An Antifa protester yells at law enforcement during competing demonstrations in Portland, Ore., June 4, 2017. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)

Conservative journalist Tom McArdle has a very worthwhile piece in the new outfit Issues & Insights analyzing possible legal responses to ongoing brutal Antifa attacks — such as this week’s hospitalizing assault on journalist Andy Ngo in Portland, Ore. — using the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act., a.k.a. RICO. Read Tom’s report here, which includes the following from our colleague, Andy McCarthy:

“Loosely knit, interstate enterprises such as Antifa are what RICO was made for,” according to McCarthy. “They can be investigated as organizations unified by ideology and tactics, all members can be held responsible for the disparate acts of all the members, and the harsh state law penalties for violent crimes can be widely applied.” Writing in NR nearly two years ago, McCarthy pointed out that “in terms of confronting Antifa or any other domestic terrorist organization, we have a more robust array of state and federal law-enforcement powers than we have ever had. Moreover, coordination between federal and state law-enforcement and national-security officers is as good as it has ever been. All that is required to gut Antifa is the will to do it — the will to say, ‘Regardless of our disparate political views, we Americans draw the line at violent extortion that eviscerates our right to speak, assemble, and engage in constitutionally protected political activity.’”

By the way, Twitchy provides an excellent tweet-by-tweet rundown of Portland mayor Ted Wheeler’s excuse-mongering as to why the Antifa thuggery — a regular event in the Rose City — once again occurred without any intervention from the city’s spectator-cops.

Related: Prosecutors in Multnomah County (where Portland is located) are seemingly justifying or excusing the use of masks in the commission of a crime!

Meanwhile, Portland police chief Danielle Outlaw (not making that up) this week called for an anti-mask law, but at the same time diminished the need for such a law.

Per The Oregonian:

“A policy that prohibits wearing a mask to a protest will have police focusing on the wrong issue. Behavior is the issue, not the mask,” she said. “It could be argued that the mask is an important symbolic part of a protester’s message. . . . There are many legitimate reasons people wear ‘masks,’ including political and religious reasons.”

Kind of like this?