WHY IS DONALD TRUMP, ALLEDGED REPUBLICAN, CALLING TED CRUZ “WORSE THAN HILLARY?”

And right on cue, Clinton surrogate “Stephanopoulos Grills Cruz: Will You Cause ‘Cataclysmic Losses’ for GOP?”

During the interrogation interview, Cruz told Stephanopoulos:

Bob Dole yesterday…said, “Donald Trump is someone we can make a deal with. We can cut a deal. We can work with him.” And, listen, if you’re someone in this country who thinks we need more Republicans in Washington to cut a deal with the Democrats to agree with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, then you ought to vote for Donald Trump.

As Glenn has noted, the Beltway establishment hates Trump, but fears Cruz.

ALGERIA IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN GENERALLY APPRECIATED: A Dangerous Combination: In Algeria, a restive population and a failing strongman.

SCOTT OTT: ‘Roe v. Wade’ Erased a Decade of Civil Rights Gains, and Violated the True Constitution of a People.

Much to the Washington Post’s chagrin, today’s “March for Life to go on in D.C. despite blizzard.”

AND THEN SMOD REALLY FINISHED THEM OFF: Whatever happened to television’s most famous couples?

Read the whole thing, for it is much better than its headline implies.

THERE THEY GO AGAIN: IRS officials are being lambasted today for erasing yet another computer hard-drive, this time one that a federal judge had previously ordered to be preserved. House Oversight and Government Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz and Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan told IRS Commissioner John Koskinen erasing hard-drives has been a continuing problem, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Katie Watson.

“It is stunning to see that the IRS does not take reasonable care to preserve documents that it is legally required to protect,” said Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, and Jordan, an Ohio Republican, in a letter to Koskinen made public late Thursday. The hard-drive is involved in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Microsoft. A federal judge hearing the FOIA lawsuit told IRS to preserve the hard-drive. Then it was erased. Law is for the little people, doncha know.

ASSAD AND PUTIN, A LOVE STORY — Damascus thanks Moscow for help in recapturing Salma from rebel forces:

Government forces were able to capture the city “thanks to the support of the friendly Russian aviation,” Latakia Governor Ibrahim Khder al-Saalem said. “Our army will now press its offensive further.”

Since Russia launched its bombing campaign on Sept. 30, its warplanes have flown nearly 6,000 missions in support of the Syrian government troops. The airstrikes were ostensibly to target Islamic State militants and other extremists, but they also have helped Assad push back rebels on several fronts and capture dozens of villages in the north and west.

The AP report also notes that the “offensive has given Assad a stronger hand going into peace talks with the opposition,” which is what Putin’s military effort there is all about.

At least somebody in the Middle East still knows what it’s like to have a major power as reliable and serious ally.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 988.

ROGER SIMON: Sorry, Spike Lee: I’m to Blame for the ‘White Oscars:’

Woody Allen is famous for not attending the Oscars and not even reading his reviews.  I used to find that a bit pretentious, but then I read an interview with Woody (with whom I worked decades ago) in the latest edition of Written By, the magazine of the Writers Guild.  In answer to the question “You don’t read reviews?” Woody responded as follows:

I’m usually on to another film at the time.  Because the whole fun is making the film.  The results of the film and the notions of legacies and things like that never interested me. … I never joined the Academy.  I never participated in any of that stuff.  I just want to work and enjoy myself working.  And one day either people will say, “We’re never going to back a film of yours again,” or I’ll suddenly get a massive coronary on the set and that will be the end.  But apart from that, I just like to work.  I’m happy in the room writing and I’m happy on the set working.

Academy members — black, white and heliotrope — would be wise to listen to Woody’s words.  Anyone who is fortunate enough to earn tons of money making movies is far and away among the most privileged human beings on the planet.  Pretending you’re a  “social justice warrior” while living in a thirty million dollar mansion is creepy beyond words.

Exactly — as with a rock musician who seem more interested in PETA, environmentalism, or anti-war protests (when a Republican is in the White House) then writing good new songs, when activism replaces the process of creation as the primary goal of an artist, it’s a signal that his best work is long behind him.

R.I.P., FORREST MCDONALD: “Professor McDonald was and will remain—long into the distant future—among the most influential historians on American history, particularly in regard to the American Revolution and the Constitution’s framing era.” I, too, received a couple of generous letters from him when I was a junior scholar.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Government Poisoned Flint’s Water—So Stop Blaming Everyone Else: A failure of local government, brought on by public employee pensions.

Flint, Michigan, was a sickly town long before residents discovered something toxic in their water.

The city’s appallingly high crime rate makes it one of the most dangerous places in the country. Its automobile manufacturing industry declined and disappeared decades ago, plunging Flint into a depression from which it never recovered. Its residents are poor. And the local government is so badly in debt that the state had to appoint an emergency financial manager in 2011. Flint is Detroit without the historic appeal. You wouldn’t want to live there. You wouldn’t even want to visit.

On top of all that, local authorities were recently forced to admit that Flint’s drinking water is contaminated with lead. The new water source might also be linked to 77 recent cases of Legionnaire’s disease (resulting in 10 deaths) in the area.

The #FlintWaterCrisis has captured the nation’s attention: many pundits have seized upon the fact Michigan is governed by a Republican, Rick Snyder, and have thus spun the disaster as one primarily caused by conservative indifference to poor black people. During last Sunday’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton explicitly blamed the crisis on Snyder’s leadership. . . .

She reiterated this stance during an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who holds the same view. Michael Moore, who hails from Flint, all but accused Snyder of pouring lead in the water supply himself. Elsewhere at Salon, writer Elias Isquith blamed “austerity,” since the root of the problem was the decision to seek a more efficient, cheaper water supply. That decision was not made by Snyder, nor was it made by his emergency financial manager, a Democrat. In fact, Flint’s own city council and mayor approved the idea. State treasurer Andy Dillon—also a Democrat—signed off on it.

In hindsight, the execution of the decision to seek a new water supply was a disaster of epic proportions. But it is one entirely caused by government actors—most of them local government actors—and ignored by regulators until it was too late. The people who have thus far done too little to fix the crisis are also government actors—at the local, state, and even federal levels. Flint is mostly a failure of governance, not a failure of markets.

At the same time, let’s not forget the reason why local authorities felt the need to find a cheaper water source: Flint is broke and its desperately poor citizens can’t afford higher taxes to pay the pensions of city government retirees. As recently as 2011, it would have cost every person in Flint $10,000 each to cover the unfunded legacy costs of the city’s public employees.

The #FlintWaterCrisis is not a blueprint for what would happen if libertarians abolished government and let poor people drink poisoned water, as some enemies of free markets are no doubt claiming. Instead, it’s a great example of government failing to efficiently provide even the most basic of public services due to a characteristically toxic combination of administrative bloat and financial mismanagement.

Well, they blamed Rick Snyder because he was the only Republican in sight.

HEH: Milo Yiannopoulos Started a College Scholarship Fund. Here’s Why the Left Went Nuts. “In an interview with Buzzfeed’s senior tech reporter, Joseph Bernstein, Milo explained that the idea for the scholarship grant had originally started out as a practical joke to infuriate the thin-skinned political correctness crowd. However, upon digging deeper into the issue and coming up with research – see the fund’s website – supporting the fact that today, low-income Caucasian males are in fact disadvantaged in academia, Milo decided to go ahead with the idea. And thus, through private donations and $25,000 of his own money, put his plan into fruition.”

JAMES LILEKS: “This is the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s website…‘How can we bring equality to history?'”

The sentiments behind the thought were so self-evidently correct that no one stopped to think how bizarre that sounds. At the most facile reading, it suggests that history should be rearranged to reflect not what happened, but what should have happened if modern values were transposed on the past. Every generation interprets the past through their own values, of course, but there is still general agreement that certain dates, people, events, inventions, and artistic creations were seminal (sorry) and influential, and while you can argue about their effect, you can’t deny that they happened. You can, however, diminish their importance in favor of other dates, people, events, inventions, and artistic creations. In some cases this is wish-fulfillment. In most cases this is a graduate thesis. It may be a contrary argument whose appeal rests in its fashionable vestments, but if it has the Proper Modern Values, it becomes a new gospel simply because it rebels against those things the spirit of the times require we rebel against.

It’s like playing a shell game and insisting that the pea was really under the middle shell because that’s what you chose. But it was under this one. I know but it should have been under that one.

As the old joke told by Russian dissidents went, “In the Soviet Union, the future is always certain; it is the past that is always changing.” Read the whole thing.

LESSONS FROM AN ACCIDENTAL DISCHARGE.

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CHANGE: More European nations are barring the door to migrants. “Increasingly, nations are taking matters into their own hands, putting up policies aimed at cutting the migrant flow and weeding out all but those most at risk from war. It happens amid rising security fears in Europe after the terror attacks in Paris by assailants including militants who disguised themselves as migrants, as well as hundreds of sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany on New Year’s Eve in which asylum seekers are among the prime suspects.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: This Swagtastic Sanders Gear Will Help You Bernish Your Liberal Street Cred and Make All Your Friends Jelly.

The red thong adorned with Bernie’s face is particularly sharp.

THAT WAS FAST: Bernie ad parodies are already coming out.

WATCH: Only Six People Welcome Hillary To Beaumont, Texas (Video).

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Law Schools Have Added Administrators (+16%) While Shedding Full-Time Faculty (-14%). Hey, those mandatory diversity-training seminars don’t run themselves.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Area Catholic Man Goes To Party Attended By Beautiful Women, Goes Home With Another Man.

TOO GOOD TO CHECK: Nazi Genocide Rooted in Hitler’s Belief of a Global Ecological Crisis (One Caused by the Jews).

IT IS LARGE; HER EXOSKELETON CONTAINS MULTITUDES: Victor Davis Hanson on The Many Contradictions of Hillary Clinton.

QUESTION ASKED: Are the Global Warmistas Simply Juicing Up the Latest Years’ Temperatures With “Adjustments” While Reducing the Temperatures of Previous Years, To Always Make the Current Year “The Hottest”?

Hide the decline!

ENDORSED: Repeal the Uniform Drinking Age Act.

The 1980’s was a very good decade in American history. The economy expanded prodigiously, inflation — the biggest economic problem of the previous decade — was tamed, and the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe crumbled. But, of course, nothing’s perfect. On July 17th, 1984, President Reagan signed into law a bill that had passed both houses of Congress unanimously, the Uniform Drinking Age Act. It required states to set 21 as the minimum age for the purchase and consumption of alcoholic beverages or lose ten percent of their federal highway funding (later amended to eight percent).

This is an issue I’ve written about more than once.