IT’S DIFFERENT WHEN THEY DO IT: Georgetown Islamic Studies Prof. Defends Muslim Slavery.

ANALYSIS: SAD BUT PROBABLY TRUE. South Korea Needs to Realize That North Korea Isn’t Going to Collapse.

Even if it violates much of what we “know” in political science and economics, it has some source of strength—extreme nationalism, a genuine belief in the Kim cult, the regime’s willingness to do anything to survive—that helps it through crises which would bring down similar nation states. North Korea has survived the end of the Cold War; the cutoff of Soviet aid; the death of founder-turned-godhead Kim Il-sung; the famine of the late 1990s; the death of the founder’s heir, Kim Jong-il; and ever-tightening United Nations sanctions. If the North has survived all this, then none of the various ideas out there for change—chasing North Korean money in Chinese banks, inward information flows, airstrikes on missile sites, more sanctions—are a likely to be a magic bullet. All are worth discussion, of course, but given what the regime has survived to date, we must admit that it will be with us for a long time. This will be a long, grinding stalemate—as it has been to date—in which the side that “hangs tough” will triumph.

Predicting the end of the Kim regime is like economists predicting the next recession: They have called seven out of the last zero times.

HUH. SO DOES THIS MEAN THEY’RE NOT THAT INTERESTED IN FIGHTING ISLAMIC EXTREMISM? OF COURSE NOT, THAT’S CRAZY. Fourth Muslim group rejects federal grant to fight extremism.

THE 1980S CALLED, YADDA, YADDA, YADDA: Russian Spy Ship Spotted Off Delaware Coast.

The ship is equipped with technology that can intercept nearby communications and measure U.S. navy sonar capability, officials told FoxNews. “It’s not a huge concern, but we are keeping our eyes on it,” an official elaborated.

The same ship, theSSV-175 Viktor Leonov, has been repeatedly deployed to the U.S. coast and harangued U.S. naval operations. The ship spent nearly a month in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2014 intercepting U.S. communications, after making a brief pit stop in Havana in February. At the time, Pentagon officials suspected the ship of lingering in international waters to monitor U.S. nuclear submarines in Georiga, and other naval installations.

Later that year, the Leonov made its way to the pacific ocean where it clung to U.S. military exercises off the coast of Hawaii. In each case the Russian ship stayed in international waters, which begin 12 nautical miles off the coast of the U.S.

Getting spied on in this way is a small price to pay for enjoying all the benefits freedom of the seas provides.

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Is Berkeley really looking for the protesters who shut down Yiannopoulos? He’s right to call the riots an organized criminal conspiracy. But does it matter, if no one will prosecute the conspirators?

TAKING RENT-SEEKING TO THE NEXT LEVEL: Cosmetology Board Investigates Student for Giving Free Haircuts to Homeless People.

The Arizona State Board of Cosmetology is investigating Juan Carlos Montesdeoca after receiving complaints that he was cutting hair without a license, Tucson News Now reported Monday. According to the complaint, which Montesdeoca shared with the TV station, the board received an anonymous complaint alleging that Montesdeoca was “requesting local businesses and local stylists to help out with free haircuts (unlicensed individuals) to the homeless.”

Montesdeoca gave the free haircuts on January 28 at the library in downtown Tucson. He organized the event through a Facebook group and solicited help from volunteers. He did it “out of the kindness of my heart,” and in memory of his mother, who loved her hair, he told Tucson News Now.

But he forgot to get permission from the state—or, rather, from the cosmetologists who apparently view his act of charity as a form of unwanted competition.

I was about to write “unbelievable,” but this kind of thing has become commonplace.

EIGHT YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT:

MARK STEYN: Headless Body in Gutless Press. “Just asking, but are beheadings common in western New York? I used to spend a lot of time in that neck of the woods and I don’t remember decapitation as a routine form of murder. Yet the killing of Aasiya Hassan seems to have elicited a very muted response. When poor Mrs Hassan’s husband launched his TV network to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims, he had no difficulty generating column inches. … But, when Muzzammil Hassan kills his wife and ‘the face of Muslim news’ is unveiled rather more literally, detached from her corpse at his TV studios, it’s all he can do to make the local press.” Doesn’t fit the narrative.

Still doesn’t.

BECAUSE THERE’S ONE UNDER EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEIR BEDS: How Do You Know He is a Nazi?

THIS ALSO DIDN’T START UNDER TRUMP, BUT SHOULD BE STOPPED: Russian Jets Buzzed U.S. Destroyer.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: An Ivy League professor who spent 4 months working in a South Bronx check-cashing store says we’re getting it all wrong.

BUT… BUT… THAT CONTRADICTS #FASHIONABLELIES: Upset About Border Patrol Cruelty? It Didn’t Start Under Trump.

DON’T COUNT ON IT. SOME THINGS ARE BEYOND SCIENCE: These dance moves will get you more sex.

LIBERAL BOYCOTTERS SHOOT SELVES IN LEFT FOOT: Finley: Left bites Ivanka’s liberal hand.

DID THEY REALLY THINK PEOPLE READ THEM FOR THE STORIES? Playboy is featuring naked women again.

I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN CALLING PEOPLE TEA-BAGGERS WASN’T HOMOPHOBIC: Mainstream Media Scream: Smeared ‘Tea Party’ name OK when it’s liberal.

PFUI. THAT’S WHY WE HAVE GPS:Most Americans can’t find these US territories on a map.

NOT AS HELPFUL A BOOK AS WE MIGHT HAVE WISHED: Here’s what to do when the next big plague hits humanity.

THEY TOLD ME IF DONALD TRUMP WERE ELECTED, THE STREETS WOULD BE FULL OF FASCISTS. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! NYU Postpones Gateway Pundit DC Correspondent Lucian Wintrich’s Speech Due to Threats. “This is what you get after eight years of Barack Obama.”

Related: Canadian Students Rally Behind Liberal Activist Calling on Comrades to ‘Punch a Zionist.’

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DANIEL HANNAN: The Left Is Collapsing Everywhere.

Here’s a startling fact: There have been eight leaders of the British Labour Party in the past 40 years. Seven of them failed to win a single general election. The exception, Tony Blair, was a Labour politician only in the most technical sense. Leftists saw him as a disguised conservative, a cuckoo in the nest. To this day, Labour activists use “Blairite” as the worst of insults, viler even than “Tory.”

Let’s widen the camera shot a little. All over Europe, traditional parties of the Center-Left have been losing badly. As I write, opinion polls show the French Socialists in fourth place, the Dutch Labour Party in seventh. Greece’s PASOK, the leading party since the early 1980s, is now polling at 7 percent. Spain’s PSOE, which had a comfortable majority as recently as 10 years ago, has been displaced by the more radical Podemos. Social Democrats in former communist countries, such as Poland and Hungary, have, if anything, fared even worse. . . .

It is in this context, perhaps, that we should consider American politics. The rest of the world has spent three months asking itself why Donald Trump won. But the more useful question is surely why the Democrats lost. Trump underperformed Republican congressional candidates and secured fewer votes than either John McCain or Mitt Romney. But Hillary Clinton performed execrably – as Democrats have been doing in legislative, gubernatorial and state elections since the 1990s.

Hmm.

BREAKING: Major Blow to Obamacare Mandate: IRS Won’t Reject Tax Returns That Don’t Answer Health Insurance Question. “As of last year, filers were required to indicate whether they had maintained coverage or paid the penalty by filling out line 61 on their form 1040s. Alternatively, they could claim exemption from the mandate by filing a form 8965. For most filers, filling out line 61 was mandatory. The IRS would not accept 1040s unless the coverage box was checked, or the shared responsibility payment noted, or the exemption form included. Otherwise they would be labeled ‘silent returns’ and rejected. This year, however, filling out that line is optional.”

CONNIE DU TOIT HAS PASSED AWAY: And Kim has a gofundme to try to put his life back together.

From the gofundme page:

Now my beloved Conne is gone, and I have to restart my life. This means clearing the debt, leaving the house where we lived together, and learning how to live without the woman who made my life possible. I’m a writer, and I have to write again, because it’s all I know. So I’ll be finishing those long-neglected novels, and yes — I will start blogging again. I just need the funds to make that possible.

Please help me.

UPDATE (From Glenn): I donated $100. (Bumped).

SO I MENTIONED A WHILE BACK THAT I BOUGHT A NIKON D500. I haven’t gotten to use it much, but here’s a pic from my dad’s memorial service. It was handheld, 1/3 of a second at 112mm on the 18-200 VR zoom. (VR means vibration reduction, which is just Nikon’s name for optical image stabilization). This is unsharpened, unedited, just as it came from the camera. I adjusted the ISO up to 4000 after this shot, but it turned out pretty well.

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PREGNANT SEA MONSTER UPDATE: Relax. It’s a fossil. Of dinocephalosaurus, “which lived about 245 million years ago during the Triassic Period.” But of course you knew that.