IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: My latest NY Observer column, ObamaCare’s Chickens Come Home to Roost.

TOM HAYDEN, AMERICAN TURNCOAT: City Journal’s Sol Stern, who knew Hayden personally in the 1960s, looks back at his life (the very definition of  radical chic) and concludes

Hayden’s life in politics after the 1960s proved that he and his intellectual hero Mills were wrong when they claimed that the democratic system was rigged. Hayden collaborated with America’s enemy during wartime and was never punished. He conspired to start a riot in Chicago to disrupt the Democratic Party, yet he beat the federal rap. He entered electoral politics and helped push the Democratic Party so far to the left that it would be unrecognizable to the 1968 Chicago protesters. When Hayden died, the mainstream media’s obituaries celebrated his achievements in human rights but erased from history his advocacy for violent revolution.

Only in America—where nothing is written in stone, where anything is possible as long as we have elections and free speech—is a life like Tom Hayden’s possible.

Read the whole thing.

Earlier: Ron Radosh on The Truth About the Late Tom Hayden—Whitewashed by the MSM.

WHO THOUGHT WE’D SEE THIS IN VANITY FAIR? Maybe the Right-Wing Media Isn’t Crazy, After All: After Trump, can the media escape the confirmation bias trap that it has set for itself? “For the first time in my memory, some of the major media organizations in this country have now abandoned all semblance of objectivity in furtherance of electing Hillary Clinton, or perhaps more accurately, in furtherance of the defeat of Donald Trump.”

FASTER, PLEASE: Scientists find key protein for spinal cord repair.

Of dozens of genes strongly activated by injury, seven coded for proteins that are secreted from cells. One of these, called CTGF or connective tissue growth factor, was intriguing because its levels rose in the supporting cells, or glia, that formed the bridge in the first two weeks following injury.

“We were surprised that it was expressed in only a fraction of glial cells after the injury. We thought that these glial cells and this gene must be important,” said lead author Mayssa Mokalled, a postdoctoral fellow in Poss’s group. Indeed, when they tried deleting CTGF genetically, those fish failed to regenerate.

Humans and zebrafish share most protein-coding genes, and CTGF is no exception. The human CTGF protein is nearly 90% similar in its amino acid building blocks to the zebrafish form. When the team added the human version of CTGF to the injury site in fish, it boosted regeneration and the fish swam better by two weeks after the injury.

“The fish go from paralyzed to swimming in the tank. The effect of the protein is striking,” Mokalled said.

The second half of the CTGF protein seems to be the key to the healing, the group found. It’s a large protein, made of four smaller parts, and it has more than one function. That might make it easier to deliver and more specific as a therapy for spinal injuries.

Like I said, faster, please.

QUESTIONS FROM 2008: Can Teleprompter Trump stay disciplined?

It’s hard, man, it’s really hard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XuItt6iuMc

Bonus question: Could Clinton have stayed disciplined at the debates without cheating?

UNEXPECTEDLY: NYC millennials are crawling with STDs.

HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION 60 YEARS ON: RealClearHistory has posted several good articles on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Here’s a 2016 essay examining contemporary news coverage of the revolt. In 2006 The Guardian essayed the rebellion’s bitter legacy. Still a good read. Last week my Creators Syndicate column was a retrospective on the revolt.

ON THE UPSIDE, THAT’S PARTLY BECAUSE TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS ARE PLUMMETING: Young Adolescents as Likely to Die From Suicide as From Traffic Accidents.

IN SCIENCE, a very strong review of my colleague Maurice Stucke’s book (with Oxford’s Ariel Ezrachi) Virtual Competition: The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm-Driven Economy, which is just out from Harvard University Press.

BREAKING: Jury finds reporter, Rolling Stone responsible for defaming U-Va. dean with gang rape story.

A federal court jury decided Friday that a Rolling Stone journalist defamed a former University of Virginia associate dean in a 2014 magazine article about sexual assault on campus that included a debunked account of a fraternity gang rape.

The 10 member jury concluded that the Rolling Stone journalist was responsible for defamation, with actual malice, in the case brought by Nicole Eramo, a U-Va. administrator who oversaw sexual violence cases at the time of the article’s publication. The jury also found the magazine and its publisher responsible for defaming Eramo.

The $7.5 million lawsuit centered on the 9,000-word article written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely titled “A Rape on Campus.” The article appeared online in late Nov. 2014 and on newsstands in the magazine’s December 2014 issue.

The story opened with a graphic depiction of a fraternity gang rape that went viral online and sent shock waves across the U-Va. campus community. But within days of the article’s publication, key elements of the account fell apart under scrutiny. The magazine eventually retracted the story in April 2015.

Eramo’s lawsuit came a month later, alleging that the magazine’s portrayal of her as callous and dismissive of rape reports on campus was untrue and unfair.

Remember that Barack Obama — along with some Congressional Republicans — was ready to make national policy based on this fakery.

KNOWN LIAR BRIAN WILLIAMS COMPLAINS THAT MARK HALPERIN GAVE DONALD TRUMP FAVORABLE COVERAGE: No, that’s not the headline. But it is accurate.

GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG: ISIS seizing boys as young as 9 to fight in Mosul, UN warns.

AN AMERICAN VOLUNTEER SERVING WITH THE KURDS IN NORTHERN IRAQ: He’s David Shumock, a 62-year-old Floridian who served with USAF pararescue. That’s an elite group. The article says he participates in combat patrols and also serves as a medic. The video interview with Shumock is informative.

STEALTH RATIONING: These Patients Are Covered by Obamacare But Can’t Afford Treatment.

Michelle Harris, a 61-year-old retired waitress in northwest Montana, has arthritis in both shoulders. She gets a tax subsidy to help buy coverage under Obamacare, though she still pays $338 a month for the BlueCross BlueShield plan. Yet with its $4,500 deductible, she says she’s doing everything she can to avoid seeing a doctor. Instead, she uses ibuprofen and cold-packs.

“It hurts, but we don’t have that kind of money,” Harris said in an interview. “So I deal with it.”

Harris is one of many people with Obamacare plans that feature high out-of-pocket costs that can put health services out of reach. That’s because the insurance coverage Harris and others like her have purchased is designed not to kick in until patients have spent thousands of dollars.

She’s not alone. While the Affordable Care Act has pushed the uninsured rate in the U.S. near a record low, a Commonwealth Fund study this year found that about four in 10 adults in ACA plans aren’t confident they could afford care if they got sick.

Imagine treating poor and middle-class Americans to Lamborghini subsidies but sticking them with the full price for tuneups.

ON SALE FOR $3.29: The Insta-Wife’s Men On Strike, on Kindle. It’s currently #1 in Gender Studies!

ABOUT THAT LAST JOBS REPORT… Multiple Jobholders Hit All-Time High, As Full-Time Jobs Tumble.

SETTING A GOOD EXAMPLE: Kansas State Tells Students They Don’t Have Right to Not Be Offended.

I’M NOT AN ARACHNOPHOBE, BUT THAT’S A GOOD THING BECAUSE IT LOOKS LIKE A LAND CRAB: The internet is freaking out about this terrifyingly large huntsman spider.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Brain Chemicals That Make You Happy (And How To Trigger Them). Or you can just read InstaPundit, which is proven to be good for your brain. The science is settled!

IF YOU WANT TO GET TO THE TOP, DON’T LET THE RULES HOLD YOU BACK: NOTORIOUS HRC: PAY MY FOUNDATION.

STRONG HORSE: Hard-Line Strain of Islam Gains Ground in Indonesia, World’s Largest Muslim Country.

Police said an estimated 100,000 people turned out for a rally called by hard-line Muslim groups against the capital’s Christian governor, whom they accuse of having committed blasphemy.

Turnout was lower than some organizers had predicted, after the nation’s largest Muslim organizations this week discouraged their members from attending.

President Joko Widodo had met with other political leaders amid calls for calm, but critics say he has been too slow since taking office in 2014 to respond to worsening tension for fear of being labeled anti-Muslim.

In a recent interview, Mr. Widodo said religious and political leaders had a responsibility to “cool temperatures down,” and he vowed to protect minorities.

“We are one of the most tolerant countries in the world,’’ Mr. Widodo told The Wall Street Journal. “My government won’t tolerate any discrimination.”

Indonesia has made a lot of progress in the last 25 years, largely dismissed by both the Obama and Bush administrations. We may be beginning to pay a price for focusing on the country’s longstanding problems instead of encouraging more successes.

PAUL RAHE: An Open Letter to the NeverTrumpers from a Sympathizer.

The real issue is whether in the future we will have open discussion of political issues and free elections. Think about what we have now — a federal bureaucracy that is fiercely partisan. An IRS that tries to regulate speech by denying on a partisan basis tax-exempt status to conservative organizations. A Department of State that hides the fact that its head is not observing the rules to which everyone else is held concerning security of communications and that colludes with a Presidential campaign to prevent the release of embarrassing information. A Department of Justice that ought to be renamed as the Department of Injustice, which does its level best to suppress investigations that might embarrass the likely nominee of the Democratic Party. An assistant attorney general that gives a “heads up” to that lady’s campaign. An Attorney General who meets on the sly with her husband shortly before the decision is made whether she is to be indicted. A federal department that promotes racial strife and hostility to the police in the interests of solidifying for the Democrats the African-American vote.

Think about what else we have now — a press corps that colludes with a campaign, allowing figures in the Clinton campaign to edit what they publish. Television reporters who send the questions apt to be asked at the presidential debates to one campaign. A media that is totally in the tank for one party, downplaying or suppressing news that might make trouble for that party, inventing false stories about the candidates nominated by the other party, managing the news, manipulating the public, promoting in the party not favored the nomination of a clown, protecting the utterly corrupt nominee of the other party from scrutiny.

Let’s add to this the fact that the Democratic Party is intent on opening our borders and on signing up legal aliens to vote. If you do not believe me, read what Wikileaks has revealed about the intentions of Tony Podesta. Barack Obama promised to “fundamentally change America.” He called his administration “The New Foundation.” Well, all that you have to do to achieve this is to alter the population.

To this, I can add something else. Freedom of speech is under attack. Forty-four Senators, all of them Democrats, voted not long ago for an amendment to the Constitution that would hem in the First Amendment. Ostensibly aimed at corporate speech, this would open the doors to the regulation of all speech. The Democratic members of the Federal Election Commission have pressed for regulating the internet — for treating blogposts as political contributions and restricting them. Members of the Civil Rights Commission have argued that freedom of speech and religious freedom must give way to social justice. There is an almost universal move on our college campuses to shut down dissent — among students, who must be afforded “safe spaces,” and, of course, in the classroom as well. There, academic freedom is a dead letter; and, in practice, despite the courts, in our public universities, the First Amendment does not apply.

None of this is by accident, and none of it is out of good intentions. It is all about power.

BRIDGEGATE: Former officials guilty on all counts.

FEEL-GOOD STORY OF THE DAY: This Badass Kurd Plunged His Bulletproof BMW Into ISIS Snipers to Save 70 Lives.

“TWEET OF THE ELECTION:” “Clinton camp now boasts: pedophiles, philanderers, conspirators, criminals, and possibly now a blood-drinking occultist. What’s not to love?”

2016, man.