SPACE: Branson’s Space Plane Hits New Heights.

OR, YOU KNOW, NOT AT ALL: There Are Things You Do On Twitter That Should Only Be Done At 3 AM.

THEY’RE GIVING AWAY 5 COPIES OF THE NEW SCHOOL OVER AT THE BLAZE:

To snag a copy of @Instapundit’s new book, follow & tweet us 1 change you would make to the US edu system w/ #TheNewSchool by 5PM ET on 1/17

— TheBlaze Books (@TheBlazeBooks) January 15, 2014

THE INSTA-WIFE stands up to hatred and bigotry.

THEY TOLD ME IF WE ELECTED A DEMOCRAT THIS WOULD HAPPEN. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! To help balance US budget, active duty soldiers going from 570,000 today to 420,000 in 2019 and technology modernization is also out. Though it’s more like “to have more money to spend on constituency groups” than “to help balance US budget.”

AT AMAZON, up to 60% off on select shoes and handbags.

Also, deals galore on Men’s Jeans.

Plus, “Futurama,” The Complete Series, 43% Off.

REASON TV: Legalize Prostitution to Fight Sex Trafficking? Sex Workers Say “Yes.”

MAYBE HE’S BEEN READING MY NEW BOOK. MAYBE NOT. Obama Throws Gut Punch To The Teachers’ Unions.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Director of National Intelligence Counterterrorism Map Misspells ‘Israel.’

FASTER, PLEASE: Experimental Surgery Aims to Revive a Paralyzed Limb. “Doctors will attempt to reanimate a patient’s paralyzed arm with a pioneering surgery that involves capturing signals from his brain and restoring movement through a fine network of electronics linked to arm muscles.”

STILL BETTER THAN HAVING A NICKELBACK SONG STUCK THERE: Australian man has nearly inch-long cockroach removed from his ear.

Upside: He’s a worldwide celebrity now. But there are limits: “Mr Hendrik, who works as a supervisor at a warehouse, said he had not been offered any book or film deals in the wake of his moment in the spotlight.’We would need to seriously mess with the facts of the story to make it more interesting for the big screen I think,’ he said.”

BIPARTISAN SENATE REPORT: Benghazi Attack Was ‘Preventable.’ Well, by competent people, yes.

5 EMAIL MYTHS DEBUNKED.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: This Man Is Dating Someone Even Though He’s Married. Sounds Disgusting, But I’m On His Side.

THE BLAZE BOOKS IS giving away 5 copies of my book, The New School.

MARK TAPSON: Let’s End “The End of Men” Conversation. “Though women like Rosin and Dowd unhelpfully want to couch them in terms of condescending jokes, there are serious gender relation issues today that radical feminism has exacerbated, not resolved, on both sides of the gender fence. Anyone paying attention to what real men and women are saying – not just smug elitists like Dowd and Rosin – can hear that there is very real anger and frustration and a divide between them like the Red Sea. If women have ‘won’ anything it is a Pyrrhic victory. Men aren’t going anywhere, and they’ve had enough of being dismissed.”

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 251.

MEGAN MCARDLE ON shopping, and our crummy economy.

The economy does seem to be easing back into a slightly more normal pattern of jobs and growth (at least, as long as we think that the dismal December jobs report was a fluke, rather than a harbinger of worse to come). But it still faces a big test: Can people who survived the Great Recession shed the fear they acquired during those wretched years?

The people who survived the Great Depression, particularly its early years, bore permanent scars. There were labor market scars — then, as now, being out of work for a long time was not good for your long-term earnings prospects. And there were psychological scars. My grandfather used to hide money in the house in case the banks closed, to the point where my grandmother found $10,000 stashed in a teapot she was about to donate to the church jumble sale. (Thank heavens she decided to clean it first!) U.S. household savings rates began to decline just as the last children of the Great Depression began to retire and let the baby boomers take over, and while a lot of factors contributed to that, struggling through the Great Depression may have made those generations more conservative in their financial habits.

To be sure, we had a boom after World War II. But that boom followed almost two decades of suppressed consumption and a labor crunch during the war that had driven down unemployment to effectively nothing. People had stacks of money saved from war work and war bond purchases, and soldiers getting demobilized had the GI Bill. We’re unlikely to repeat that phenomenon.

A lot of things need to happen for us to return to economic health. One of them is for people to feel like a better future is possible, even likely. Right now, I’m more likely to hear people projecting a future that looks like the endless grinding insecurity of the present. Let’s hope the people I read, and interview, are not a representative sample.

Uh huh.

WELL, FIRST YOU HAVE TO GO OUTDOORS. . . . Almost No Americans Die From Lightning Strikes Anymore. Why? “In the middle of the 20th century, hundreds of Americans died each year from lightning strikes. Now, fewer than 30 do. What gives?”

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Also, markdowns on self-help, finance, and self-improvement.

Plus, today only: Furinno Laptop Desks, $39.99 (50% off). We talked about those here a while back.

ANOTHER DEM STEPS DOWN: Virginia’s Moran Announces Retirement from Congress. He will not be missed. “Over the years Moran has served on Capitol Hill, his professional accomplishments were sometimes overshadowed by personal scandals. Brash and occasionally outspoken to a fault, he has shoved members leaving the House floor, suggested that the Jewish community pushed for the U.S. invasion in Iraq in 2003 and possibly squandered a small fortune in the stock market. In 2012, his son resigned as field director for his father’s reelection campaign after he was caught on camera advocating voter fraud.”

HEY, THIS IS KINDA LIKE “BRIDGEGATE,” ONLY NATIONAL IN SCALE AND TARGETED AT CHILDREN: Probe Finds White House Wanted to Make Sequestration as ‘Painful as Possible’ for Rural Schools: Over USDA objections, OMB ordered that fiscal year 2012 disbursements be retroactively docked for 2013 sequestration.

THEY LIED: Obamacare’s 12 false premises and broken promises.

CLETA MITCHELL: What FBI ‘investigation’ of the IRS scandal?

Last week, we learned that the head of the “probe,” Barbara Bosserman, is a donor to Obama campaigns and the Democratic National Committee. This is, someone who could hardly be trusted to understand what all the fuss is about.

Now we learn that the FBI has “concluded” that there was no actual illegal activity involved in the IRS scandal, conclusions reached without ever speaking to a single conservative or Tea Party organization leader or attorney to learn what actually happened these past four years.

Having represented dozens of groups before the IRS over the years, including many victimized by the IRS in this scandal, one might have thought the FBI might have called me or even one of my clients.

But, to paraphrase the song, if our telephone ain’t ringin,’ I guess it must be the FBI “investigating” the IRS.

If only Bush had been smart enough to do this during the Plame kerfuffle. The press doesn’t seem to even notice . . .