THE FREEDOM OF RUNNING YOUR OWN BUSINESS: This Oregon Woman Was Just Fired From Her Job For Being Pro-Life.

GUESS WHETHER THE DONALD GAVE MORE TO MILITARY VETERANS OR THE CLINTONS: Trump’s New Pro-Veterans Website Directs All Donations To Trump’s Personal Foundation.

COLLECT THE WHOLE SET! 33 NEW VARIATIONS: The PC Nazis get their hands on Barbie.

STEERING AGAINST THE SKID: A humiliating day awaits the Federal Reserve.

THEY KEEP USING THAT WORD, I DON’T THINK THEY KNOW WHAT IT MEANS: An ‘ethics’ assault on the First Amendment.

IS KEN’S BODY IMAGE REALISTIC? Barbie has a new body, but was it necessary?

TO MATCH THEIR DIPLOMAS: New York state tests are about to become meaningless.

OUR COUNTRY IS IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: HHS didn’t check homes before giving migrant kids to traffickers.

INTERESTING: Will Shale 2.0 Lower Oil Prices to $20 Per Barrel?

BAD YEAR FOR ROCK MUSICIANS CONTINUES; JEFFERSON AIRPLANE CO-FOUNDER PAUL KANTNER DIES AT 74:

Kantner, a founding member of the Jefferson Airplane, was 74 and had suffered a heart attack this week.

His death was confirmed by longtime publicist and friend, Cynthia Bowman, who said he died of multiple organ failure and septic shock.

Mr. Kantner had a string of health problems in recent years, including a heart attack in March.

* * * * * * *

The band was formed in 1965 in a Union Street bar called the Drinking Gourd, when Balin met Mr. Kantner and expressed his interest in creating a “folk-rock” band. It didn’t take long for the Airplane to attract a sizable local following, enough so that when fledgling promoter Bill Graham opened his legendary Fillmore Auditorium, the Jefferson Airplane served as the first headliner.

The Airplane was the first of the so-called “San Francisco sound” bands to sign a recording contract with a major label, and in August of 1966, its debut album, “Jefferson Airplane Takes Off,” was released. Slick joined the band a year later and songs like “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit” became national hits as the love children came streaming into San Francisco.

Kanter transmogrified the Airplane into Jefferson Starship in the 1970s, to cash-in on the slick radio-friendly corporate rock sound the group Boston invented and San Francisco rivals Journey perfected, but looked oddly out of place as the group’s token Beatles moptop coiffed, granny glasses bespectacled hippie in the late ’70s and ’80s. However, he was wise enough to bolt the group in the mid-‘80s (taking with him the “Jefferson” half of its name by suing his former bandmates when they attempted to use it) shortly before its nadir with the uber-‘80s hit “We Built This City.”

By the way, telling line in the San Francisco Chronicle’s obit:

A sometimes prickly, often sarcastic musician who kept his own counsel and routinely enraged his old bandmates — they sued him for trademark infringement (and settled) after he started his own version of Jefferson Starship in 1991 — Mr. Kantner became something of a landmark on the San Francisco music scene, the only member of the band still living in town.

“Somebody once said, if you want to go crazy go to San Francisco,” he said. “Nobody will notice.”

What a perfect summation of that city and what drives it myriad woes.

WRAPPING UP THE TRUMPLESS DEBATE, Steve Green writes:

Trump really was supposed to be Godot, the man who never showed up but everyone obsessed over anyway — Kabuki Theater of the Absurd, as I called it the other day. But other than some awkward “Oh my God, that was supposed to be funny?” comments from Ted Cruz, Trump’s absence wasn’t much… present.

Rubio seemed enlarged by that absence, Cruz seemed diminished by it.

Everyone else played their parts the same way they’ve played them through all the previous debates. That’s for good and for ill, but mostly for naught. No matter your (or my) personal preference, the GOP doesn’t seem likely to nominate a Bush, a Carson, a Christie, or a Kasich.

I hate to talk about the polls, because I hate to talk about the polls — but the time has come to do just that.

The most recent figures from Iowa show that with historical turnout, either Cruz or Trump wins in a squeaker. If Trump manages to revolutionize Iowa turnout — and I don’t dismiss the possibility — then he wins in a blowout.

But it doesn’t feel like Cruz helped himself tonight. If anyone did, it was probably Rubio, but that’s probably too little, too late.

This is where I should mention that out of seven competitive GOP Iowa caucuses, Iowa voters have picked the nominee only three times — and only once has the nominee gone on to win the general election.

You watch enough of these things, and you get a feel for the ebb and flow of the candidates, but also for the moderators. And my final thought tonight is that Fox wanted to host a Donald Trump circus, and failing that, tried to force the circus format on the remaining candidates.

It didn’t work. If you’ve been following these drunkblogs, then you’ve seen debates hosted by networks that were more biased, but you might not have seen a debate as weird and awkward as tonight’s.

At the last debate we saw Trump at his grownup best. Tonight, he wasn’t there at all, and it was as though Fox tried to make up for it by being as outlandish (if that’s the right word) as Trump at his adolescent worst.

And it just didn’t work, for me or for the candidates.

How did it work for you?

Let us know in the comments.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Does Europe Have A Future?

CAN ANYBODY HERE PLAY THIS GAME? GOP Debate’s Islamic-Advocate Questioner Also Is A Bernie Sanders Supporter.

HE’S TOO OLD TO BE SEXY NOW: The NYT tries to figure out why Bill Clinton can’t bring his old “magic” to the Hillary Clinton campaign. Also, the vegan diet has left him thin and listless.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Nets Waste Nearly 10 Mins on Trump; Barely Preview Actual GOP Debate.

I’M BEGINNING TO THINK THAT YOU CAN’T REALLY TRUST GOVERNMENT STATISTICS, EVEN FROM THE “SQUEAKY-CLEAN” NORDIC STATES: ‘Hundreds’ of rapes ‘hidden’ by Danish police.

WELL, THIS IS ENCOURAGING: Oil Crash Only The Tip Of The Iceberg. “We may be enjoying amazingly low prices at the gas pump, but as oil prices continueing to slide we must also remember the catastrophic events that have followed almost every drastic oil price slump in the past.”

STEVE GREEN: Drunkblogging The Missing Donald Debate.

TUCKER CARLSON: Donald Trump Is Shocking, Vulgar and Right. “American presidential elections usually amount to a series of overcorrections: Clinton begat Bush, who produced Obama, whose lax border policies fueled the rise of Trump. In the case of Trump, though, the GOP shares the blame, and not just because his fellow Republicans misdirected their ad buys or waited so long to criticize him. Trump is in part a reaction to the intellectual corruption of the Republican Party. That ought to be obvious to his critics, yet somehow it isn’t.”

HILLARY MUST BE WORRIED: First it was WaPo, and now it’s Vox dumping on Bernie.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: A Turning Tide In The War On College Men?

WOW, THE 2016 MERCEDES ARE BIGGER THAN EVER! (And I thought my ’85 500SEL was whale-sized…)

CC: Tim Blair.

#OREGONSTANDOFF ENDS: Massive Government Convoy Descends on Refuge; Militiamen Taken Away (Photos).

“THAT’LL TEACH HER!” Melissa Click suspended with pay, according to the Columbia Missouri Tribune.

(Headline via Iowahawk.)