BYRON YORK: To fire Comey, Trump team waited for Rosenstein.

Roger Simon was on this angle last night.

BYRON YORK: To fire Comey, Trump team waited for Rosenstein.

RAND PAUL: Comey firing ‘couldn’t happen soon enough.’ “He had the confidence of almost no one.”

SCIENCE: Liberals Are Less Tolerant Than They Think.

OOPS: BACKFIRE alert! Audience reaction to Comey firing NOT what Stephen Colbert wanted.

BEGUN, THE ETAIL WARS HAVE: Amazon strikes back again at Walmart’s free 2-day shipping offer.

ARCHEOLOGY: Primitive Humanlike Species Lived More Recently Than Expected.

Homo naledi is primitive in some ways, with a small brain and other physical features reminiscent of our early ancestors. But it also walked upright, and had hands that may have been capable of making tools.

This perplexing combination of features raised questions about when the animal walked the Earth. But in new research published Tuesday in eLife, scientists have come to the conclusion that it lived between 335,000 and 236,000 years ago. That’s only about a tenth of the age some experts previously predicted.

It suggests that this humanlike creature may have lived alongside early humans, or Homo sapiens. “It’s a much more complex picture of human evolution that is rising,” lead author Paul Dirks of James Cook University and the University of Witwatersrand tells The Two-Way.

And:

Homo naledi’s age and other recent discoveries complicate previous ideas of how humans evolved. “Traditionally, not all that long ago, human evolution was pretty much viewed as a linear sort of progression towards larger-brained animals,” Dirks says.

But the finding that this creature is young enough to have lived alongside early humans means “the whole evolutionary process may have happened slightly differently than a simply linear process,” he says. “There may have been a number of different species evolving side by side.”

Findings like these have me wondering if early man didn’t kill off the the very same branches they evolved from and with.

IMPORTANT NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Cheese does not increase risk of heart attack or strokes, find researchers.

STACY MCCAIN: Liberal Paranoia In The Trump Age.

THEY’VE STAYED DIALED UP TO 11 EVER SINCE HILLARY BLEW THE ELECTION: Jacob Sullum: Firing the FBI Director Is Not a ‘Constitutional Crisis:’ Democrats should take a deep breath.

VENEZUELA ROUNDUP FROM BATTLESWARM BLOG: It’s worse than you think.

THIS IS NOT NEWS TO INSTAPUNDIT READERS: OPEC is out of options.

PROMISE BROKEN: Trump won’t move U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Trump’s pursuit of the “peace process” is likely to blame.

ROGER SIMON: Comey’s Out. Who’s Next for Rosenstein? “If I were Hillary Clinton, I’d be afraid.  I’d be very afraid.”

MORE PROBLEMS AT ESPN: The worldwide leader in politically-correct sports coverage is still creating headaches for owner Disney.

ESPN recently announced a new round of layoffs and [Disney CEO Robert] Iger, despite his liberal views, might be particularly impatient for a turnaround at the network—and not just because he wants to deliver robust earnings growth for Disney shareholders. A recent report from the website Axios claims that Mr. Iger is contemplating a run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Such a run would be premised on his business success, so Disney has to be thriving for him to make a Trumpian leap into politics.

Mr. Iger may be so eager to spruce up his tarnished cable operation that he’ll consider the analysis by former ESPN and current Fox Sports journalist Jason Whitlock that ESPN’s embrace of leftist ideology is partly to blame for driving away former fans of the sports giant.

Progressives across social media have been in an uproar since the Journal published Mr. Whitlock’s op-ed on Sunday night. Mr. Whitlock wrote that ESPN is “diverse on its surface, progressive in its point of view, and more concerned with spinning media narratives than with the quality of its product. The channel has become too handcuffed by politics to protect its most experienced and loyal employees. It’s a massive symbol of everything that fueled Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency.” Mr. Whitlock also opined that ESPN had been highly influenced by attacks from the leftist website Deadspin to adopt its current politicized approach to sports coverage.

Iger can either take the progressive politics out of ESPN and please his stockholders, or he can continue to use ESPN to please the Democratic base and help him win the nomination, but he likely can’t do both.

THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: According to Loren Thompson it’s about one percent of the U.S. GDP.

…most of the defense budget is not spent on weapons, it is spent on items like military pay and benefits, training, maintenance and the like. The amount of money set aside for developing and procuring military equipment in the budget agreement Congress reached last week is $197 billion — a third of the $593 billion defense budget, and barely 1% of GDP (which stands at $19 trillion).

THE PENTAGON’S AIR AND SEA LIFT DEFICIT: My latest Creators Syndicate column.

SANCTUARY SCHOOLS: In ‘act of non-cooperation,’ Los Angeles Unified School District bolsters protections for immigrant students, families.