Which, say the editors of The Weekly Standard, is profoundly disappointing, given the reforms of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has also “championed women’s rights.” Some Western commentators have condemned MbS, suggesting this means his moves toward openness “must be empty gestures.” But there are widespread rumors that the prince, who “hasn’t been seen in public for several weeks,” may have been “injured or assassinated.”

Conservative take: The Left Will Only Back Notorious RBG So Far

Commentary’s Noah Rothman takes note of “the contrived campaign to make Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg into some kind of folk hero,” inspiring her followers to “feel as she felt and to weep as she wept.” But don’t call this a cult — because cult leaders are considered infallible. Ginsburg’s role with her flock, on the other hand, “is transactional.” And the willingness of the left to applaud, and of political media “to serve as [her] stenographers,” is limited by her occasional transgressions “against progressive tenets” (like criticizing Colin Kaepernick’s National Anthem protest), which then complicate “the realization of liberal objectives.” Fact is, “when she becomes an impediment to those objectives, few of her so-called allies have any compunction about throwing RBG under the bus.”

Historian: When the CIA Infiltrated a Campaign for Prez

Critics are questioning President Trump’s claim that FBI agents infiltrated his presidential campaign for political purposes. But Steve Usdin at Politico notes that “there is precedent” for a US intelligence agency doing just that. In 1964, CIA officer Howard Hunt — later of Watergate notoriety — was in charge of an agency effort targeting GOP nominee Barry Goldwater on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson. The aim was to obtain advance copies of Goldwater’s speeches, position papers and other material. Johnson, notes Usdin “wasn’t squeamish about using the inside information” and Goldwater aides soon noticed that LBJ’s campaign “had the unnerving habit of responding to points in their candidate’s speeches before he had delivered them.” Significantly, “Goldwater never mentioned his concerns publicly, and even insisted that his aides keep quiet.”

Security desk: Chinese Espionage at US Universities

Josh Rogin at The Washington Post says lawmakers and the intelligence community are “shining new light on how the Communist Party is operating inside America’s higher-education system and raising the alarm about the possibility of Chinese intelligence-gathering.” The focus is on Confucius Institutes, Communist Party-sponsored educational collaborations on more than 100 US campuses, which “operate through opaque arrangements with host institutions.” FBI Director Christopher Wray has warned that the institutes are suspected of being used as nontraditional intelligence collectors. They also work “to stifle criticism of China on campus.” Often, he reports, “universities self-censor in order to keep the funding and the reciprocal access to China that the relationships enable.”

Academic: Kanye West’s Inconvenient Truths for Dems

Syndicated columnist Walter Williams says his “heart goes out to the white people who control the Democratic party” in the wake of Kanye West’s recent statements supporting both President Trump and Candace Owens, who has argued that Barack Obama “caused ‘damage’ to race relations.” It’s no surprise that his remarks have been met “with vicious backlash from the left.” Because West committed the “bottom-line sin” of questioning “the hegemony of the Democratic Party among black Americans.” And, unlike black conservatives and libertarians, “he has 28 million Twitter followers and a huge audience of listeners” whom Democrats don’t want asking serious questions “about what the party has done for them.” But if black pols and civil-rights leaders are “going to sell their people down the river to keep Democrats in power, they ought to demand a higher price.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann