PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Ashe Schow: A Win For Due Process At Brown University.

BULLETS AND BOURBON UPDATE (Video): Dr. Helen talks with Dana Loesch at Rough Creek Lodge in Texas immediately after her speech at Bullets & Bourbon this past December:

To be added to the mailing list for details of this year’s event once they’re finalized, just drop us a line, here.

REPORT: Charlie Rangel (D-NY) to retire at the end of his 23rd term in Congress. No word yet if he’ll be retiring to his Caribbean resort property in which he was reported to have failed to disclose and pay taxes on his rental income or pay mortgage interest for a decade. Or as PJTV’s Scott Ott and Alfonzo Rachel said in 2009, here’s to you, Mr. Tax-Law-Writing-Tax-Evader!

POLITICAL WIRE: To Win, Hillary Will Have To Go Scorched Earth.

SURPRISE: OBAMA VETTING GOP GOV. BRIAN SANDOVAL FOR SCALIA’S SUPREME COURT SEAT. “Gotta give credit where it’s due. Obama and his pal Harry know how to troll Republicans…Sandoval is pro-choice, expanded Medicaid, and oversaw Nevada’s construction of its own ObamaCare exchange (after the first attempt went sideways). He’s as ‘friendly’ to Democrats as a modern Republican gets.”

UPDATE: Why would Mr. Obama nominate a man for the Supreme Court that even his own Website dubs a “Climate Change Denier?”

To ideologically invert a famous quip by President Reagan about his White House, with the Obama administration, it sometimes seems as if the left hand doesn’t know what the far left hand is doing.

BETTER DEAD THAN RUDE: Isn’t protection against offensive ideas far more important than actually saving lives?

A REMINDER: People say they want free college “like Europe,” but nobody wants the European system.

CONGRESSIONAL WATCHDOG SAYS MEDICARE FRAUD CAN’T BE MEASURED: “It would be really nice to know how much fraud there is in Medicare and other healthcare programs,” Government Accountability Office’s Health Care Director Kathleen King says on an official podcast. It’s so difficult to know because it’s so easy for fraudsters to fool investigators, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton. Uncle Sam spent nearly $850 billion on Medicare last year.

IT’S COME TO THIS:

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Improving crystallographic resolution through using less perfect crystals.

STEVE GREEN: It’s Over — This isn’t your father’s GOP. Unless your father is Donald Trump.

Michael Walsh spots Rubio Whistling Past the Nevada Graveyard.

Concurrently, Michael Graham is asking “Is Cruz Texas Toast?”

I’M TAKING THIS AS VIACOM’S OFFICIAL CORPORATE OPINION ON THE TOPIC: Comedy Central’s Nightly Show: Rubio and Cruz Aren’t Really Hispanic:

Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz weren’t Hispanic enough for the Monday panel of Comedy Central’s Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore.

“Why do you think Cruz and Rubio don’t really embrace their Hispanic heritage?” host Larry Wilmore asked.

“Whoa! They’re Hispanic?” joked Nickelodeon host Jordan Carlos.

Wilmore asked if they only used their Hispanic identity when convenient. “That’s what will what they do, they use it when it’s convenient,” agreed contributor Grace Parra.

Two observations: Why is the DNC-MSM so utterly racist? And second, I thought Wilmore’s race card had already maxed out long ago. At least, that’s what Jon Stewart said on the air about Wilmore in 2010.

MORE REASONS NOT TO TRUST TOR: Confirmed: Carnegie Mellon University Attacked Tor, Was Subpoenaed By Feds. Or CMU, or the Feds, maybe.

I’D LIKE A PAIR, PLEASE: Flexible Optical Metasurfaces Promise “Smart” Contact Lenses.

AND NOW, THE REST OF THE STORY: Starving on the Prosciutto-and-Brie Poverty Diet.

Michelle Malkin does yeoman work, going into the details of Talia Jane, the woman we mentioned on Monday who complained about the how expensive it is to make it San Francisco, whose screed resulted in her being fired by Yelp, in which she mentioned being “25-years old, balancing all sorts of debt and trying to pave a life for myself that doesn’t involve crying in the bathtub every week.”

There’s no doubt that SF is an expensive city to live in thanks to its deepest of blue state taxes and policies. But it’s even more expensive when, as Malkin discovered, you’re spending — as Jane boasted on Instagram and Twitter — your wages on “‘prosciutto-brie-cilantro-garlic biscuits,’ ‘brie-stuffed meatballs topped with brie and rosemary sprigs,’ ‘roast chuck marinated in herbs,’ ‘a s— ton of Swedish potatoes au gratin,’ and ‘mini pumpkin pies’” – and “indulging in a spa day with a fashionable facial mask made of Lush-brand coffee grounds.” “In one of her richer moments (pun intended),” Michelle writes, “Jane brags about having Bulleit Kentucky Bourbon delivered to her office through a smartphone app.”

Read the whole thing.

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF SNACKS AND SERENDIPITY: The Amazing True Story of How the Microwave Was Invented by Accident.

FASTER, PLEASE: Genetically engineered immune cells are saving the lives of cancer patients. That may be just the start.

UNPACKING TRUMP’S APPEAL:

His theme is pride — self esteem. I think the message is: Even if you’re poorly educated — especially if you are poorly educated — you are smart, and you are American, and you should feel great. All those other politicians look down on you, and they look down on the country. They insult it. They use the worst insults, like “racist.” They’d have you believe that it’s racist to say “Make America great again” and to want to preserve the benefits of America for Americans and to increase those selfishly guarded benefits. But it’s not something to be ashamed of, it’s being smart. And he’s very smart, and we — you, with me leading the way — “are going to be the smart people.”

An interesting blend of traditional rightish slogans (America is great) and leftish ones (we’re the smart people). And a natural response to a ruling class that doesn’t much care for the country it rules, and that has gotten uninterested in hiding the fact.

And entirely separately, a big-time journalist — you’d recognize his name — sent me these texts:

The well-educated have been flattered beyond their deserts for decades, so it’s only fair. And Trump is, in a weird way, a kind of egalitarian: He thinks he’s so great that everybody else is equal in comparison. His message is “I’m great and you can be too.” Sure, maybe not as great as him, but still really, really great.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1021.

THE FRACKERS: DOING MORE TO PROTECT WESTERN CIVILIZATION THAN THE PEOPLE WHO ARE TASKED WITH PROTECTING WESTERN CIVILIZATION. The Trickle of U.S. Oil Exports Is Already Shifting Global Power.

The sea stretched toward the horizon last New Year’s Eve as the Theo T, a red-and-white tug at her side, slipped quietly beneath the Corpus Christi Harbor Bridge in Texas. Few Americans knew she was sailing into history.

QuickTake U.S. Crude Oil Export Ban

Inside the Panamax oil tanker was a cargo that some on Capitol Hill had dubbed “Liquid American Freedom” — the first U.S. crude bound for overseas markets after Congress lifted the 40-year export ban.

It was a landmark moment for the beleaguered energy industry and one heavy with both symbolism and economic implications. The Theo T was ushering in a new era as it left the U.S. Gulf Coast bound for France.

The implications — both financial and political — for energy behemoths such as Saudi Arabia and Russia are staggering, according to Mark Mills, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank and a former venture capitalist. “It’s a game changer,” he said.

For the Saudis and their OPEC cohorts, who collectively control 40 percent of the globe’s oil supply, the specter of U.S. crude landing at European and Asian refineries further weakens their grip on world petroleum prices at a time they are already suffering from lower prices and stiffened competition. With Russia also seeing its influence over European energy buyers lessened, the two crude superpowers last week tentatively agreed to freeze oil output at near-record levels, the first such coordination in a decade and a half.

The political effects need not wait until U.S. shipments become more plentiful, Mills said. “In geopolitics, psychology matters as much as actual transactions,” he said.

If only we had a diplomatic operation that could take advantage of this.

NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS: Earth May Be a 1-in-700-Quintillion Kind of Place.

Astrophysicist Erik Zackrisson from Uppsala University in Sweden arrived at this staggering figure — a 7 followed by 20 zeros — with the aid of a computer model that simulated the universe’s evolution following the Big Bang. Zackrisson’s model combined information about known exoplanets with our understanding of the early universe and the laws of physics to recreate the past 13.8 billion years.

I’m skeptical. It’s a big universe, and our biggest telescopes have only seen the smallest fraction of it up close.

UPDATE [FROM GLENN]: So you’re telling me there’s a chance!

REVOLVING DOOR UPDATE: Former CFPB Lawyer Joins Goldman Sachs Online Lending Unit.

Yet another argument for my revolving door surtax.

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