CHANGE: Young Blood Offered As Anti-Aging Therapy, But Is It Ready?

I dunno, it kinda looks like it’s not so much that young blood is good for you, as that old blood is bad for you.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: “I have disagreed with Senator Ron Wyden on practically every political question there is, but he always has struck me as a decent and honest man, and so it is with a heavy heart that I write these words: Senator Wyden must resign his seat in light of disturbing new information about his past that has come to light. The shocking revelation: Senator Wyden has been, for more than a decade, a willing accomplice to a plot to undermine the American political order and to overthrow the Constitution by infiltrating agents of radicalism into the highest reaches of the federal judiciary.”

Read the whole thing.

WE AREN’T AS SERIOUS ABOUT COMBATING CARBON EMISSIONS: China’s Nuclear Power Capacity Set to Overtake U.S. Within Decade.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Democrats are becoming the party of secession.

Cross-filed under: Headlines from 1860.

HEALTH: How Samsung is leveraging VR to manage pain.

Together, Samsung and AppliedVR are working with a group of hospitals to validate the technology for children and adults. In one randomized controlled trial, the two have collaborated with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to evaluate the clinical utility of VR for inpatient pain management and its effect on narcotic use, length of stay, and patient satisfaction. The study is currently recruiting up to 120 hospitalized adults, according to the description on ClinicalTrials.gov’s website.

Dr. David Rhew, who is Samsung’s chief medical officer and head of healthcare and fitness, noted that virtual reality is commanding respect for its ability to relieve patients’ stress, anxiety, and pain before and after a procedure.

“Clinical findings from Cedars-Sinai and AppliedVR have shown that VR results in a 25 percent reduction in pain, in many cases obviating the need for narcotics, and a 60 percent reduction in stress and anxiety,” he said in a phone interview.

Realer, please.

I’M NOT SAYING THAT IT’S ALIENS, BUT IT’S ALIENS: An unexplained ‘void’ appears to be pushing the Milky Way through the Universe at 2 million km/h: We’re fleeing from a mysterious ‘dead zone’. Thanks, aliens, for saving the galaxy!

NEAL K. KATYAL: Why Liberals Should Back Neil Gorsuch.

I believe this, even though we come from different sides of the political spectrum. I was an acting solicitor general for President Barack Obama; Judge Gorsuch has strong conservative bona fides and was appointed to the 10th Circuit by President George W. Bush. But I have seen him up close and in action, both in court and on the Federal Appellate Rules Committee (where both of us serve); he brings a sense of fairness and decency to the job, and a temperament that suits the nation’s highest court.

Katyal was President Obama’s former acting solicitor general.

I BLAME DANA LOESCH: Americans Are Eating So Much Bacon That Reserves Are at a 50-Year Low.

THE JOYS AND PAINS OF DRILLING YOUR OWN WELL. I helped a friend’s brother drill a well once. It was fun for me.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: AZ Bill Would Allow Residents to Shoot Nuisance Wildlife.

NOW WHO WILL SAVE US FROM THE WEATHER? Tom Steyer Moves Beyond Climate.

The billionaire will expand the focus of his environmental political advocacy group, NextGen Climate Action, to fund initiatives and candidates with an eye to issues well beyond the realm of climate change, Steyer said in an interview on Tuesday.

The 59-year-old Steyer, a San Francisco hedge fund manager and possible contender for next year’s California governor’s race, said he made the decision to broaden his reach in response to Trump and to a legislative agenda he described as “deplorable” and “a barrage against the basic fabric of American society.”

The exact contours of NextGen’s transition, Steyer said, will be determined by what he hears in response to a video he released Tuesday to solicit ideas from activists like the millions who attended marches over inauguration weekend. “We want to know what matters most to you, and what should be done,” he says in the clip.

As Glenn likes to say, I’ll believe the climate is in crisis when they start behaving like it’s in crisis.

BuzzFeed link, so click at your own risk.

INSTEAD OF “NUCLEAR OPTION,” if Republicans end the filibuster maybe they should call it the “Reid Option” in memory of its author.

CHANGE: United States, Saudi defence chiefs reject Iran ‘interventions’

New Pentagon chief James Mattis agreed in a telephone call with his Saudi counterpart to oppose Iranian “interventions” in the Middle East, Saudi state media reported on Wednesday.

Mattis and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman expressed “their full rejection of the suspicious activities and interventions by the Iranian regime and its agents”, the Saudi Press Agency said.

The two ministers spoke on Tuesday.

Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia regularly accuses Shiite Iran of interference in the region, while some of President Donald Trump`s picks for cabinet have adopted an anti-Iran stance.

Mattis, a retired four-star Marine general, has described Iran as “the biggest destabilising force in the Middle East”.

Well, Iran certainly didn’t have much meeting their aggression from the previous Administration.

ROGER KIMBALL: Donald Trump vs. Immanuel Kant.

Perhaps Australia knows the real truth.

TRAVEL: 3 Teams Advance in Hyperloop Competition.

“We could see the different engineering approaches taken by the teams and talk with them about their pods,” explained David Goldsmith, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech University, which participated in the competition.

“We saw pods that had gone down different developmental paths, and we saw pods that had gone down the same path we had,” he told TechNewsWorld. “That was invaluable.”

The competition also helped the teams define the parameters of their knowledge.

“We now know what we don’t know,” Texas A&M’s Karpetis remarked. “We did not know a lot of little things, from electronics, to breaking, to levitation, to batteries.”

If you haven’t seen the amazing Hyperloop concept in action, here’s an excellent animated presentation.

ORRIN HATCH ON THE SENATE DEMOCRATS: “I don’t care what they want at this point.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:

The speaker, who is wearing a Black Lives Matter sweatshirt, isn’t identified by name but says at one point, “I am a pre-school teacher who is going to f**king radicalize mother-f**king four year olds and five year olds.” This brings a huge cheer from the crowd.

After opening the rant with, “F**k white supremacy. F**k the U.S. empire” the speaker attacks capitalism. “You know what America thrives off of? Capitalism,” the speaker says, adding, “We use our mother=f**king, f**king black and brown bodies to live and survive while white people own f**king properties after that.” But the speaker has a solution for this problem, “So you know what we need to do? We need to start giving f**king money.” The rant continues, “White people, give your f**king money, your f**king house, your f**king property, we need it f**king all. You need to reparate black and indigenous people right now.”

A minute or so later, the speaker takes it up a notch saying, “And we need to stark killing people. First off, we need to start killing the White House. The White House must die.”

I eagerly await Paul Krugman’s swift and brutal denunciation of this ugly and violent eliminationist rhetoric by a person with such influence over others.

K.C. JOHNSON & STUART TAYLOR: Campus due process in the courts.

BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE WRONG? British Medical Association Wants Doctors to Stop Calling Pregnant Women ‘Expectant Mothers’

ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Sally Yates was wrong and should have resigned.

An attorney general, like any citizen, has the right to disagree with a presidential order, but unless it is clear that the order is unlawful, she has no authority to order the Justice Department to refuse to enforce it. This order is multifaceted and complex. It raises serious constitutional and legal issues that deserved nuanced and calibrated consideration from the nation’s highest law officer.

There are significant differences between the constitutional status of green card holders on the one hand, and potential visitors from another country who are seeking visas. Moreover, there are statutory issues in addition to constitutional ones. A blanket order to refuse to defend any part of the statute is overkill. If she strongly disagreed with the policies underlying the order, she should have resigned in protest, and left it to others within the Justice Department to defend those parts of the order that are legally defensible.

Honor is as rare in former President Obama’s high-level Justice Department appointees as it is among thieves.

GOOD LORD: Executive Order Separates Badly Burned Iraqi Boy From Family.

After a heater exploded in the Iraqi refugee camp where he was sleeping, an aid group got two travel visas and rushed the boy to Shriner’s Hospital in Boston along with his father.

After preliminary surgery, his dad returned to their war-ravaged country to be with his wife as she gave birth to Dilbreen’s little brother. It was November 8th an hour before Donald Trump won the election. They named the baby ‘Trump.’

Dilbreen was set for a second surgery this month. His family was set to stay at the Peace House in Ipswich. Then they got the news their visas were suddenly revoked.

“So they are stranded in Iraq,” Schuchardt said. “The child is here. The need for surgery is pressing.”

RELATED: 5 Year-Old Iranian-American Boy Handcuffed, Held at Dulles Airport for Hours.

Even the most reasonable policy can have horrifying results when the rollout is rushed and not fully thought through.

THE ATTACK ON ADIIVKA: Russia’s latest Ukraine probe looks like it targets the Trump Administration.

THANKS, OBAMA: Iran confirms new missile test, says not against nuclear deal.

“The recent test was in line with our plans and we will not allow foreigners to interfere in our defense affairs,” Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan said, according to Tasnim news agency.

“The test did not violate the nuclear deal or the (U.N.)resolution 2231,” he said.

A U.S. official said on Monday that Iran test-launched a medium-range ballistic missile on Sunday and it exploded after traveling 630 miles (1,010 km).

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif neither confirmed nor denied the U.S. report, but said on Tuesday that Tehran would never use its ballistic missiles to attack another country.

Meanwhile 220 Iranian lawmakers supported Tehran’s missile program, calling international condemnation of the tests “illogical”.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is against weapons of mass destruction, so its missile capability is the only available deterrence against enemy hostility,” the parliamentarians said in a statement carried on state media on Wednesday.

You can believe Iran’s words about weapons of mass destruction, or place your trust in their actions.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Immigration, ObamaCare, and Unintended Consequences.

The idea reportedly under consideration is to alter the conditions under which potential immigrants are considered likely to become a “public charge.” The government currently bars people from admission to the U.S., or from getting a green card, if they are deemed likely to need cash benefits like Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. But of course, there are also substantial non-cash benefits available to people legally living in the U.S., especially health-care services like Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program or Obamacare subsidies. Barring individuals who might benefit from those programs would significantly reduce the number of lower-skilled immigrants who are eligible to stay in the U.S. legally.

Such a change in immigration criteria might also have a major impact on those programs. Because American immigration policy is biased toward family reunification, more than the skills-based systems used by many other countries, we get a lot of lower-skilled immigrants who receive some help from the government (and, of course, contribute to the economy and the tax base). For example, legal immigrants benefited from Obamacare much more than native-born citizens. Those people will continue to benefit; the proposal is apparently to change how we assess new immigrants, not people who have already gotten green cards or been naturalized. But changing the nature of our immigration flows would change how many people those programs cover in the future.

I favor a more skills-based approach, myself.