LAWYERS WEIGH IN: Why Star Trek’s Prime Directive could never be enforced. The real reason, of course, is that it would make things boring.

RODDENBERRY SHRUGGED: Reason TV presents Star Trek: The Libertarian Edition.

Heck, I’d be happy if Star Trek had just stuck with its original muscular JFK-LBJ-era pro-American liberalism rather than TNG’s wimpy far left UN in Space moral relativism.

I SAW ONE OF THESE THE OTHER DAY AND WAS IMPRESSED WITH HOW NICE IT LOOKED: Genesis Will Give You All The Korean Luxury For $68,100.

SHOCK THE SURVEYMONKEY: Over at VodkaPundit, it’s time again for Wargaming the Electoral College using brand new numbers from that huge WaPo/SM poll of more than 74,000 voters across the nation.

Spoiler: Trump’s Mexico trip was yuge.

THAT ’70S HOME: Kitsch house that hasn’t changed in 47 years goes up for sale with all original furniture, an 8-track player and a toaster that pops out of the wall.

James Lileks’ 2004 book on hideous 1970s design Interior Desecrations came with a stern warning that it was not a how-to guide, but apparently somebody didn’t get the message. (Or more likely, it was far too late to warn them.) Which is why, if the Karova Milk Bar from A Clockwork Orange is closed for the night and Alex and his Droogs need a place to crash, this place is it.

(And I agree entirely with Lileks’ warning entirely, but I still think it would be fun to throw caution to the wind and build the 2001-inspired bathroom from his book.)

HOW NOT TO TREAT passengers on your airline.

THE ANNIVERSARIES OF BENGHAZI AND 9/11: My Creators Syndicate column for this week — at StrategyPage.

NO ONE GOES THERE ANYMORE; IT’S TOO POPULAR: Why Lego wanted people to stop buying its toys.

Business has been so brisk at the world’s most profitable toymaker that Lego last year did something unusual: It began looking for ways to discourage customers from buying its products.

The Danish company scaled back its advertising efforts amid a 25 percent rise in annual sales, according to Reuters. It simply couldn’t make enough toys to satiate demand in North America, and needed a break while it boosted capacity at its factories and increased its workforce by nearly 25 percent.

“We feel we need to invest, to build some breathing space,” John Goodwin, Lego’s chief financial officer, told Reuters.

Judging by the mess on my kids’ playroom floor, it didn’t work.

CHANGE: Donald Trump Wants Plan Within 30 Days to Defeat ISIS if Elected.

It’s been about 32 months since President Obama dismissed ISIS as the “jayvee.” 32 months after Pearl Harbor, most of Italy was in Allied hands, the breakout from Normandy was about to begin, Saipan had been secured by US Marines, and the Japanese Navy had been decisively defeated in the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.”

THAT’S BECAUSE THEY’RE DESIGNED FOR SECURITY THEATER, NOT FOR SAFETY: Modern Airports Offer No Easy Way Out for Panicking Crowds. “False reports of shooters at two of the busiest U.S. airports—one in New York City and one in Los Angeles—left many passengers swept along by surging crowds of panicked people searching for the closest exits. The chaos was perhaps all too predictable, because computer simulations suggest that many major airports are terribly designed for emergency evacuations.” Penning a bunch of helpless people together in a place that’s hard to escape is poor policy.

GRIM MILESTONE WATCH: Chicago Hits the 500+ Murder Milestone for 2016.

Reminder: Chicago hasn’t had a Republican mayor since over a year before FDR was inaugurated in 1933.

Classical reference in headline.)

SO I’M READING S.M. STIRLING’S NEW “CHANGE” NOVEL, Prince Of Outcasts, which came out yesterday. So far, it’s quite good, like all his stuff.

PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE SHOULD SUPPLEMENT B12: Vitamin B12 as Protection for the Aging Brain.

European researchers have also shown that giving B12 to people deficient in the vitamin helped protect many of the areas of the brain damaged by Alzheimer’s disease. In a two-year study at the University of Oxford of 270 people older than 70 with mild cognitive impairment and low B12 levels, Dr. Helga Refsum, a professor of nutrition at the University of Oslo, found reduced cerebral atrophy in those treated with high doses of the vitamin.

“A B12 vitamin deficiency as a cause of cognitive issues is more common than we think, especially among the elderly who live alone and don’t eat properly,” Dr. Rajarethinam said.

The academy estimates that between 10 percent and 30 percent of people older than 50 produce too little stomach acid to release B12 from its carrier protein in foods, and as the years advance, the percentage of low-acid producers rises.

But many people do not know they produce inadequate amounts of stomach acid. In fact, evidence from a study of young adults called the Framingham Offspring Study suggests that insufficient absorption of B12 from foods may even be common among adults aged 26 to 49, so the following advice may pertain to them as well.

The academy recommends that adults older than 50 get most of their daily requirement of B12 — 2.4 micrograms for people 14 and older, slightly more for women who are pregnant or nursing — from a synthetic form of the vitamin found in foods fortified with B12 or in a multivitamin supplement. Synthetic B12 is not attached to protein and thus bypasses the need for stomach acid.

Vitamin D is good, too.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: ‘Crooked Hillary’ nickname isn’t going away: The new FBI information suggests Clinton is either criminal, criminally incompetent or both.

AND SPEAKING OF POLITICAL JUJITSU… Report: Rally For Obama’s ‘First Muslim Judge’ Run by … Hillary’s Campaign Manager? “Why would Obama choose to nominate Qureshi? Why now, if he stands no chance of being confirmed? Perhaps because Donald Trump has been tripped up by Clinton’s campaign over his comments about U.S. Muslims.”

HEALTH: As FT4 Levels Rise, so Does Sudden Cardiac Death.

“Our study findings suggest that persons with higher thyroid hormone levels, even within what we consider the normal range of thyroid function, have a four-fold increased risk of sudden cardiac death compared to persons with lower thyroid hormone levels,” said Chaker in an interview with MedPage Today.

“Our hypothesis was that thyroid hormone levels could increase the risk of sudden cardiac death by changing levels of cardiovascular risk factors such as blood pressure. We were surprised to see that when we control our analyses for these cardiovascular risk factors, the association remained similar, suggesting that other pathways could play a role.”

As someone who’s twice endured a hyperactive thyroid gland, I can tell you it’s nothing you want to leave untreated.

HEADLINES FROM 2001: Army to Deploy 101st Airborne Soldiers to Afghanistan.

COUGH, COUGH: Julian Assange: ‘We Have Released Thousands of Emails Where Clinton Herself Has Used a ‘C’ in Brackets’

TRUMP CALLS HILLARY ‘TRIGGER-HAPPY,’ ‘UNSTABLE’ AHEAD OF DEFENSE FORUM:

“Unlike my opponent, my foreign policy will emphasize diplomacy, not destruction,” the Republican presidential nominee told veterans and supporters at an event in Philadelphia.

“Her destructive policies have displaced millions of people. Then she has invited these people in the U.S. with no plan to screen them,” Trump said. “Sometimes, it seems there wasn’t a country in the Middle East that Hillary Clinton didn’t want to invade, intervene in or topple.

“She’s trigger-happy and very unstable,” he added, claiming his own foreign policy would be “tempered by realism.”

In late August, a Trump video similarly pushed back against his own charges by noting that “Hillary Clinton needs to address the racist undertones of her 2008 campaign.”And then there are all of the attacks recently on her health.

Note the style of jujitsu going on here? In the past, these have all been far left DNC-MSM attacks on Republican presidential candidates, such as the attacks on Reagan, Papa Bush and Dole over their age and aloofness, and GWB and McCain’s desire for nation building in the Middle East. If Trump keeps at it, he has a chance of inflicting some major damage on Hillary between now and November. Or at the very least, driving the media crazy having to defend attacks in that in prior election years, they helped to enable.

POOR BARACK. WE’VE LET HIM DOWN AGAIN. In Laos, Obama Repeatedly Calls Americans ‘Lazy.’

I AGREE: It’s Not Immoral To Want To Be Immortal: Fears of a world of geezers who hog up all the resources are overblown. Of course, immortality isn’t really the point — even if you never age or get sick, eventually you get hit by a falling safe or something — but living much longer and much better is.

Plus, as I’ve noted, longer, healthier lives can bear huge economic dividends.

PETER THIEL: Trump has taught us this year’s most important political lesson. “The establishment doesn’t want to admit it, but Trump’s heretical denial of Republican dogma about government incapacity is exactly what we need to move the party — and the country — in a new direction.”

DEMOCRAT OPERATIVE WITH A BYLINE SAYS WHAT? Scandal-plagued George Stephanopoulos asks is it ‘appropriate’ for scandal-plagued Roger Ailes to advise Trump?

Flashbacks: “Stephanopoulos Again Fails to Disclose His Donations During Clinton Interview” as recently as April of 2016. Hillary’s operative with a byline at ABC donated a reported $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation, which the Sunlight Foundation noted “operates as a slush fund for the Clintons.”

In the run-up to the 2012 presidential election Dan Gainor of Fox News explored another “Scandal No One is Talking About:”

We are watching ABC’s George Stephanopoulos attack Herman Cain on how he deals with women. This is the same George Stephanopoulos who worked for Bill Clinton and did his best to undermine attacks against him. Remember, Clinton was charged with a variety of women-unfriendly incidents including rape. Yes, rape. Not that the networks made a big deal of it at the time.

Here’s Stephanopoulos, on page 267 of his autobiography “All Too Human,” “Most important, I wanted to keep reports of Paula [Jones’] press conference off television … It wasn’t a hard sell.” His book goes on to say how he tried to discredit her. Yes, this openly Democratic operative is a “newsman” now.

Don’t believe it for a second. The different between “journalist” and Democratic Party operative is often non-existent.

Just think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines, and you won’t go far wrong.

ZEPHYR TEACHOUT AND SETH BARRETT TILLMAN debate the Foreign Emoluments Clause.

PRESIDENT ASH CARTER: Russia has a ‘clear ambition’ to degrade world order with military, cyber campaigns.