NON-LETHAL FIREARMS: ‘I lit him up … I could smell something burning.’ “Those are the words of a woman who reports that she stun-gunned a man who was trying to rape her and who had stabbed her four times, puncturing her lung. The Detroit News (Oralandar Brand-Williams) adds that the alleged would-be rapist, Darian Winfield, is also accused of having earlier stabbed another woman and may have murdered a 17-year-old girl in a different assault. Fox 2 Detroit (Hannah Saunders) reports that Winfield wasn’t incapacitated by the stun gun, and punched the woman who stun-gunned him in the head, but nonetheless ran away. Michigan banned stun guns until 2012; the repeal followed a trial court decision holding the statute unconstitutional under the Second Amendment, and People v. Yanna (Mich. Ct. App. 2012), decided after the repeal, affirmed that trial court decision.”

It would be better if she’d shot him in the head with a real gun, but there are good reasons why nonlethal firearms should receive Second Amendment protection, too.

MAN BITES DOG: “Woman stops Florida cop for speeding.”

“The reason I pulled you over today, and I’m asking you to come over and have a conversation, is because I saw you since Miller Drive, when you were first jumping onto the Palmetto, and you were pushing 90 miles an hour,” the woman told the officer after he poked his head into her open car window.

“Really?” the officer said. “Okay.”

There’s video at the link.

The story also cites a Pulitzer Prize-winning Sun-Sentinel investigation into off-duty official driving habits, which revealed “that nearly 800 officers from several departments and agencies were reaching excessive speeds, sometimes hitting 130 mph.”

Even traffic laws are just for the little people.

NICHE WORKPLACES: Inside The Limited World Of Hand Models. “Amanda George usually wears gloves and opens car doors very carefully. She eats with plastic utensils, applies hand lotion and cuticle oil regularly, and avoids bright nail polish that might stain. . . . George can also use her perfectly size-7, thin-fingered, spotless hands to earn $1,000 for a day’s work. And in an advertising world full of hand-related products like toilet paper, jewelry, watches, nail polish, and handy wipes, there’s a small but lucrative market for hand models to earn extra money or even make a career of it.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Don’t Be a Poll-Hater — Election Accuracy Remains Unchanged over Past 20 Years.

GOOD NEWS FOR THE PLANET: China plans on at least 110 nuclear reactors by 2030 and many will be 1400 megawatts or larger.

HOW THE LEFT RUINED AIR TRAVEL:

Finally, we’re closing in on the root of the problem. There aren’t enough airports for the volume of air traffic the American market demands. Few airports means few slots, which means few airlines able to compete.

So why don’t we build more airports?

Because airports need to be built near the cities they serve. The cities they serve are controlled by leftists who make construction a Sisyphean nightmare. Take our own New York City. JFK is the worst airport in the country. It would like to refurbish itself, improve and expand, but it’s surrounded on three sides by neighborhoods that wouldn’t tolerate the Concorde; that barely tolerate JFK as it is now and will brook no expansion. On its fourth side, JFK is bounded by federally protected wetlands, so that’s a non-starter too. New construction has to be on JFK’s existing footprint, and that new construction has to abide by New York’s absurdly onerous labor and environmental laws. Nonetheless, Governor Cuomo insists that JFK’s rebuilding will happen. According to Forbes, Cuomo’s plan for JFK will address New York’s passenger needs from 2050 forward.

To put that in perspective, if the Wright Brothers’ first flight were this year, Cuomo would be talking about fixing JFK in time for the invention of the jet.

Now imagine that JFK were being started from scratch.

Read the whole thing, which explores a topic far beyond just airplanes and airports.

20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: “On January 20th, 2017, President-Elect Bernie Sanders will step up to podium, place his hand on the Communist Manifesto and then deliver his Inaugural address into a banana. The swathes of Hollywood celebrities behind him will cheer and the rest of us will be trading our bank accounts for hidden lockboxes under our floorboards, all the time wondering how a batshit crazy 75-year-old socialist dinosaur became our Republic’s 45th President. How did it come to this?“

Read the whole thing.

“PROGRESS”: University of Connecticut building racially segregated dorm for black males. Ah, sweet “progress.”

The awkwardly long acronym ScHOLA²RS stands for “Scholistic [sic] House Of Leaders who are African Amercian[sic] Researchers and Scholars.” ScHOLA²RS House will be among seven distinct communities at UConn’s $79 million, 210,000 square-foot NextGen Residence Hall, which is set to open in the fall.

It’s not clear if the words “Scholistic” and “Amercian” are purposefully misspelled for some reason.

In any case, the mission of the segregated dorm is “to groom, nurture, and train the next generation of leaders to address grand challenges in society through the promotion of academic success in undergraduate programs at the University of Connecticut and in competitive graduate programs.”

The concept, supporters of the neo-Jim Crow dorm say, is to increase college graduation rates for black males at UConn.

UConn education professor Erik Hines, the faculty director for the dorm, observed that black males at the school get diplomas at a rate of just 54 percent. The rate for all students on campus is 82.5 percent.

“It is a space for African American men to, one, come together, and validate their experiences that they may have on campus,” Hines told Hartford Fox affiliate WTIC-TV. “Number two, it’s also a space where they can have conversation and also talk with individuals who come from the same background who share the same experience.” . . .

About 40 black males are expected to live in ScHOLA²RS House.

It is not clear what would happen if a male who is not black applied to live in the ScHOLA²RS House community.

BEHOLD: THE HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON CHILDREN’S BOOK. “Maybe it should mention that every Monica, Paula and Juanita was just a stepping stone for Hillary’s career. Maybe it should read, ‘Hillary paved her way with women everywhere.’”

GETCHER Pickleball Starter Set.

STEVE CARTER: If Flint Had a Privatized Water Company, Its Water Would Be Fine. “Public Citizen has issued a 10-point fact sheet on why privatizing water service is a bad idea. Ironically, the most troubling issues on the group’s list — low water quality, corruption, unheard local concerns and suffering among the poor — are all present in Flint.”

JOHN CLEESE CONDEMNS POLITICAL CORRECTNESS ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES:

In a video for Big Think, Cleese speaks specifically about college campuses, where he says he’s been warned not to perform because “any kind of criticism or any individual or group could be labeled cruel.”

Cleese also recalled something said to him about the issue by London psychiatrist Robin Skynner, with whom he’s worked on two books about psychology and psychiatry.

“[Skynner] said, ‘If people can’t control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people’s behavior.’ And when you’re around super-sensitive people, you cannot relax and be spontaneous because you have no idea what’s going to upset them next,” says Cleese.

I love the original Monty Python series and have seen every episode countless times (though I’m not as crazy about the last season, when Cleese had left the show), but it was a full-on BBC-endorsed assault on traditional English values. Funny how when your goal is fundamental transformation, sometimes what you rue what you end up with. But then, as I’ve written before, John Cleese morphed into Theodore Dalrymple so slowly, I hardly even noticed.

OBAMA EMAILED HILLARY 18 TIMES, LATER CLAIMED HE LEARNED OF SERVER FROM THE NEWS.

If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq. ISIS is the jayvee.

And since he knows the DNC-MSM won’t call him on his lies, why would he stop lying now?

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Are You at Risk for Sexually Transmitted Infections?

DECIMATED AND ON THE RUN: al Qaeda seizes town in southern Yemen.

Azzan is a major commercial hub of about 70,000 people in an arid and mountainous region and was controlled by al Qaeda for around a year until the group was ejected in 2012 by an alliance of tribesmen and armed residents loyal to Yemen’s since ousted central government.

“Dozens of al Qaeda gunmen arrived in the early hours of the morning and set up checkpoints at the entrances to the town and in its streets. They planted their black flag on government buildings,” one resident who declined to be named told Reuters by telephone.

“They faced no resistance or clashes,” the resident said, adding that tribal militia forces quit the area as it was being taken over.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has expanded during Yemen’s civil war, which triggered a military intervention by a Gulf Arab coalition last March, and also controls the major port of Mukalla in a neighboring province.

The Saudi-led coalition had been making headway against al Qaeda, but currently finds itself battling the UN over its airstrikes in Yemen.

COVERING THE IMPORTANT STORIES: Here’s how Downtown Julie Brown changed the Super Bowl.

WELL, WITH ALL THE HEDGE-FUNDERS AND WALL STREET TYPES SUPPORTING DEMOCRATS, THIS OFFENDS ME LESS THAN IT USED TO: Clinton (47%), Sanders (54%) Propose Highest Capital Gain Tax Rates (Now 24%) In History. I think we should have a 95% tax on profits from currency trading. We could call it the Soros Tax. Did I say 95%? Sorry, I meant 105%.

SHOULD PLANNED PARENTHOOD TAMPERING CHARGES CHILL JOURNALISTS? Law professors Sherry F. Colb & Michael C. Dorf write for CNN:

The Planned Parenthood case reveals that activists — and journalists — might also have to go to prison for undercover reporting if they violate any laws to gain access to the targets of their investigation.

Consequently, the public fails to learn about some important matters. Whistleblower statutes provide a modicum of protection for insiders who expose wrongdoing, but the risks to career and reputation frequently prevent those in the know from coming forward.
…
Thus, the law can legitimately circumscribe undercover investigations. For example, the Center for Medical Progress could possibly be held civilly liable for misleading editing of the Planned Parenthood videos. But the criminal prosecution of Daleiden and Merritt, even if they did break the law, could chill undercover journalists and activists everywhere.

Those charges ought to scare journalists, sure. Democratic operatives with bylines, not so much.

HERE IN MY CAR, I FEEL SAFEST OF ALL. I can lock all my doors; it’s the only way to live.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 998.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Hillary’s emails disqualify her from the presidency. “The facts: Hillary built and maintained an unofficial, non-sanctioned server that was almost certainly compromised by our national security enemies according to both former CIA Acting Director Mike Morell and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. . . . Just ask yourself what we would give to know what the Russian or Chinese foreign secretary was reading and sending every day in real time. That’s what our enemies had for four years. Thanks, Hillary. Even the president was sending her emails the enemies of the United States were reading.”

What’s more, she did this in an illicit effort to avoid accountability under the law — and, quite possibly, to make it harder for the Obama Administration to keep tabs on what she was doing.

FINALLY, A CANDIDATE PLEDGE YOU CAN BELIEVE.

WHO’S UP FOR CASUAL GOOD FRIDAY? Church of England Considers Casual Dress for Clerics.

The Abolition of Britain rolls on.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Heritage reports that “the United States, once again, finds itself outside the top 10 free economies of the world — tying its all-time low score.”