WASHINGTON AND EU TO ISRAEL: MAKE THE LAND SAFE FOR TERROR.

BUT IF THE NEXT PRESIDENT’S A REPUBLICAN, THE RECESSION WILL BE HIS FAULT FROM DAY ONE: US economy slowed to scant 0.7 pct. growth rate last quarter.

WHAT IF THE REFUGEES ARE NOT JUST IGNORANT SAVAGES?, Bookworm asks:

Here’s what I think is going on: The refugees are acting as they are, not because they see themselves as charity cases, but because they see themselves as conquerors. They know perfectly well that one doesn’t defecate in a pool in which people (especially children) are swimming. They’re doing it because they are performing the literal equivalent of the expression “I don’t give a shit about you.” They know you’re not supposed to rape women . . . that is, unless those women are the products of conquest, in which case raping them is one of Mohamed’s commandments.

It’s almost funny seeing Europeans trying politely to teach their conquerors how not to treat those whom they have conquered. I wonder how long it will take before the Europeans figure out that they’re no longer in the driver’s seat. And then I wonder whether they’ll be able or willing to mount a counter-strike, or whether the twelve-hundred year-long Islamic jihad against Europe will finally have succeeded.

(Headline by Ace of Spades co-blogger Maetenloch)

GOOD NEWS: McAuliffe Surrenders, Restores Concealed Carry Reciprocity in Virginia.

MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME: FIVE CONCEALED CARRY PERMIT HOLDERS FROM ALASKA TO SOUTH CAROLINA STOP DANGEROUS ARMED ROBBERS.

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED INSTITUTIONS SUCH HOTBEDS OF CORRUPTION? The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes that current PA AG Kathleen Kane “faces criminal charges, and since October has been running the attorney general’s office with a suspended law license,” and “now faces a second legislative initiative to potentially remove her from office after a House committee Tuesday approved an investigation that could lead to impeachment.”

And she’s the leader amongst the four Democrats competing in the primaries next month in at least one poll.

I TALK ABOUT LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING, on the Politinerds podcast with Jazz Shaw and Doug Mataconis.

THE QUEEN MUST BE PROTECTED: “Recent weeks have seen a large, simultaneous anti-Bernie Sanders effort by Democratic media. This movement is an attempt to ensure that a specific establishment, corporate candidate receive her scheduled coronation.”

WOMEN ARE OBVIOUSLY TOO FRAGILE TO FACE THE CRUEL WORLD WITHOUT A PROTECTOR: Richard Dawkins disinvited from conference for offending feminists.

Outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins says a lot of things that people find offensive, but apparently the last straw came when he dared to share a parody video that criticized feminism.

Dawkins’ retweeting of the video caused him to lose his invitation to speak at the Northeast Conference on Science & Skepticism. The invitation was rescinded “in response to Dr. Dawkins’ approving retweet of a highly offensive video.”

The NECSS didn’t specify that it was the video focusing on feminism that had done Dawkins in, but is the most likely culprit. In the video, feminists are compared to radical Islamists. Never once does the video suggest feminists are violent, however.

It also seems unlikely that Dawkins would have been disinvited had he retweeted something comparing Islamists to, say, Republicans.

Of course not. That would have been hilarious.

THE BERNIE SANDERS BLACKOUT:

Since the senator from Vermont and avowed democratic socialist announced his campaign for the Democratic nomination last May, he has drawn crowds ten times the size of Hillary Clinton’s. He’s received a record number of small-dollar donations—more than Barack Obama in 2011. As I write, in mid-January, a poll has him tied with Clinton in Iowa. He’s ahead of her in New Hampshire.

And yet, as far as the traditional media are concerned, Sanders is a nonentity. Zaid Jilani of The Intercept searched the Lexis-Nexis database for mentions of Sanders on news shows during a 30-day period. Sanders, he discovered, had been discussed 20 times. Donald Trump was discussed 690 times over the same period.

What, and risk quoting Bernie on how awful the economy is under Obama’s watch, thus (a) making the media look like fools for being such throne-sniffing cheerleaders since the middle of 2007 and (b) making it that much more difficult for Hillary to run as his designated successor?

WHEN IN ROME, DO AS THE IRANIANS DO?

Related: James Lileks adds:

If there’s anything that feels like a cold thumb pressed on the heart, it’s stories like this: Italy covers up nude statues for Iranian president visit. (I was disappointed that no one responded to tweets about the story with ancient swipes about John Ashcroft. C’mon, guys, this moral relativism isn’t going to relavatize itself.) Here you have a government whose leaders exhibit antipathy to every achievement of the West from the least to the greatest, and Italy — seat of it all, in so many ways — cringes and whimpers. At least France canceled a dinner over the issue of wine, and while you could say “that’s all they care about,” I doubt the French would cover up the odd unholstered bosom, particularly if the artist was French.

Especially if the artist was French.

Heh, indeed.™

IT’S AS IF IT’S ALL JUST CHEESY PARTISAN POLITICS: Lawmakers Who’ve Led on Heroin Epidemic Get Hit on It Anyway.

The mood in the Senate hearing room Wednesday morning was somber as lawmakers pledged bipartisan support to combat the scourge of heroin and prescription drug addiction. But with two of the Senate’s most vulnerable Republicans testifying, the hearing offered the opportunity to demonstrate some passion for an issue voters care about intensely. It also gave Democratic opponents a chance to criticize them.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, has been working for years to combat the drug crisis as his state has been one of the hardest-hit. At the Judiciary hearing, he urged his colleagues to support his legislation to combat the epidemic. “I truly believe it can make a difference in the lives of the people I represent,” he said.

While the hearing was still going on, the Ohio Democratic Party sent out a press release accusing Portman of “D.C. double speak,” on the issue, noting he voted against the year-end spending package that included additional funds for drug programs.

“Not only has Rob Portman voted to slash funding for substance abuse programs, he tried to take credit for drug abuse treatment programs that he actually voted against,” Ohio Democratic Party spokesman Daniel van Hoogstraten said.

“I think it’s really sad. Really sad,” Portman said of that statement. “This has been totally bipartisan from the start. I’ve been working on this issue for over two decades, and I’ve never been attacked politically on it. It’s kind of absurd.”

In Wednesday a conference call, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., who testified at the hearing and is also facing a tough re-election bid, said, “We rose above politics today, and we’re going to continue to when it comes to addressing this opiate crisis.”

The Pennsylvania Democratic Party also used the hearing as an opportunity to take a swing at GOP Sen. Patrick J. Toomey, who didn’t testify with the other senators. Democrats asserted that Toomey, who is facing re-election “may portray himself as sympathetic to this issue when he’s up for re-election, [but] his record tells a different story.”

Toomey’s campaign spokesman Steve Kelly pointed out that Democrats have praised Toomey’s work on this issue. “Toomey has repeatedly stated that the scourge of opioid abuse should not be a partisan issue,” Kelly said, “so it’s disappointing that the Pennsylvania Democratic Party is attempting to politicize such an important public health crisis.”

It’s the same way on race, criminal justice reform, etc.

FRANK LUNTZ SEES PATH TO VICTORY FOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG.

Why not? One way or another, America seems destined at the moment to elect a left-leaning Big Government-loving zillionaire New York plutocrat to the White House.

GEE, WHICH PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BENEFITS FROM THIS ARTICLE? “We Keep Electing Outsiders; How’s That Working Out?”, Jonathan Allen asks at Roll Call:

Jimmy Carter kicked off the trend with a promise to restore honor to the White House. Ronald Reagan, the tough-talking movie star and California governor, vowed he’d get Washington’s spending and taxing under control. Bill Clinton, who had never worked in Washington, ran as the man from Hope. George W. Bush, despite being the son of a president, managed to come off as more Texan than political elite. Most recently, Barack Obama’s message and historic 2008 candidacy made it impossible for anyone to view him as an insider.

And yet, after electing this caravan of outsiders, voters still see Washington as a swamp of dysfunction, decadence and corruption. I readily admit I have more faith in our government and its leaders than most Americans do. But if you truly believe that Washington is getting worse, why keep electing the same kind of candidate?

If this sounds like an infomercial for Hillary Clinton, that’s likely not a coincidence. In December of 2009, NewsBusters spotted “another entry for the revolving door file: Politico’s Jonathan Allen…formerly of Congressional Quarterly and former Sen. Paul Sarbanes’ [D-MD] office, will take over as the top staffer at Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s DWS PAC,” Ken Shepherd wrote. “For his part, Allen, whose wife works as the communications director for freshman Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), found it an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

In February of 2010, when Allen returned to the Politico after admitting that he preferred pack journalism to working in a PAC, he sheepishly claimed:

I am a registered independent. My political views, like those of many Americans, are not neatly defined by anyone’s platform. I love the power of a good idea and get frustrated when I see the political system distorted by inertia or hypocrisy. I have voted for both Republicans and Democrats and even some third-party candidates. I am not by temperament a partisan or an ideologue. But there is no doubt that I have voted more often for Democrats, and when I decided to indulge my curiosity about life on the other side of the notebook it was most natural for me to align with them.

And judging by the above article, he’s still a Democrat operative, whether it’s with or without his byline.

BUTTERFIELD TRUMP:

[Trump's] support in the polls, much of it from blue-collar men, has not wavered for months despite him insulting Mexican immigrants, threatening to deny Muslims entry to the United States and fighting with Republican establishment figures like Senator John McCain.

Oh yeah, no doubt those three items will crush Trump’s standing with blue-collar voters. In other words, the Butterfield Effect strikes again!

HE’D RATHER BE SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE U.N. — MORE TRAVEL, LESS WORK: WH: Obama doesn’t want Supreme Court appointment.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Thursday threw cold water on the idea President Obama would accept an appointment to the Supreme Court after he leaves office.

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton floated the possibility this week, calling it a “great idea” to nominate Obama to the nation’s highest court. But Earnest said the 44th president has other plans after he leaves office.

“My guess is that his aspirations for his post-presidency extend beyond a Supreme Court appointment,” the spokesman said of Obama.

Obama, a graduate of Harvard Law who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, “would have plenty of ideas for how he would do a job like that,” Earnest said. But he added Obama would prefer to handle a wider range of issues after he leaves the White House.

Speaking at an Iowa campaign rally Tuesday, Clinton herself acknowledged the idea was a long shot. “He may have other things to do,” she said.

The president himself downplayed his interest in a court appointment in 2014.

He lacks a scholarly mind.

ROGER SIMON: It’s Not the Debate. It’s the Focus Group.

WHAT NEXT FOR THE LEFT? “The progressives go from bad to worse,” James W. Ceaser writes in new issue of the Weekly Standard. (Love the accompanying cover illustration):

“Modern progressivism has driven much of American politics for the past seven years. It now fully owns the Democratic party. President Obama failed to achieve the general electoral realignment that many anticipated after 2008, but he succeeded in creating an ideological realignment within his own party. The result was attained by subtraction. Advocates of rival positions — New Democrats, “blue dogs,” pro-lifers — were either sacrificed or induced to sacrifice themselves. The Democratic party is now divided between a progressive wing and a more progressive wing, one that openly wears the label of socialist.”

I’d joke that once you go full Weimar, adding a soupçon of nationalism to your socialism is the next logical step — but Bernie Sanders is way ahead of me!

BOB WOODWARD’S SINS OF OMISSION:

More recently, we have learned that among those harboring deep skepticism about Woodward’s account of Deep Throat—so critical to the Washington Post’s coverage of Watergate, and to the Woodward legacy—was the man to whose memory The Last of the President’s Men is dedicated: Ben Bradlee, the executive editor who oversaw that coverage.
Rummaging through Bradlee’s papers for an authorized biography, Jeff Himmelman—himself a trusted former researcher to Woodward—came across an unpublished 1990 interview in which Bradlee had confided his misgivings about Woodward’s reliability. “Did that potted [plant] incident ever happen?” Bradlee mused about the notion that Woodward moved a flowerpot on his balcony to signal for meetings with Deep Throat. Likewise, about the purported rendezvous in the garage, Bradlee wondered: “One meeting in the garage? Fifty meetings in the garage? I don’t know how many meetings [there were] in the garage.” He added: “There’s a residual fear in my soul that that isn’t quite straight.”
Himmelman exposed half a dozen lies, evasions, deceptions, misrepresentations, and other journalistic sleights of hand on a single page of All of the President’s Men.

* * * * * * *
The final product was Yours in Truth: A Personal Portrait of Ben Bradlee (2012). Were it up to Woodward, the book’s explosive contents would have been suppressed. Writing in New York magazine, Himmelman recorded how Woodward sought to intimidate his former protégé:

I had worked for [Woodward]; he had given an impromptu toast at my wedding. You know me and the world we live in, he said. People who didn’t like him and didn’t like the Post—the “fuckers out there,” as Ben had called them—were going to seize on these comments. “Don’t give fodder to the fuckers,” Bob said, and once he lit on this phrase he repeated it a couple of times. The quotes from [Bradlee’s 1990] interview…were nothing more than outtakes from Ben’s book, he said. Ben hadn’t used them, and so I shouldn’t use them, either.

That argument didn’t make sense, and I said so. Bob told me it was his “strong recommendation” that I not use the quotes, then that it was his “emphatic recommendation.” Then, when that got no truck: “Don’t use the quotes, Jeff.”

Read the whole thing.

NEW FRONTIERS IN INEQUALITY: U.S. Colleges Raised Record $40.3 Billion In 2015 — 0.5% Of Colleges Raised 25% Of The Money.

More support for my notion that we should end tax exemptions for institutions with over $1 Billion endowments. At some point, you’ve raised enough money.

IS RUSH LIMBAUGH BETRAYING CONSERVATISM WITH DONALD TRUMP?

HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLOSION UPDATE: Don’t Act Like You’re Not Oppressed.

JUST A DIFFERENT TYPE OF PSYCHIC PORN: Forget Cat Videos: YouTube is Powered by Schadenfreude.

THE FREEDOM OF RUNNING YOUR OWN BUSINESS: This Oregon Woman Was Just Fired From Her Job For Being Pro-Life.

GUESS WHETHER THE DONALD GAVE MORE TO MILITARY VETERANS OR THE CLINTONS: Trump’s New Pro-Veterans Website Directs All Donations To Trump’s Personal Foundation.

COLLECT THE WHOLE SET! 33 NEW VARIATIONS: The PC Nazis get their hands on Barbie.

STEERING AGAINST THE SKID: A humiliating day awaits the Federal Reserve.

THEY KEEP USING THAT WORD, I DON’T THINK THEY KNOW WHAT IT MEANS: An ‘ethics’ assault on the First Amendment.

IS KEN’S BODY IMAGE REALISTIC? Barbie has a new body, but was it necessary?

TO MATCH THEIR DIPLOMAS: New York state tests are about to become meaningless.

OUR COUNTRY IS IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: HHS didn’t check homes before giving migrant kids to traffickers.

INTERESTING: Will Shale 2.0 Lower Oil Prices to $20 Per Barrel?

BAD YEAR FOR ROCK MUSICIANS CONTINUES; JEFFERSON AIRPLANE CO-FOUNDER PAUL KANTNER DIES AT 74:

Kantner, a founding member of the Jefferson Airplane, was 74 and had suffered a heart attack this week.

His death was confirmed by longtime publicist and friend, Cynthia Bowman, who said he died of multiple organ failure and septic shock.

Mr. Kantner had a string of health problems in recent years, including a heart attack in March.

* * * * * * *

The band was formed in 1965 in a Union Street bar called the Drinking Gourd, when Balin met Mr. Kantner and expressed his interest in creating a “folk-rock” band. It didn’t take long for the Airplane to attract a sizable local following, enough so that when fledgling promoter Bill Graham opened his legendary Fillmore Auditorium, the Jefferson Airplane served as the first headliner.

The Airplane was the first of the so-called “San Francisco sound” bands to sign a recording contract with a major label, and in August of 1966, its debut album, “Jefferson Airplane Takes Off,” was released. Slick joined the band a year later and songs like “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit” became national hits as the love children came streaming into San Francisco.

Kanter transmogrified the Airplane into Jefferson Starship in the 1970s, to cash-in on the slick radio-friendly corporate rock sound the group Boston invented and San Francisco rivals Journey perfected, but looked oddly out of place as the group’s token Beatles moptop coiffed, granny glasses bespectacled hippie in the late ’70s and ’80s. However, he was wise enough to bolt the group in the mid-‘80s (taking with him the “Jefferson” half of its name by suing his former bandmates when they attempted to use it) shortly before its nadir with the uber-‘80s hit “We Built This City.”

By the way, telling line in the San Francisco Chronicle’s obit:

A sometimes prickly, often sarcastic musician who kept his own counsel and routinely enraged his old bandmates — they sued him for trademark infringement (and settled) after he started his own version of Jefferson Starship in 1991 — Mr. Kantner became something of a landmark on the San Francisco music scene, the only member of the band still living in town.

“Somebody once said, if you want to go crazy go to San Francisco,” he said. “Nobody will notice.”

What a perfect summation of that city and what drives it myriad woes.

WRAPPING UP THE TRUMPLESS DEBATE, Steve Green writes:

Trump really was supposed to be Godot, the man who never showed up but everyone obsessed over anyway — Kabuki Theater of the Absurd, as I called it the other day. But other than some awkward “Oh my God, that was supposed to be funny?” comments from Ted Cruz, Trump’s absence wasn’t much… present.

Rubio seemed enlarged by that absence, Cruz seemed diminished by it.

Everyone else played their parts the same way they’ve played them through all the previous debates. That’s for good and for ill, but mostly for naught. No matter your (or my) personal preference, the GOP doesn’t seem likely to nominate a Bush, a Carson, a Christie, or a Kasich.

I hate to talk about the polls, because I hate to talk about the polls — but the time has come to do just that.

The most recent figures from Iowa show that with historical turnout, either Cruz or Trump wins in a squeaker. If Trump manages to revolutionize Iowa turnout — and I don’t dismiss the possibility — then he wins in a blowout.

But it doesn’t feel like Cruz helped himself tonight. If anyone did, it was probably Rubio, but that’s probably too little, too late.

This is where I should mention that out of seven competitive GOP Iowa caucuses, Iowa voters have picked the nominee only three times — and only once has the nominee gone on to win the general election.

You watch enough of these things, and you get a feel for the ebb and flow of the candidates, but also for the moderators. And my final thought tonight is that Fox wanted to host a Donald Trump circus, and failing that, tried to force the circus format on the remaining candidates.

It didn’t work. If you’ve been following these drunkblogs, then you’ve seen debates hosted by networks that were more biased, but you might not have seen a debate as weird and awkward as tonight’s.

At the last debate we saw Trump at his grownup best. Tonight, he wasn’t there at all, and it was as though Fox tried to make up for it by being as outlandish (if that’s the right word) as Trump at his adolescent worst.

And it just didn’t work, for me or for the candidates.

How did it work for you?

Let us know in the comments.

(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

JOHN HINDERAKER: Does Europe Have A Future?

CAN ANYBODY HERE PLAY THIS GAME? GOP Debate’s Islamic-Advocate Questioner Also Is A Bernie Sanders Supporter.

HE’S TOO OLD TO BE SEXY NOW: The NYT tries to figure out why Bill Clinton can’t bring his old “magic” to the Hillary Clinton campaign. Also, the vegan diet has left him thin and listless.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Nets Waste Nearly 10 Mins on Trump; Barely Preview Actual GOP Debate.

I’M BEGINNING TO THINK THAT YOU CAN’T REALLY TRUST GOVERNMENT STATISTICS, EVEN FROM THE “SQUEAKY-CLEAN” NORDIC STATES: ‘Hundreds’ of rapes ‘hidden’ by Danish police.

WELL, THIS IS ENCOURAGING: Oil Crash Only The Tip Of The Iceberg. “We may be enjoying amazingly low prices at the gas pump, but as oil prices continueing to slide we must also remember the catastrophic events that have followed almost every drastic oil price slump in the past.”

STEVE GREEN: Drunkblogging The Missing Donald Debate.

TUCKER CARLSON: Donald Trump Is Shocking, Vulgar and Right. “American presidential elections usually amount to a series of overcorrections: Clinton begat Bush, who produced Obama, whose lax border policies fueled the rise of Trump. In the case of Trump, though, the GOP shares the blame, and not just because his fellow Republicans misdirected their ad buys or waited so long to criticize him. Trump is in part a reaction to the intellectual corruption of the Republican Party. That ought to be obvious to his critics, yet somehow it isn’t.”

HILLARY MUST BE WORRIED: First it was WaPo, and now it’s Vox dumping on Bernie.

AT AMAZON, Best Deals in Lighting & Ceiling Fans.

Plus, up to 60% off in Movies & TV.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: A Turning Tide In The War On College Men?

WOW, THE 2016 MERCEDES ARE BIGGER THAN EVER! (And I thought my ’85 500SEL was whale-sized…)

CC: Tim Blair.

#OREGONSTANDOFF ENDS: Massive Government Convoy Descends on Refuge; Militiamen Taken Away (Photos).

“THAT’LL TEACH HER!” Melissa Click suspended with pay, according to the Columbia Missouri Tribune.

(Headline via Iowahawk.)

FUNNY HOW SOCIALISTS ALWAYS KEEP DEMANDING MORE. Sanders Camp: If Clinton Wants Another Debate, She Should Agree to Three More.

THIS IS COOL: Near real-time (updated every 3 hours) maps of winds worldwide.

DRUDGE: TRUMP MANIA ENGULFS MEDIA; DEBATE ATTENDANCE STILL POSSIBLE?

Trump may or may not show up tonight, but Steve Green and his titanium liver will be on duty at PJM to drunkblog the debate at 9:00 PM eastern tonight.

POPULAR MECHANICS: The Challenger Disaster, 30 Years Later.

BUT SEX DIFFERENCES ARE CULTURALLY CONSTRUCTED: How women can tell when other females are ovulating using clues in their face – and how they may then try to hide their partners from the ‘threat’ of these fertile ladies.

WELL, THERE’S THE PROBLEM WITH THEIR RESEARCH:

“We don’t believe that little girls naturally play a certain way or speak a certain way,” says Fought, a professor of linguistics at Pitzer College. “They’re not born liking a pink dress. At some point we teach them. So a big question is where girls get their ideas about being girls.”

Having two X chromosomes plays a major role. I’m guessing that Carmen Fought and Karen Eisenhauer don’t have kids.

A TRUMP-LED TRIUMVIRATE?: Well, not exactly, but it’s not far off the mark. Huckabee and Santorum to join Trump at his fundraising event for veterans following their GOP undercard debate.

Huckabee tweeted that he will participate in an earlier debate of lower polling candidates and then head off to nearby Drake University, where Trump is holding his event after bolting from the debate after a war of words with Fox News and Megyn Kelly, who is set to co-moderate the event.

Huckabee’s announcement is part of a last ditch effort for the 2008 Iowa victor to boost his standing with caucus-goers before Monday and stick it to Sen. Ted Cruz, who he has been harshly attacking on the campaign trail. By early Thursday afternoon, Santorum representatives confirmed to the Washington Examiner, as well as multiple media outlets, that he, too, would attend the event. Santorum won the caucus in 2012. . . .

More than anything, Huckabee and Santorum’s appearance at the event helps provide cover from criticism being launched at Trump by Cruz for ducking the debate and plays into Trump’s image as a candidate who doesn’t play by the normal rules of politics.

Santorum and Huckabee are angling to steer attention and votes away from other candidates–particularly Cruz– so their appearance at the Trump-led event isn’t any sort of endorsement. But still, their attendance illustrates how Trump is undeniably a flame to the media moths.

RELATED:  Ted Cruz Mega-Donors Holding Veterans’ Charities Hostage for Donald Trump Debate.

In response to Senator Ted Cruz’s challenge of a one-on-one debate, the principal donors of the Keep the Promise I and II super PACs are offering presidential candidate Donald Trump a truly fantastic deal, pledging to donate $1.5 million to charities committed to helping veterans if Mr. Trump agrees to debate Senator Cruz in Iowa.

That’s right, a group of Ted Cruz mega-donors have offered the princely sum of $1.5 million, but only if Trump agrees to debate Cruz. Otherwise, tough luck, heroes! This is sick, even by the stunt-charity standard being set by Trump, who, along with his own sketchy history of exploiting veterans, is apparently only raising money for them tonight because Fox News pissed him off. But at least he’s raising the funds, not withholding them as a political ransom.

Apparently, Carly Fiorina has offered her own $1.5 million contribution to veterans’ groups if she can join any Cruz-Trump debate.

Meanwhile, one veterans’ group has said it would decline any such donations, from Trump or any other GOP candidate participating in the event, calling it a “political stunt.”  Of course it’s a political stunt–it’s being organized by politicians, for goodness sake. But it seems odd–and itself perhaps political– that the head of a veterans’ organization would turn down a charitable gift for this reason.

RAND SIMBERG: Challenger lessons still unlearned after 30 years.

FASTER, PLEASE: There will now be a third hyperloop test track. Okay, it’s actually pretty fast already.

AT AMAZON, Valentine’s Gifts for Her, and Valentine’s Gifts for Him.

Plus, today only at Amazon: SINGER 5400 Sew Mate Sewing Machine, $90.00 (64% off).

And, also today only: Cricut Explore One Cutting Machine, $136.99 (45% off).

WASN’T HOWARD WOLOWITZ WORKING ON THIS PROJECT? Squishy Robot Fingers Gently Tickle Deep Sea Critters.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Female Sperm: A Trans Woman’s Perspective On Reproduction.

ASK, AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE, with Amazon Echo.

UPDATE: For those who don’t like always-on voice control, the Alexa on the Fire TV Stick only works when you press the button.

21ST CENTURY QUESTIONS: How much do you need to read about Zika virus before you scream “no” to the question “Would it be wrong to eradicate mosquitoes?”

SPACE: Europe Looks Toward NASA’s Cargo Plane To Clean Up Space Junk.

DAVID STEINBERG: Glenn Greenwald and Pierre Omidyar: Retract and Apologize For Smearing PJ Media, Misleading The Intercept’s Readers. It’s easier to demonize people you disagree with if you lie about them.

BUT HE’LL PROBABLY BE LECTURING ME ABOUT MY CARBON FOOTPRINT SOON: Microsoft cofounder’s yacht allegedly destroyed a coral reef. These are sites I’ve dived many times. Sorry to see them wrecked.

I SAW A FILM ABOUT THIS AS A KID AND IT INFLUENCED ME FOR LIFE: Door Plucked From Grapevine Fire Shows How Closed Doors Can Save Lives. “Flames badly damaged one side of the interior door that was directly exposed to the flames. But the other side barely shows hardly any damage at all. Firefighters in Grapevine saved the door and plan to use it as a teaching tool to remind people why they should sleep with their bedroom door closed.”

ED MORRISSEY: Here’s Why the Republican Populist Revolt Will Backfire.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Pew: 10.2 million ‘detached’ young adults in U.S., ‘source of social unrest.’

I STILL BELIEVE IN AMERICA: Bacon shot glasses dipped in chocolate and filled with whisky.

OUCH: WaPo: Bernie Sanders Fiction-Filled Campaign. “Mr. Sanders is not a brave truth-teller. He is a politician selling his own brand of fiction to a slice of the country that eagerly wants to buy it. . . . He would be a braver truth-teller if he explained how he would go about rationing health care like European countries do. His program would be more grounded in reality if he addressed the fact of chronic slow growth in Europe and explained how he would update the 20th-century model of social democracy to accomplish its goals more efficiently. Instead, he promises large benefits and few drawbacks.”

To be fair, socialists always lie, because if they told the truth nobody would vote for them.

DEPARTMENT OF THINGS YOU NEVER THOUGHT YOU’D SAY: I agree fully with the action taken today by French President Francois Hollande.

A lunch between the French and Iranian presidents in Paris was scrapped today because France refused to remove wine from the menu.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has been on a tour of Europe, signing billions of pounds worth of business deals with different nations, after economic sanctions against the country were lifted.

He was due to dine with President Francois Hollande at an upmarket restaurant in the French capital.

More like this, please.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Obama administration needs to abandon its Petraeus obsession:

In politically driven moods, the ancient Romans often wiped from history all mention of a prior hero or celebrity. They called such erasures damnatio memoriae.

The Soviet Union likewise airbrushed away, or “Trotskyized,” all the images of any past kingpin who became politically incorrect.

The Obama administration seems obsessed with doing the same to retired Gen. David Petraeus.

Read the whole thing.

As Bill McGurn noted in the Wall Street Journal on the day of Obama’s inauguration in 2009, “Bush’s Real Sin Was Winning in Iraq.” Petraeus was the man who made that possible until Obama unilaterally chose to throw that all away as part of his reelection bid, as Dexter Filkins of the leftist New Yorker noted in 2014, thus giving rise to ISIS. No wonder Obama wants him punished in his last year in office.

DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: Man arrested with handguns, Koran at Disneyland Paris.

JOHN SCHINDLER EXPLAINS JUST HOW MUCH DAMAGE Hillary Clinton’s email problem did to our national security:

To take just the Russians: their plus-sized embassy in Washington, D.C. is conveniently located on a hill overlooking the city, with an impressive antenna field on its roof aimed downtown. That is where Ms. Clinton’s “unclassified” emails went. The Russians care so much about State Department information they’ve been caught planting bugs inside a conference room just down the hall from the Secretary of State’s office. “Of course the SVR got it all,” explained a high-ranking former KGB officer to me about EmailGate (the SVR is the post-Soviet successor to the KGB’s foreign intelligence arm). “I don’t know if we’re as good as we were in my time,” he added, “but even half-drunk the SVR could get those emails, they probably couldn’t believe how easy Hillary made it for them.”

Any foreign intelligence service reading Ms. Clinton’s emails would know a great deal they’re not supposed to about American diplomacy, including classified information: readouts from sensitive meetings, secret U.S. positions on high-stakes negotiations, details of interaction between the State Department and other U.S. agencies including the White House. This would be a veritable intelligence goldmine to our enemies. Worse, access to Ms. Clinton’s personal email likely gave foreign spy agencies hints on how to crack into more sensitive information systems. Not to mention that if Clinton Inc. was engaged in any sort of illegal pay-for-play schemes, our adversaries know all about that, as well as anything else shady that Ms. Clinton and her staff were putting in those unencrypted emails.

Read the whole thing.

IN THE MAIL: F*ck Feelings: One Shrink’s Practical Advice for Managing All Life’s Impossible Problems.

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THIS IS NOT AN UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE OF OBAMA’S DIPLOMACY: The Humbling Of The West: Europe and the U.S. bow and scrape to ascendant Iran.

Some wonder how history will treat Barack Obama’s presidency. That depends on who writes the histories.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s account will fist-pump the Iran nuclear deal as the central foreign-policy event of the Obama presidency, a triumph for Western diplomacy.

But news photographs in recent weeks are producing a different history. These photos document the abject humiliation of the West by Iran. Americans who plan to vote in their presidential election should look hard at these photos, because the West’s direction after this will turn on the decisions they make.

The first photo is of a hallway in Rome’s Capitoline Museums, a repository of art dating to Western antiquity. Out of what the government of Italy called “respect” for the sensibilities of visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the museum placed large white boxes over several nude sculptures, including a Venus created in the second century B.C.

Then, because Mr. Rouhani will not attend a meal that serves alcohol to anyone, the nominally Italian government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi declined to serve wine.

They did so for the same reason that beggars grub change in front of Rome’s churches. Freed by the Obama nuclear deal with Iran, Italy’s tin-cup businesses signed about a dozen deals with Mr. Rouhani this week, totaling $18 billion.

As I say, this is no accident.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 994.

MIZZOU IN DISARRAY: Ex-Missouri President Lashes Out in Confidential Email. “In an email to a group called the Missouri 100, Wolfe accused the former chancellor of Missouri’s Columbia campus, R. Bowen Loftin, of stirring up controversy to try to protect his own job, and criticized the football team’s decision to go on strike.”

Related: Controversial U of Missouri Professor Suspended. “The University of Missouri Board of Curators announced late Wednesday that it was suspending Melissa Click, who teaches communications at the university’s flagship campus in Columbia. Click was recently charged with misdemeanor assault in relation to her videotaped blocking of a student journalist during last fall’s campus protests. She has apologized for the action, but many Republican legislators have called for her dismissal. Faculty members, while not defending her actions during the protests, have said she should not be fired.”

A QUANTUM OF ACCOUNTABILITY: Rolling Stone rape hoaxer ordered to release communications. “Jackie, the woman whose tall tale of a gang-rape captivated readers of Rolling Stone in late 2014, will have to turn over her communications as part of a lawsuit. However, the communications will be labeled confidential, so we won’t be able to read them unless they are leaked.”

HOLLYWOOD IS PURGING OLD WHITE PEOPLE. “No really. They’ll be making sure you’ve been active in the business within the last ten years, or else you forfeit your Academy membership,” Ace of Spades writes. “I support these rules for a simple reason: Liberal institutions have long ignored the onerous, stupid rules they inflict on everyone else. They don’t realize how bad these rules are, because they except themselves. Thus we get super-white Vox arguing about other companies not hiring enough minorities. It’s time that they lived under their own rules. Period.”

WATCH THIS FAST FOOD WORKER EXPLAIN WHY SHE DESERVES TO BE PAID MORE THAN PARAMEDICS.

Related! Minimum-wage offensive could speed arrival of robot-powered restaurants.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: WHO leader: Zika virus ‘spreading explosively.’ I hope the response is less inept than the Ebola response. More here.

JONATHAN ADLER: The Illegal Implementation Of ObamaCare.

The Obama administration has repeatedly flouted legal requirements or acted outside the scope of its delegated authority when implementing Obamacare. I’ve argued as much in numerous blog posts, congressional testimony and in a chapter on what I call the “Ad Hoc Implementation of Obamacare” in a new book, “Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State.” David Bernstein also makes this case in his book, “Lawless,” as have others such as Iowa law professor Andy Grewal.

Criticism of the Obama administration’s implementation of Obamacare from the administration’s critics is not particularly surprising. Although some of us may have criticized equivalent Bush administration lawlessness, there’s not much newsworthy about an administration taking fire from across the aisle.

It is more notable when a prominent defender of the Obama administration acknowledges that the administration has colored outside the lines, and not always with good justification. So those interested in the Affordable Care Act and the administrative law should give Nicholas Bagley’s new paper on “Legal Limits and the Implementation of the Affordable Care Act” a careful read. The paper’s still in draft form — and in my view bends over backward to provide the most charitable read of the administration’s actions — but still concludes that the administration has violated the law repeatedly in implementing the ACA, even if not quite as often as some administration critics have claimed.

Law is for the little people. For the bigshots, there is only will.

THE COLONIALS STRIKE BACK: African Bishops Against Sexual Liberation.

Africa is today an area of frequently bloody confrontation between Christianity and Islam. But south of the Sahara there is a strong Protestantism very similar theologically and morally to the one energizing the 1910 conference, even though the religious landscape of western Europe and northern America has changed dramatically since then. The former is now the most secularized region in the world. The latter still contains a robust Evangelical subculture, but with its mainline Protestant churches (including the Presbyterians who were hosts in Edinburgh) greatly liberalized both theologically and morally.

The slowly unfolding schism in the Anglican Communion can be seen as a late (and rather ironic) fruition of the great missionary success of Protestantism. The incipient schism, mainly pitting African bishops against those in the English-speaking world, has focused on what I Iike to call issues south of the navel (sexuality and gender). But there are underlying theological issues, especially based on different views of the authority of Scripture. The schism is on a slow fuse. But it has recently accelerated.

It is important to understand both the demographic and the financial resources of the two parties. The total number of Anglicans in the world is generally estimated as between seventy and eighty million. The website of the Anglican Communion tries to be very careful to distinguish between official numbers (that is, individuals formally on parish rolls, some of whom rarely if ever show up in church) and “realistic” numbers (those who participate in the life of the church with some regularity). Even with the best of intentions, the latter are quite unreliable estimates. There is no central headquarters comparable to the Vatican (though recent revelations about its finances do not suggest confidence in its statistics): Each national church is autonomous under its own “primate” (an unfortunate term, since zoologists use it to refer to the big apes); the Archbishop of Canterbury is no pope, but simply presides over meetings of all the other bishops; the mother church, the Church of England, is still a state establishment headed by the monarch (thus its membership figures mean very little indeed—you stay listed unless you make the effort to opt out); finally, many government censuses do not ask questions about religion, as for example in the U.S.). Nevertheless, the discrepancy between the main Anglican churches in Western countries and those in Africa (now the demographic center of the Anglican Communion) is instructive. The Church of England has 44 dioceses with 26 million official members, 1.2 million “realistic” ones. The Episcopal Church in the U.S. has 111 dioceses with 2.4 million official members, 800,000 “realistic” ones. Nigeria and Uganda are the largest churches in Africa, the website does not differentiate between the two categories of members; be this as it may, in Nigeria there are over 100 dioceses with over 17 million members, in Uganda 32 dioceses with over 9 million members. It’s clear who has the numbers. Needless to say, the financial resources of the Western churches are much superior to the African ones.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has been trying hard to avoid an outright schism. A recent event, which he himself caused for this end, has made his task more difficult. The leaders of African Anglicans, along with those in other non-Western countries, have been particularly shocked as the Episcopal Church in the U.S. sequentially consecrated an openly gay bishop, then ordained gay and lesbian priests, and most recently authorized priests to conduct same-sex weddings.

Yes, the Africans now send missionaries to minister to the souls of the benighted heathens in Britain and America.

Plus:

But the new African elites who celebrated the end of the Victorian Raj had been successfully indoctrinated with Victorian morals—and those turned out to be very functional to poor people trying to get out of poverty (if you will, the Max Weber effect), even if the elite (like elites everywhere) only paid lip service to moral principles while enjoying the hedonism supported by the privileges of power. But Anglican bishops are not part of the elites in Africa: When they uphold good Protestant values, in the best Evangelical tradition, this is no mere lip service—they really mean it! And so the Archbishop of Uganda may by 2019 excommunicate the Archbishop of Canterbury!

The getting-out-of-poverty thing is key, and will soon (again) have a similar relevance in the First World.

DISPATCHES FROM THE HIGHER EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Amherst College Drops ‘Lord Jeff’ as Mascot: “The institution, which is one of the most diverse private colleges in the nation, was encouraged to cut its ties with Lord Jeff, who came to be seen as an inappropriate symbol and offensive to many members of the student body.”

Isn’t everything?

CAN WE BUY THIS AND SEARCH FOR POLITICIANS’ AND JUDGES’ MOVEMENTS? THAT’LL GET IT FIXED FAST. A private company has captured 2.2 billion photos of license plates in cities throughout America. It stores them in a database, tagged with the location where they were taken. And it is selling that data.

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FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: The admiral in charge of Navy intelligence has not been allowed to see military secrets for years.

For more than two years, the Navy’s intelligence chief has been stuck with a major handicap: He’s not allowed to know any secrets.

Vice Adm. Ted “Twig” Branch has been barred from reading, seeing or hearing classified information since November 2013, when the Navy learned from the Justice Department that his name had surfaced in a giant corruption investigation involving a foreign defense contractor and scores of Navy personnel.

Worried that Branch was on the verge of being indicted, Navy leaders suspended his access to classified materials. They did the same to one of his deputies, Rear Adm. Bruce F. Loveless, the Navy’s director of intelligence operations.

More than 800 days later, neither Branch nor Loveless has been charged. But neither has been cleared, either. Their access to classified information remains blocked.

Although the Navy transferred Loveless to a slightly less sensitive post, it kept Branch in charge of its intelligence division. That has resulted in an awkward arrangement, akin to sending a warship into battle with its skipper stuck onshore.

It’s like this administration isn’t really serious about defending the country or something.

PUBLIC SPACES THEN AND NOW: “New Yorkers sense something changing, and not for the better. Much of this new unease seems to involve the rise in homelessness and increasing displays of disorder that take many new Gothamites by surprise while giving long-timers a chill of recognition.”

Read the whole thing.

Related: #NewYorkValues: City to soften its stance on public urination.

VIDEO: MSNBC Relentlessly Mocks Hillary Clinton For Leaving Iowa To Fundraise

Et tu, MSNBC?

DISPATCHES FROM THE HIGHER EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: “Yes, it turns out that if you dare to question the premise of microaggressions, you will be called names and there will be shoving and punching.”

Punch back twice as hard, as a wise community organizer and Constitutional “scholar” once said.

ASHE SCHOW: Camille Paglia knocks Hillary Clinton’s brand of feminism.

American social critic Camille Paglia has accused Hillary Clinton of conforming to a “blame-men-first” brand of feminism. This kind of feminism “defines women as perpetual victims requiring government protections,” according to Paglia.

Paglia also suggested that this, coupled with her “sometimes impatient or patronizing tone about men,” could end up hurting her campaign.

It’s not hard to see where Paglia is coming from on this. Clinton endlessly reminds voters that she is a woman and running to be the first woman president, as if we forget or can’t tell. Yet despite this constant discussion of women and “women’s issues,” Clinton is beginning to lose support among women. Young women especially don’t care for Clinton, which at least seems odd considering how many college-aged social justice warriors there are claiming women in America are horribly oppressed.

Paglia also brings up how Clinton detoured from the “women don’t need men” mantra of second-wave feminism and began relying on Bill Clinton for her career advancements.

“As his most trusted counselor and strategist, she helped guide her husband’s rise to attorney general and governor of Arkansas, but at every point, her professional life, culminating in a partnership at the Rose Law Firm, was at least partly derived from her association with him — not an ideal feminist paradigm,” Paglia wrote.

The social critic took special note of how Clinton deviated from the “women as victims” narrative when it suited her — when her future was at risk due to husband Bill’s infidelities. At that time, Clinton began berating women who accused her husband of rape and women who remained in abusive relationships.

That’s true.

CLINTON FOUNDATION DONOR/LIBERAL FUNDER’S ILLEGAL DRUG TRIALS KILLED FIVE PEOPLE: But Obama’s Justice Department didn’t prosecute him. Swiss billionaire Hans Wyss – he of the $5 million promise to Hillary’s “No Ceilings” Clinton Foundation project – escaped prosecution after being the unnamed co-conspirator “Person No 7″ in a 2009 federal indictment. He ordered four corporate subordinates to conduct illegal human drug trials. Ultimately, five people died in the trials. The subordinates went to jail, but Wyss didn’t. Now Citizens United – yes, that Citizens United –  is demanding documents from Obama’s Justice Department on why.

Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group, who has been all over Wyss for three years, has the story on the Citizens United Freedom of Information Act requests. Wyss is on the Center for American Progress board of directors and one of the liberal think tank’s most generous funders. He also funds huge land grabs in the Western U.S. by enviro groups. Wyss is like George Soros but without the Hungarian accent. “Veddy, veddy bad man,” as Seinfeld’s Babu might well say.

NEBRASKA SEN. BEN SASSE REBUKES MEDIA FOR FAILING TO ASK TRUMP TOUGH QUESTIONS: “The media failed to vet President Obama in 2008, and right now I don’t think the people in your profession are doing a very good job of asking Trump real questions.”

The “I can’t believe he brought that up” grin from Chuck Todd, who began his career as an operative to former Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and remains a de facto Democratic operative with a byline is a nice tell.

NATION’S TWO LEADING SOCIALISTS MEET AT THE WHITE HOUSE, CONCLUDE EVERYTHING IS BUSH’S FAULT.

I never thought I’d say this, but Dubya really is unconstitutional — judging by the rhetoric of Bernie, Barry, and Hillary, he’s violated the 22nd Amendment and matched the number of terms that FDR served as president!

HMM: CQ Roll Call Survey of Hill Staff Finds Cruz, Trump on the Rise.

Republican staffers on Capitol Hill still are hoping Florida Sen. Marco Rubio will win the GOP presidential nomination, but more of them are having doubts that he’ll be able to do it.

Six in 10 of those who responded to CQ Roll Call’s Capitol Insiders Survey this month said Rubio would be the most formidable candidate for the Republicans. But only half think he’ll actually be the nominee and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and businessman Donald Trump are on the rise.

Trump and Cruz both doubled their tally from December when it comes to who aides believe will be the nominee. Twenty-one percent of the GOP aides surveyed said it will be Trump, while 17 percent think it will be Cruz.

Stay tuned.

FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION: The Ferguson Effect Is Real, and You Better Get Used To It, Jack Dunphy writes.

FRANCE AND IRAN COZYING UP ECONOMICALLY now that sanctions are lifted.

France and Iran hailed a set of business tie-ups and export deals on Thursday including the sale of dozens of Airbus planes and a car factory revamp that re-ignites a decades-old relationship between Tehran and carmaker Peugeot.

The deals, some of which were not yet finalised, were announced at a Franco-Iranian business forum attended by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and a host of ministers and business leaders.

The visit follows a deal between Iran and the west on the middle-eastern country’s nuclear program that resulted in the lifting earlier this month of trade sanctions.

Now that everybody is getting a taste of Iran’s oil money, those sanctions aren’t going to “snap back” no matter how flagrantly Iran violates the “treaty” which they never signed and which our Senate never ratified.

A TALE OF TWO TAPES: Teen Cruz and Terror-Coddler Obama.

THE UNCANNY PARALLELS BETWEEN Donald Trump and FDR. “Imagine a U.S. president who is bombastic, egotistical, and just a little racist. He worries opening the borders will mean an influx of undesirables. He implements capricious executive orders, and seems more concerned with his own power than with the Constitution. He’s often called a fascist by people who know what the term means. No, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”