PLEASE, NO: Amazon, Google Dial Up Plans to Turn Smart Speakers Into Home Phones.

Amazon’s Echo or the Google Home could be used to make or receive calls, people familiar with the matter said, a functionality that would give them further control over consumers’ digital lives at home.

The tech giants could launch the feature this year, the people said—but the effort is hung up over concerns about privacy, telecom regulations and emergency services. And they are aware of the inherent awkwardness of having phone conversations on a speaker.

Amazon and Google are part of a broader race among tech giants to create and install digital assistants in everything from cars to homes. Adding phone capability is a way to tack on more functions, which could lead to greater adoption and more frequent use.

Such a feature would further disrupt traditional telecom firms like AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. The speakers could diminish the dwindling landline business and take attention away from smartphones.

I barely want my phone to act as a phone.

HMM: With Michael Flynn Gone, Russia Sees a Different Trump. “Now, there is a sense that the Kremlin might be unsettled by the president of a far more powerful country deploying Mr. Putin’s favorite tactic: unpredictability.” As I noted earlier, Hillary boosted Trump for the GOP nomination thinking he’d be easy to beat. How’d that work out?

Conspiracy theory of the day: The leaks about Flynn actually came from Trump as a way of cutting the Russians loose now that he doesn’t need them. The truth is out there!

I THOUGHT THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED: Cooking with butter may be more heart-healthy than vegetable oil: Study. I forget who said it, but “I prefer butter to margarine because I trust cows more than chemists.” Plus, grassfed butter is better because of the higher levels of vitamin K.

SORRY NOT SORRY: NY Times reporter apologizes for calling First Lady Melania Trump ‘a hooker’

“I want to take ownership of a mistake I made,” New York Times features writer Jacob Bernstein said on Twitter. “Speaking at a party in what I thought was a personal conversation, I nevertheless made a stupid remark about the first lady.”

He continued, “My editors have made it clear my behavior was not in keeping with the standards of the Times, and I agree. My mistake, referring to unfounded rumors, shouldn’t reflect on anyone else and I apologize profusely.”

Model Emily Ratajkowski revealed in a tweet Monday that an unidentified New York Times reporter called the first lady a “hooker.”

“Sat next to a journalist from the NYT last night who told me ‘Melania is a hooker,'” the model tweeted.

It’s difficult to take seriously an apology from a New York Times writer when it’s published on a Twitter account with barely over 10,000 followers.

But I guess the good news is that it’s no longer racist to call the First Lady a hooker.

FAKE NEWS:

IT’S DIFFERENT WHEN THEY DO IT:

Worse, failed-novelist-turned-Obama-Administration-fabulist Ben Rhodes bragged about lying to the press, insulted them to their faces as 27-year-old-know-nothings — and the press came back pleading for “More, sir, please?”

TOP CALIFORNIA DEM: ‘Half of My Family’ Could be Deported by Trump Order.

Lawmakers and their families don’t have to follow the laws, right?

MORE ON TRUMP-NETANHYAHU MEETING: Trump, Netanyahu to Reset US-Israeli Relations After Strained 8 Years.

Schanzer believes both the Iran deal and the settlements issue can be addressed without too much controversy.

“With the settlements, there was common ground reached by Bush and Ariel Sharon, which allowed Israelis to continue to build in areas that already have significant Israeli population,” Schanzer said, referring to former President George W. Bush and Sharon, a former Israeli prime minister.

Schanzer added it might be difficult to undo the entire Iran nuclear deal, which relieved sanctions on the country, and was agreed upon by the United States and five other countries. However, it’s likely Trump will enforce the agreement in a way Obama would not.

“It will be about rigorous enforcement of the deal and not allowing Iran to cheat even in minor ways,” Schanzer said. “The Obama administration wouldn’t enforce this out of fear the deal would unravel. Trump doesn’t care about Obama’s foreign policy legacy.”

Bingo.

OF COURSE IT DOES: NYT Ignores Obvious Fix For NY Subway Delays:

The Times mentions a few fixes which could improve service, but although it references signal improvements, it doesn’t specifically identify the most obvious potential solution: installing Communications Based Train Control (CBTC). CBTC technology isn’t cheap, and it’s already in place on several lines, but it would allow the MTA to run trains closer together. On the old analog system (yes, you read that right; most of the current Subway uses physical switches), dispatchers don’t actually know exactly where trains are on the line. They only know which section of track a train has most recently passed over. That limits how often trains can run during rush hour. Additionally, switch failure is the number one cause of delays.

Advanced CBTC technology has been around since the 1990s, but MTA has been slow to adopt it. The reasons include significant and unavoidable costs and hassles. But one cause which goes unmentioned in the NYT is the power of public sector transit unions. Unions don’t like CBTC because it eliminates lots of jobs. For example, the teams of specialized technicians on staff to maintain the decrepit and ancient signal system wouldn’t have much to do if CBTC were adopted system-wide. And, because CBTC can enable fully-automated trains, conductors and engineers could be out of a job too. These potential savings on labor costs could make up for some of the cost of installing CBTC in just a few years. But due to union agreements with MTA, even lines that have CBTC installed and could run autonomously are required to be staffed by conductors and engineers—often two per train—who can make upwards of six figures by the end of their careers.

In the private sector, firms have taken advantage of technological advances to reduce labor costs. That has had some negative effects on employment and career opportunities for working class Americans, but it’s also helped bring costs down enormously across a variety of industries while simultaneously improving customer experiences. In part thanks to the power of public sector unions, government agencies haven’t delivered the efficiencies of the 21st century to their constituents. For savvy politicians, that leaves some low-hanging fruit. But the New York Times won’t tell you that.

Well, public sector unions support Democrats, and the NYT is a Democratic Party organ.

BE CAREFUL OUT THERE: New Mac malware pinned on same Russian group blamed for election hacks.

Like its counterparts for other platforms, the Mac version of Xagent is a modular backdoor that can be customized to meet the objectives of a given intrusion, researchers from antivirus provider Bitdefender reported in a blog post published Tuesday. Capabilities include logging passwords, snapping pictures of screen displays, and stealing iOS backups stored on the compromised Mac.

The discovery builds on the already considerable number of tools attributed to APT28, which other researchers call Sofacy, Sednit, Fancy Bear, and Pawn Storm. According to researchers at CrowdStrike and other security firms, APT28 has been operating since at least 2007 and is closely tied to the Russian government. An analysis Bitdefender published last year determined APT28 members spoke Russian, worked mostly during Russian business hours, and pursued targets located in Ukraine, Spain, Russia, Romania, the US, and Canada.

And from the comments: “These malwares are mostly used for targeted attacks, I don’t think you’re likely to run into them in the wild.”

SHADOW ADMINISTRATION: Former Obama Officials, Loyalists Waged Secret Campaign to Oust Flynn.

The effort, said to include former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes—the architect of a separate White House effort to create what he described as a pro-Iran echo chamber—included a small task force of Obama loyalists who deluged media outlets with stories aimed at eroding Flynn’s credibility, multiple sources revealed.

The operation primarily focused on discrediting Flynn, an opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, in order to handicap the Trump administration’s efforts to disclose secret details of the nuclear deal with Iran that had been long hidden by the Obama administration.

Insiders familiar with the anti-Flynn campaign told the Free Beacon that these Obama loyalists plotted in the months before Trump’s inauguration to establish a set of roadblocks before Trump’s national security team, which includes several prominent opponents of diplomacy with Iran. The Free Beacon first reported on this effort in January.

This political conspiracy is a much bigger story than the ouster of a single person, but it won’t be reported that way.

WELL, THAT’S COMFORTING: Immigration Expert: 50 Million Muslims Support Violent Defense Of Islam.

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BRET BAIER: Dems Smell Blood in the Water After Flynn Ouster.

DAN MARKEL UPDATE: Two Prison Inmates Provide Link To Adelsons In Dan Markel’s Murder.

NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF FAKE NEWS:

WELL, GOOD: Trump to greet Netanyahu by abandoning ‘2-state’ doctrine.

If we assume that the two-state solution was ever viable, it lost even our ability to assume when Arafat rejected a deal giving the Palestinians 93% of what they wanted, in favor of waging a renewed terror war against Israel.

WELL, THAT’S BECAUSE IT’S NOT: Poll: Majority of voters don’t think Trump’s executive order is a ‘Muslim ban.’

The Feb. 11-13 survey found 56 percent of registered voters deemed the order a “terrorist hot spot restriction,” while 37 percent said it was a “Muslim ban.”

Although more than half of the those polled do not believe the move was not an attempt to discriminate based on religion, a majority of the country disapproves of the executive order. Forty-six percent supported Trump’s Jan. 27 immigration order.

This shows more critical thinking ability than most of our pundits.

THE HILL: Chairman: House intel panel won’t investigate Flynn, will probe leaks.

DON’T CALL IT A DEATH SPIRAL: Humana says it plans to pull out of Obamacare exchanges in 2018.

The GOP Congress is so forward-thinking, they’ve even privatized ObamaCare repeal!

CHATTER: Harward emerges as front-runner to replace Flynn following talks.

Vice Adm. Robert Harward, a former deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command, became the front-runner late Monday to replace Michael Flynn as the White House national security adviser, following lengthy discussions among top advisers to President Trump and several Cabinet members after Flynn resigned.

Harward’s rapid ascension to the top of Trump’s three-person shortlist for the position was confirmed by two White House officials who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Vice President Pence has been leading the discussions and working closely with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Homeland Security Security John F. Kelly, CIA director Mike Pompeo, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, the officials said.

Harward served under Mattis while he was at U.S. Central Command and remains an ally and friend of the defense secretary.

The Mattis-Harward connection would smooth out what looked like was going to be a dangerously rocky relationship between Defense and D.I.A.

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DAMON LINKER IN THE WEEK: America’s spies anonymously took down Michael Flynn. That is deeply worrying.

The whole episode is evidence of the precipitous and ongoing collapse of America’s democratic institutions — not a sign of their resiliency. Flynn’s ouster was a soft coup (or political assassination) engineered by anonymous intelligence community bureaucrats. The results might be salutary, but this isn’t the way a liberal democracy is supposed to function.

Unelected intelligence analysts work for the president, not the other way around. Far too many Trump critics appear not to care that these intelligence agents leaked highly sensitive information to the press — mostly because Trump critics are pleased with the result. “Finally,” they say, “someone took a stand to expose collusion between the Russians and a senior aide to the president!” It is indeed important that someone took such a stand. But it matters greatly who that someone is and how they take their stand. Members of the unelected, unaccountable intelligence community are not the right someone, especially when they target a senior aide to the president by leaking anonymously to newspapers the content of classified phone intercepts, where the unverified, unsubstantiated information can inflict politically fatal damage almost instantaneously. . . .

But no matter what Flynn did, it is simply not the role of the deep state to target a man working in one of the political branches of the government by dishing to reporters about information it has gathered clandestinely. It is the role of elected members of Congress to conduct public investigations of alleged wrongdoing by public officials.

What if Congress won’t act? What if both the Senate and the House of Representatives are held by the same party as the president and members of both chambers are reluctant to cross a newly elected head of the executive branch who enjoys overwhelming approval of his party’s voters? In such a situation — our situation — shouldn’t we hope the deep state will rise up to act responsibly to take down a member of the administration who may have broken the law?

The answer is an unequivocal no.

In a liberal democracy, how things happen is often as important as what happens. Procedures matter. So do rules and public accountability.

You can bet that a lot of Trump supporters are concluding that if none of those things is true, so be it. . . .

DAVID HARSANYI: Why “The Resistance” Is The Best Thing That’s Happened To Donald Trump: By offering a zero-sum choice, Democrats have made defending the president a lot easier. “For pundits on the Left, the idea that conservatives can judge the presidency issue by issue is completely unacceptable. . . . The Resistance gives conservatives the space to defend long-standing political positions such as school choice, immigration enforcement, and deregulation. I imagine many Republicans would happily hand over the scalp of more Michael Flynns if it meant creating a more stable and experienced administration. But they also understand that people who treat DeVos like a bigger threat to the republic than Steve Bannon will never be placated. Those who spend weeks after the election acting like the Electoral College was some kind trick pulled on the country are not interested in ‘rule of law.’ They’re interested in Democrats.”