JAMES TARANTO: In Defense of West Virginia: There’s more to mining than the shaft.

Suddenly it’s fashionable to beat up on West Virginia. Two weeks ago a chemical spill at a coal-processing plant fouled the Elk River, prompting a don’t-drink-the-water order that affected 300,000 households at the start and wasn’t finally lifted for the final 6,000 or so until Saturday, 10 days after the spill, as Reuters reports. . . .

Actually, what Harrop is describing is a basic feature of human (and indeed animal) psychology: the quest for identity. The feelings of kinship with in-groups (whether or not they are literally kin) and wariness or hostility toward out-groups are not deviant but normal. And out-group antagonism tends to escalate when it is reciprocated.

Harrop herself puts on quite a show of such antagonism toward West Virginians, for whom her column drips with aristocratic disdain. She “can’t understand” why West Virginians resist calls “for reforming the state’s famously lax [environmental] regulations.” After all, “birds don’t dirty their own nests.” She goes on to observe that “the hard-luck people of Appalachia” suffer from “servility” and are “bursting with prideful self-pity.” She concludes that they “should know that the outsiders pity them, as well.”

We read Waggoner’s piece after Harrop’s, which may explain why to our mind, the most compelling part of the harangue was directed against condescending intellectuals from out of state. “To hell with the person I met during my PhD work who, within ten seconds of finding out I was from West Virginia, congratulated me on being able to read.” Addressing this “stranger” in the second person, he notes: “Civility was plainly not your native tongue.” We know the type.

Meanwhile Robert Reich, while less lofty than Harrop, manages if anything to show himself even more clueless.

No small accomplishment. Read the whole thing. And remember that most lefty politics are about tribalism, insecurity, and dominance displays.

GOVERNMENT: Mexican Citizens Topple Cartels And Are Rewarded With Government Retaliation.

ROLL CALL: Boehner: Obama ‘Must Not Allow Politics to Cloud His Judgment’ on NSA. Cloud his judgment? Politics determines his judgment. On everything.

NO, THEY’RE RUNNING INTERFERENCE. THAT’S WHAT THEY DO. Michael Barone: Is Politico Telling The Full Story About Wendy Davis?

There has been lots of coverage in Politico on the charges against New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie and members of his staff. About Texas Democratic state Senator and governor candidate Wendy Davis, not so much. In case you missed it, the Dallas Morning News published a story by reporter Wayne Slater on Saturday that pointed out discrepancies between the stories Davis has told about her past and the facts. She got her first divorce, it turns out, not at 19 as she repeatedly said and even testified in federal court, but at 21. She went on to graduate from Texas Christian University and Harvard Law School, but she paid for the latter with help from her second husband. Then, on the day after he paid off her final loan, she walked out on the marriage and agreed that he would get custody of their 14-year-old daughter. . . .

So what does Politico offer us? Only one story since Slater’s Jan. 18 Morning News story, headlined “Wendy Davis hits back at questions about bio,” a story which includes nothing about how she left her second husband the day after he paid off her law school loans and agreed that he have custody of her daughter. Instead it features Davis’s pathetic response — “My language should have been tighter” — and quotes her prepared statement, “I am proud of where I came from and I am proud of what I’ve been able to achieve through hard work and perseverance. And I guarantee you that anyone who tries to say otherwise hasn’t walked a day in my shoes.” Politico also links to a timeline of Davis’s life that leaves out some of the inconvenient facts.

Politico also doesn’t mention that her opponent, who “hasn’t walked a mile” in her shoes, is a paraplegic who doesn’t walk at all. But hey, let’s hear Wendy Davis’s story about triumphing over adversity. . . .

REALLY? BECAUSE IT KINDA LOOKS LIKE YOU’VE BEEN IN BED WITH THEM FOR YEARS. The Hill: Google chief Schmidt ‘literally outraged’ by NSA activities.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt was “literally outraged” when he first learned that American and British spies were tapping into the firm’s data.

In an interview with The Guardian published on Tuesday, Schmidt said he and other Google executives have “complained at great length” to the U.S. government about the National Security Agency’s surveillance efforts and have since started to encrypt internal communications.

Surveillance by the NSA and the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has raised alarms among tech company executives and privacy advocates, since the efforts were disclosed last year. Documents released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the spy agencies had gained access to fiber-optic cables connecting the world’s Internet users.

Meanwhile, I notice that there was a lot of government and media outrage over reporters guessing celebrities’ voicemail passwords, but not nearly so much demand for prosecution here. . . .

THE MYTH OF “RED STATE WELFARE:” In fact, since 2000, solid “blue” states have received far more in federal funding than solid “red” states. “Here is a breakdown of all 50 states and the District of Columbia by electoral map color and federal funding since 2000, according to USA.gov.”

DOUBLE STANDARDS: D.C. man on trial for one shotgun shell – wasn’t given David Gregory deal.

A year ago this month, the attorney general for the District of Columbia let NBC News anchor David Gregory off scot-free for possession of a “high capacity” magazine because doing so “would not promote public safety.”

Now, Irvin Nathan refuses to use that same prosecutorial discretion for an average citizen who violated a bizarre technicality that makes empty casings and shells a crime as serious as having an illegal firearm.

This sort of thing is addressed in my Second Amendment Penumbras piece, though the prosecutorial abuse involved in bringing such charges is covered in my Ham Sandwich Nation piece.

FLOP SWEAT: Reeling Wendy Davis Grasps for Guns, Tells AP that Her Origins Story is Now Off-Limits.

It’s obvious misogyny to point out a female candidate’s lies.

WENDY DAVIS: My paraplegic opponent, Greg Abbott, doesn’t understand my struggle, “hasn’t walked a day in my shoes.” Yeesh.

UPDATE: “There’s a gaffe for the ages.” (Bumped).

TIM CARNEY: K Street and Tea Party in Nebraska proxy war.

J.D. JOHANNES WRITES:

A little heads up. With Rep. James Lankford running for Coburn’s seat, his House seat OK-5 will be open.

Lt. Colonel Steve Russell (Ret.) is very likely to run. He served at term in the OK State Senate shortly after retiring from the Army.

Here’s a story I did about him for TIME. Took him back to Iraq, totally un-emebedded, to the street where in 2003 he wasted some of Sadaam’s goons.

Cool.

MELANIE STURM: On masculinity and the War on Poverty. “That there are dramatically fewer men willing and able to safeguard family prosperity is perhaps America’s greatest — and most unrecognized — problem. . . . Women gained all 74,000 jobs added to payrolls in December, and among the world’s seven biggest economies, America is last in the share of ‘prime age’ males working — just behind Italy. Why isn’t widespread male workless-ness a priority for policymakers, given the massive economic, fiscal and social costs?”

Related: No Jobs For Burly Men. This is actually a place where Obama’s instincts were right, but he quickly caved to pressure from feminists.

RICHARD EPSTEIN: The Problem With Net Neutrality.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Law Deans May Go to Jail for Submitting False Data to U.S. News. During our last couple of dean searches, we had candidates who basically told us they could cook the books to make us rise in the U.S. News rankings. We instead hired deans with integrity. That’s looking like a better move all the time. . . .

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ED DRISCOLL: The United States Of Paranoia. “If more and more everyday Americans are engaging in conspiracy theories about the federal government, it’s worth noting that the federal government and the elite MSM that supports it (and often serves as a farm team for it) at the dawn of the Obama administration was rife with conspiracy theories about everyday Americans.”

TOURNIQUETS MAKE A COMEBACK. “The tourniquet’s resurgence results in part from lessons learned in Afghanistan and Iraq. Only 2 percent of soldiers with severe bleeding in those countries died compared with 7 percent in Vietnam in part because tourniquets were in widespread use and the injured were quickly transported to doctors. In the past year, civilian trauma doctors, realizing that emergency personnel in much of the country can transport the wounded to a trauma center in less than 30 minutes, have followed the lead of the military. The success of the rapid medical response to the Boston Marathon bombings, where bystanders used their clothes as tourniquets, has bolstered their efforts.”

So I keep a trauma kit with clotting agent in the back of the car, but maybe I should add one of these?

WHEN BIG DATA FAILS: It was addressed to “Mike Seay, Daughter Killed in Car Crash.”

TAKING THE BOEING: The Volokh Conspiracy Joins The Washington Post.

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Also, savings at Tax Central. Everything from software, to calculators.

Plus, Jewelry Sales and Deals. Valentine’s Day is coming.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Obama’s Legacy: Paranoid Conspiracy Theories Aren’t Crazy Anymore.

FINALLY!!! “Imagine a fire-rated gun safe hidden inside a custom built couch, with bullet proof cushions with carry straps, so they can be used on the fly as a shield. Now there is one.”

UPDATE: Jules Crittenden emails: “Yeah, but is it cat proof?” Science can only do so much.

AS WE SAY IN RADIO, WOW — WHAT A DEAL! 2014 Cadillac ELR leases for $699 a month. “There are two things to note in the fine print. The most surprising is that the payments are based on ‘a 2014 Cadillac ELR with an MSRP of $76,000.’ That’s $1,000 more than the official MSRP announced in October. Then we get to the real kicker: The lease limits you to a mere 32,500 miles, which is just 833.3 miles a month.”

GOOD LUCK WITH THIS: New Plans Aim to Tame Painkiller Abuse.

UPDATE: I agree with the suggestion in the comments that the most likely result will be seriously ill patients suffering additional pain.

FASTER, PLEASE: Hacking the Immune System to Prevent Damage after a Heart Attack.