ORWELL’S 1984: A WARNING FOR THE REST OF US, A HOW-TO GUIDE FOR THE LEFT: New ‘Trust and Safety Council’ Is Twitter Version of 1984’s Ministry of Truth.

Related: Twitter share price nosedives on news it is losing users.

GOOD: Federal legislation to prohibit state/local anti-encryption laws.

BYE-BYE, NATO? Putin Threatening WWIII over Turkey.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why We Get Running Injuries (and How to Prevent Them).

INDEED: Russia’s Big Worry Is Not What the Pentagon Thinks but What Shale Frackers Will Do to Oil Prices. The frackers are saving Western Civilization, despite the best efforts of its political and intellectual “leaders” to flush it down the toilet.

WELL, IT COULD BE: Top U.S. Intelligence Official Calls Gene Editing a WMD Threat: Easy to use. Hard to control.

Well, we’re pretty much halfway between when Vernor Vinge wrote Rainbows End and when it was set. Key bit:

Every year, the civilized world grew and the reach of lawlessness and poverty shrank. Many people thought that the world was becoming a safer place . . . Nowadays Grand Terror technology was so cheap that cults and criminal gangs could acquire it. . . . In all innocence, the marvelous creativity of humankind continued to generate unintended consequences. There were a dozen research trends that could ultimately put world-killer weapons in the hands of anyone having a bad hair day.

Also, the civilized world doesn’t seem to be growing, and lawlessness doesn’t seem to be shrinking. Poverty continues to decline, but the politicians may manage to turn that one around too. . . .

REALLY, IS THERE NOTHING IT CAN’T DO? Climate Change Causes Cats.

21ST CENTURY MEDICINE: The Surgeon Will Skype You Now.

WHEN AN EXPANSIVE VIEW OF FREE SPEECH WAS NEEDED TO PROTECT COMMUNISTS, THE ACLU WAS ON IT. NOW THAT IT’S NEEDED TO PROTECT CONSERVATIVES, NOT SO MUCH. ACLU Identifies ‘Critical Civil Liberties Challenges Facing Our Country.’ Does Not Include First Amendment.

NOW THAT’S MY KIND OF FEMINISM: “Former ISIS sex slaves now army of ‘Sun Ladies’ ready to defeat terror group”

Some 2,000 Yazidi women who were captured in the brutal August 2014 attack on their mountain stronghold have escaped and have taken up arms against their former tormentors. Driven by the fresh memories of unspeakable atrocities and the survival of their people, hundreds have signed up to fight the black-clad terrorist army.

“Now we are defending ourselves from the evil; we are defending all the minorities in the region,” Capt. Khatoon Khider told FoxNews.com from the unit’s makeshift base in Duhok, Iraq. “We will do whatever is asked of us.”

Godspeed, ladies.

[Link fixed!]

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1008.

NFL SHOWCASING BLACK PANTHERS TRIBUTE PROVES THE LEAGUE STILL DOESN’T GET IT:

The NFL allowing a halftime tribute, no matter how oblique, to a group whose leaders brazenly raped women surely ranks at least on par to its mishandling of the Ray Rice domestic-violence assault in its offensiveness. No number of pink flags thrown by referees, or ads touting a “Vikings family” that morphed into an NFL family when one son moved to Cincinnati and had “Bengals babies” and another ate “Roethlis-burgers,” absolves this.

“Rape was an insurrectionary act,” Eldridge Cleaver wrote in Soul on Ice of transitioning from sexual assaults on black women to whites. “It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man’s law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women—and this point, I believe, was the most satisfying to me because I was very resentful over the historical fact of how the white man has used the black woman.”

Whereas Black Panthers Supreme Servant Newton broke his pistol grips by beating four fractures into the skull of African American tailor Preston Callins in 1973 and killed black prostitute Kathleen Smith by shooting her in the face—both for the crime of calling Huey “baby”— in 1974, Black Panthers Minister of Information Cleaver allegedly murdered a fellow African American activist in exile in Algeria.

File the league-endorsed Super Bowl 50 halftime tribute to the Black Panthers away for some perspective this fall, when the pink shoes come out and the anti-domestic violence PSAs begin running once again during Sunday’s NFL games.

Oh, and to get a sense of how fundamentally the culture has been changed by a generation of the far left making, as Roger Kimball would say, the long march through its institutions, who were performers at Super Bowl I? “The halftime show featured trumpeter Al Hirt, the marching bands from the University of Arizona and Grambling State University, 300 pigeons, 10,000 balloons and a flying demonstration by the hydrogen-peroxide-propelled Bell Rocket Air Men.”

Related: #BoycottBeyonce Movement Gains Momentum.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Islamism Spreads In Africa:

The fundamentalist forms of Islam spreading in Africa, as well as the slow-simmering religious war between Christians and Muslims on the continent, are big stories. Sub-Saharan African Muslims are traditionally Sufi, a form of Islam that emphasizes individual spirituality and incorporates traditional African culture. However, as the WSJ reports, Wahhabism, funded and promoted by the Saudis, has increasingly come to Africa. And when you mix jihadist ideology with other factors in Africa—”weak states, poorly policed frontiers, rapid population growth and large pools of underemployed young men to the mix,” as we once wrote—the situation will likely worse before it gets better.

Over 20 years ago you could see Saudi money turning once-mellow Muslims into radicals throughout northern Nigeria. Now we have Boko Haram. Want to stop this? Cut it off at the source.

WHY ARE THEY AFRAID OF A STRONG BLACK WOMAN? Racist Democrats Target Mia Love For Defeat.

HOW IT MUST BURN THE GOPe: They couldn’t figure this out by themselves, so the voters are giving them a little remedial lesson. Stephen Moore explains, “America Trumped: Trump is the Anti-Obama in Every Way.”

It is striking that Trump is the anti-Obama in every way. Obama blames America first for every problem on the earth, from global warming to terrorism. Trump emanates love for America and pledges to “make America great again.”

Obama hates business. Trump runs businesses.

Obama is a pessimist. Trump is an optimist.

Obama is an elitist. Trump is a populist.

Obama ‎is a college professor and a community organizer. Trump is a job creator and a profit maker.

Obama is incompetent. Trump is a professional — he exudes competence. . . .

In February 1980 the Republican establishment said that a staunch conservative Hollywood actor could never be president ‎and he won two landslide elections. Trump isn’t Reagan — but he’s one of the most talented retail politicians in modern times. For nine months everyone has been underestimating this man, saying that he was surely going to go away. He’s not going away. He’s rising and proving his critics on the left and right dead wrong. That’s Reaganesque.

Cruz has many of these qualities, too, but may have narrower appeal than Trump. Both are populists, running on a long-overdue theme of patriotism. With either candidate, the GOPe is getting a long-overdue spanking.

WHAT IS SEEN CANNOT BE UNSEEN: Your next president could look as old as this by 2025.

CHANGE: “Bernie Sanders Intrigues a South Carolina Town That Loves Hillary Clinton“

SHOCKER: Anti-Gunners’ Predictions of Chaos, Mass Death Wrong Again. “For the first time since 1871, Texans are permitted to openly carry their firearms. Beginning January 1, Texas joined the majority of the country by allowing open carry, reports The Star-Telegram. Some predicted that the law would lead to a surge of 911 calls, but according to Cpl. Tracey Knight, spokeswoman for the Fort Worth Police Department, not much has occurred.”

Best quote, from Texas Sheriff Dee Anderson: “I said before this became law that I thought it was going to be much ado about nothing, but I didn’t know it was going to be this much nothing.”

IS ANYONE SURPRISED BY THIS? Politico: What happened at Sanders U.? When Bernie Sanders’ wife was in charge of small, private Burlington College in Vermont, it sank into debt.

IS IT SNOWING IN HADES THIS MORNING? How else to explain the fact the number two man at the Department of Veterans Affairs just asked Congress to get serious about cutting the bureaucrat protections that prevent firing incompetent managers in the federal civil service. The Merit Systems Protection Board – which recently reversed three VA firings of bad hospital directors – is one of the biggest of many such roadblocks.

Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson wants to strip VA members of the Senior Executive Service and the department’s doctors of the right to appeal adverse personnel actions to the MSPB, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Luke Rosiak. If Congress goes along, which seems likely, Gibson could become the guy behind the most significant and positive civil service reform since, well, the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 that created the MSPB. Once it happens at VA, which federal department will be next?

DOWN WITH WHITE PRIVILEGE: Stop Calling The Babylonians Scientists!

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I DUNNO, THERE ARE SOME CONSULTANTS WHO ARE LICKING THEIR CHOPS: Who Wants Michael Bloomberg To Run For President? Practically Nobody.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire thinks that Bloomberg serves as a valuable anesthetic for disaffected Dems.

DISPATCHES FROM THE LAND OF THE SCREAMING CAMPUS GARBAGE BABIES: Student at UC-Santa Barbara faces stabbing threat after writing conservative op-ed.