MICHAEL WALSH: There’s a saying in the intelligence community: when David Ignatius speaks, the CIA’s lips move.

FIGHT THE FUTURE: US regulators just dealt a blow to the most hyped area in tech investing right now.

On Tuesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said that “ICOs” (Initial Coin Offerings) can sometimes be considered securities — and as such are subject to strict laws and regulations.

For the uninitiated, ICOs are a fancy new way of fundraising enabled by digital currencies like Ethereum — participants invest money and receive digital “tokens” in return. Thus far, it has been largely unregulated, with some ICO crowdfunding events raising hundreds of millions of dollars — leading some observers to argue that it is a massive bubble.

But the SEC’s warning means that this free-for-all may not last forever.

All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW (CONT’D): The Navy’s Railgun Is About to Get Faster and More Powerful. It’ll be useful for cracking that Arctic ice.

SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST. Why people are getting the hell out of the Northeast:

The cost of living across the region is among the highest in the nation and three of the five most expensive states or districts in the country (New York, Washington, DC, Massachusetts) are in the area. (The other two states are Hawaii and California.) Having to spend so much just to get by can make getting out of debt seem much harder. And housing costs and taxes in many of these states are also sky-high.

The horrendous weather

We told you winter was coming to the North — and it’s so bad that many people are leaving the Northeast in search of better weather. Indeed, the largest migration between states is from New York to Florida, according to data from the Census Bureau. And simple looks at recent winters in the Northeast explain why. For example, in 2015, Boston had its snowiest winter on record and New York City had one of its snowiest blizzards on record in 2016.

Just ask Karen Lanovi, a lifelong New Yorker who says she “left for better weather,” moving to central Florida 12 years ago. “It has proven a great decision for my husband, myself and our three children. We for the most part have a better life,” she says. The same reasons drove tech entrepreneur Jaimyn Chang out of the Northeast to Austin; he says he was “sick of the ridiculous snowy winters and bone-chilling temperatures” and “ the constant seemingly endless gray overcast days.”

Huh – that’s not what the New York Times was predicting at the start of the 21st century – and as recently as 2014. It’s as if the science is not settled or something.

(Classical reference in headline.)

INEVITABLE: Singapore Startup Launches Cryptocurrency Debit Card.

OH, THAT FAKE NEWS: Misreport Spreads That Psychiatrists May Now Diagnose Trump — the “American Psychoanalytic Association” is not the same thing as the American Psychiatric Association.

Twitchy has a roundup of the damage spread yesterday on Twitter, by Time, Deepak Chopra, Josh Marshall, and representatives of NBC and the Washington Post, among others: “‘F’ing nuts’! ‘Goldwater rule’ Fake News strikes the blue-checkmark brigade. WHERE ARE THE CORRECTIONS?”

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Indie Doc Goes Where Hollywood Fears to Tread.

TV show after TV show altered its programming to embrace “The Resistance.” The progressive movement attempted to overturn the will of the people by removing Trump from office before he even set foot in the White House..

It all happened in less than a year. And we’ll be seeing the fruits of this new creative push for months, if not years, to come.

And then there’s ISIS.

The radical Islamist group’s barbarism is the stuff or our worst nightmares. And they’re on the march. ABC News succinctly captures ISIS’s impact on the globe last year:

…the world’s most brutal terrorist network, not only responsible for thousands of deaths in the Middle East but also linked to hundreds more in dozens of terrorist plots in the West.

It’s been that way since President Barack Obama dismissed the group as a “JV” threat in 2014.

The Democrat-Media Complex has had Obama’s back from the start — why would they stop now? That aside, City of Ghosts looks like great viewing, and believe it or not it’s from Amazon Studios.

And do read the whole thing.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Russia May Put Lasers on Its New Icebreaker Ships: Moscow claims shipboard lasers will cut only ice, not enemy ships and planes. I’m skeptical about the ice-cutting rationale, though.

OH: A White Woman Can’t Walk Down the Street Anymore Without Being Racist. Literally.

JOURNALISM IS ABOUT COVERING IMPORTANT STORIES. WITH A PILLOW, UNTIL THEY STOP MOVING: Networks Cover Up Wasserman Schultz’s Shady IT Staffer Being Arrested, Fired.

Just think of broadcast news as Democrat operatives with Chyrons, and it all makes sense.

Meanwhile, Nick Confessore‏ of the New York Times calls the story “remarkable,” Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post describes it as “Wild,”’ and curiously, neither seems very upset that both of their papers missed it.

Unexpectedly, as they say in the DNC-MSM.

(Classical reference in headline.)

Related: Scott Johnson of Power Line on “The Awan connection.”

JAZZ SHAW: North Korea Within One Year Of Nuke ICBM.

Let’s just get the bad news out of the way up front. We’ve known for quite a while now that North Korea has been working on miniaturizing their nuclear weapons while simultaneously sharing technology with Iran to develop reliable ICBMs. Recent intelligence analysis seemed to indicate that they were making progress, but it was probably still a few years away, giving us time to work on a diplomatic solution. But now our own intelligence community is briefing the Senate and letting them know that the timetable has moved up. Kim Jong-un could have a reliable, nuclear tipped ICBM ready to go by next year. And yes, it could potentially reach the lower 48.

Shoot them down. All of them.

AT AMAZON, deals on Glassware, Barware and Drinkware.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Forward Head Posture Fix. The only time you should push your head forward is in a picture, when “smiling forward” will make your face and jawline look a lot better. (It’s an old model trick).

SALENA ZITO: Why the Rust Belt just gave Donald Trump a hero’s welcome.

Trump’s approval rating, according to Gallup, is 39 percent. Youngstown is the 39 percent.

On Monday, police said that the advance ticket request of over 20,000 had exceeded the 6,000-seat capacity of the center, prompting the event coordinators to put a large screen outside the center for the overflow crowd.

Dave Torrance, from Hermitage, Pa., had left early in the morning with three of his friends to see Trump. Torrance, 71, wore a blue ball cap with “American Patriot” embroidered across the top and a navy T-shirt with an American flag across the front.

Torrance, who is black, says he gets his fair share of criticism from folks when they find out who he supports. He got more when he told them he was driving to see him in person at the rally.

“They don’t understand why I think he is doing OK,” he said. “They don’t think because I am black that I should support him. I am polite about it, but I tell them that politics isn’t about color, it is about accomplishments, and I think Trump is doing the right things.”

Great reporting from Salena, as you’ve come to expect.

IT WILL NOT BE MOURNED: Adobe announces Flash is dead.

Flash is malware masquerading as an interactive content platform.

SILICON VALLEY GROWS EVER CREEPIER: Roomba’s Next Big Step Is Selling Maps of Your Home to the Highest Bidder.

TEXAS CONGRESSMAN: ‘I Would Bulldoze Existing Wall’ at Border.

REPORT: Toyota set to sell long-range, fast-charging electric cars in 2022.

Toyota’s new electric car, to be built on an all-new platform, will use all-solid-state batteries, allowing it to be recharged in just a few minutes, the newspaper said, without citing sources.

By contrast, current electric vehicles (EVs), which use lithium-ion batteries, need 20-30 minutes to recharge even with fast chargers and typically have a range of just 300-400 kilometers (185-250 miles).

Toyota has decided to sell the new model in Japan as early as 2022, the paper said.

Toyota spokeswoman Kayo Doi said the company would not comment on specific product plans but added that it aimed to commercialize all-solid-state batteries by the early 2020s.

Toyota thinks they can beat the range and charging time problems in just five years, and if they can, then the price problem should solve itself quickly enough through economies of scale.

Master those three problems, and the age of the electric car will have arrived.

AMERICA’S LONGEST WAR: Taliban Seizes 3 Districts From Afghan Government.

Bill Roggio:

The loss of the three districts shows that the Taliban is capable of conducting operations in all regions of the country. Even as the three districts fell, the Taliban is on the offensive in all of the other regions. Afghan security forces, which are sustaining record highs in casualties and desertions, is largely on the defensive in most areas of the country.

The state of play of Afghan districts is often difficult to determine. Often, some districts switch hands multiple times over a short period of time. For instance, Nawa district in Helmand province has gone back and forth between the Taliban and the Afghan government four times over the past year. The Afghan government retook it just last week, but the Taliban are fighting to regain control.

In some cases, such as with Jani Khel or all of the districts in Uruzgan province, the Taliban controls all of the district except for the district center, which hosts the government facilities and police headquarters.

Estimates issued by the US military and the Taliban are not that far apart.

Positive spin? At least we agree on something.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Jeff Sessions Lets Cops Be Robbers.

Jacob Sullum:

In theory, the government can forfeit a seized asset only after proving it is a tool or fruit of crime, typically drug trafficking. But the burden of proof is much lighter than in a criminal case, and it applies only if the owner challenges the seizure in court, which often costs more than the asset is worth.

Recognizing how easily innocent people can lose cash, cars, and homes to money-hungry cops, two dozen states and the District of Columbia have reformed their forfeiture laws since 2014. The changes include mandating data collection and reporting, strengthening standards of proof, and requiring a criminal conviction before some or all forfeitures.

By reviving federal “adoption” of forfeitures initiated by state or local agencies, Sessions is offering cops who chafe at these restrictions the option of ignoring them. Adoption, which Attorney General Eric Holder mostly eliminated in 2015, lets police and prosecutors evade state limits on forfeiture and keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds.

Seven states prohibit or restrict such circumvention. But in the rest, cops who do not like reforms aimed at protecting innocent property owners from legalized theft can once again easily dodge them with help from the Justice Department.

Washington is where bad ideas go to achieve immortality.

ERIC HOLDER: ‘Elections are Officially Rigged’ by Republicans, Not Voter Fraud.

HMMM: Trump Should Pocket Minor Healthcare Win and Move to Tax Reform Immediately, Roger Simon writes.

DAVID HARSANYI: So-Called Fact Checkers Keep Butchering The Facts About Obamacare.

“Fact checking” has evolved from an occasionally useful medium to an exercise in revisionism and diversion. Take The Washington Post writer Glenn Kessler’s recent article titled “President Trump’s mangled ‘facts’ about Obamacare.” Headline readers might assume it’s just Trump doing what Trump does most of the time. I almost passed myself. Yet it turns out that all these supposedly “mangled” contentions about Obamacare are, at the very least, debatable assertions.

Kessler, for example, doesn’t approve of this Donald Trump statement: “Americans were told that premiums would go down by $2,500 per year. And instead, their premiums went up to levels that nobody thought even possible.” Other than the hyperbole (“nobody thought even possible”), this statement is substantively true.

Kessler’s ostensive debunking of the “premiums are soaring” claim is really just a confirmation that premiums have indeed risen, augmented by an argument that it wasn’t Obamacare’s fault. Kessler blames the vagaries of modern life and demographics—because these things apparently didn’t exist when Democrats were making their big unrealistic promises in 2009.

Think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines, and you’ll have it exactly right.

THE STATE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND:

Conscience is a flexible thing, so the authorities who blocked a desperate parental bid to risk an untested therapy that just might have helped their child are presumably sleeping soundly with no bad dreams.

But it was a wicked abuse of the state’s coercive power to prevent the parents from trying their best for their child, and it should strengthen the determination of everyone who cares about human liberty to fight the inexorable, gratuitous growth of states that fail at the most basic jobs (like educating children in public schools) but who endlessly seek to expand their ‘competencies’ into new and more challenging fields.

We need states that stick to their knitting: that perform a few core functions efficiently and well, rather than the current set up of slovenly, meddlesome government that fails at basic tasks (like keeping the drinking water safe in Flint) while interfering mindlessly in the most intimate dramas of family life.

The worse a government is at performing its basic tasks, the more energy it seems to spend on virtue-signalling and nannying.