POLITICO: Senator Kid Rock: Don’t Laugh.

A YEAR AGO: Leaked DNC Emails Reveal Discussions About Attacking Bernie Sanders’ Religion.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Research shows how physical exercise prevents dementia: Findings show physical activity can influence brain metabolism and prevent the increase in a certain metabolite.

RICHARD DAWKINS NOW A HERETIC TO “PROGRESSIVES:” “It is interesting to know that in the eyes of progressives like these, some religions are more worthy of consideration than others. Islam, generally speaking, is vastly more illiberal than Christianity. Somehow, though, Islam falls under the protecting veil of progressivism.”

The enemy of my enemy is my friend – plus the hope that they’ll be devoured last. And as Mark Steyn wrote a decade ago, in the post-9/11 leftwing worldview, “our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people’s intolerance, which is intolerable. And, unlikely as it sounds, this has now become the highest, most rarefied form of multiculturalism. So you’re nice to gays and the Inuit? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of fellows like that, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti masochists.”

EUGENE VOLOKH: Can accusation of lynching be ordered taken down as a supposed threat of lynching?

I agree that “Lynching is our paradigmatic image of private racist violence against African American,” but here it is being used to accuse Brummer of figurative racist violence — and of literal racist adjudication — not to threaten Brummer. The “tragic history and present-day reality of racism” can’t justify, I think, categorically labeling images of lynching associated with a person as threats, when the person is accused of being the perpetrator of lynching (not urged as a target for lynching).

Yeah, I wish I were amazed that someone got a court to order this taken down, but I’m not amazed by much anymore.

DISPATCHES FROM THE K-12 IMPLOSION. New York City’s school buses are hell on wheels:

Nearly 1,000 city school-bus drivers and escorts were suspended or fired for misbehavior in 2015 — an alarming number that has skyrocketed in recent years, records show.

One driver was seen dropping his pants outside a school, twice in one day. Another urinated in a bottle on a bus with a child aboard because he had a “bladder and bowel condition.”

One carried Coors Light; another reeked of pot. One denied dozing off at the wheel, but was caught on video by frightened attendants.

The city Department of Education listed 760 disciplined drivers and 185 errant escorts. The vast majority were removed without pay for a few days to six months — but then allowed to return.

Read the whole, depressing, thing. Why are Democrat-monopoly cities such cesspits of institutional neglect?

THIS IS INTERESTING: Oxygen therapy revives brain of toddler who nearly drowned.

In one of the first such confirmed cases, an Arkansas toddler who suffered severe brain injury after nearly drowning has had that brain damage reversed, using a new treatment.

The treatment is known as hyperbaric oxygen therapy, or HBOT. It exposes a patient to pure oxygen within the confines of a carefully controlled pressurized chamber. During the therapy, the body gets three times the normal amount of oxygen, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. . . .

One reason hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been met with skepticism is that it’s been difficult to explain how this treatment works, he said.

But several recent studies involving adult acute injury patients have indicated that even a single session of HBOT can have an immediate impact on the activity of thousands of genes critical to the promotion of tissue recovery, Harch explained.

Amazing that it worked months after the injury.

HERPA-DERP: Saying ‘Derpy’ Is No Longer Permitted? That’s Dumb.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IS THE BANE OF ART: Deaf director Eli Steele thought he found the perfect leading man for his 2005 film. That didn’t matter to one vocal community.

TRUMP LIVES RENT FREE IN THE FANTASY WORLD IN THEIR HEADS: The creative team behind the upcoming HBO series say it’s all about the Trump effect on modern America.

LOCAL POLITICIAN WITH DIRTY MIND UNDERTAKES TO SULLY LOCAL BUSINESS:Restaurant under fire for ‘sexually suggestive’ uniforms.

OTTO WARMBIER NOT AVAILABLE FOR ENDORSEMENT: North Korea launches new online tourism site.

AS WEAPONS: On Intimidation and Character Assassination.

AND YOU THINK I EXAGGERATE THE DANGER FROM THE RODENT LIBERATION FRONT?  Crazed squirrel goes on biting rampage in Prospect Park.

DEVIL ARK SOUNDS LIKE THE TITLE OF A DARK FANTASY NOVEL, BUT IT TURNS OUT THEY WORK FOR GOOD: Record 51 Tasmanian Devils Born at Devil Ark.

ME, ONE YEAR AGO: Trump’s not a savior — but neither was Obama.

Obama has continued in this vein much more recently, telling police, “I’m your best hope” in his address after the police shootings by black nationalist Micah X. Johnson.

Obama wasn’t the Messiah, of course, and his feet of clay are now abundantly evident to everyone, except probably him. (With US troops fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan today, even that ending-war stuff turns out to have been a sham, never mind the rise of the oceans stuff. And all the email-deletion and document-shredding doesn’t look very messianic either.)

But that’s no surprise. If it’s salvation you seek, you won’t find it from a politician of either party. They’re pretty much all very naughty boys. And girls. Vote accordingly.

Indeed. Though by not being Hillary or Obama, Trump’s been successful enough to make me glad he won. And the nonstop butthurt from the DC crowd — Democrats and Republicans — is delicious. What really gets them, I think, is that they think Trump is miles beneath them, but the public seems to think that there’s not much difference.

MICHAEL WALSH ON THE ‘AMAZON WASHINGTON POST,’ AND WHY IT NEEDS TO BE DESTROYED.

CAN THE PRESIDENT PARDON HIMSELF? YES HE CAN! Mark Tushnet has it right.

The president’s constitutional power to pardon “offenses against the United States” is limited only by excluding “cases of Impeachment.” A self-pardon for ordinary criminal offenses does not fall within that exception, on my understanding.

A self-pardon might well be outrageously improper (unless there was the prospect of charges brought by a rogue prosecutor, whom, for some reason, the president could not control by firing him or her), but the response the Constitution creates for such misconduct is impeachment, a political rather than criminal remedy.

I think that Congress could impose some procedural rules on pardons under its Necessary and Proper Clause powers, but the power itself is plenary.

And for those saying that this is a sign of how far we’ve fallen, well, yes, but not necessarily the way they mean. People were talking about impeaching Trump before the election results were official. That fact tells us less about Trump than about the people who hate him.

Trump, as I keep saying, is a symptom of how rottenly dysfunctional our sorry political class is. Take away Trump and they’re just as awful and destructive. He just brings their awfulness to the fore, where it’s no longer ignorable. Now they’re willing to play with fire, risking the future of the polity over little more than hurt feelings, in a way that would have been unthinkable not long ago.

Related: Thomas Frank: The media’s war on Trump is destined to fail. Why can’t it see that? “Everything they do, they do as a herd – even when it’s running headlong over a cliff. . . . It happens because so many of them are part of the same class – an exalted and privileged class. They are professionals and they believe in the things that so many other professional groups believe in: consensus, ‘realism,’ credentialing, the wisdom of their fellow professionals and (of course) the stupidity of the laity. This is the key to understanding many of their biases – and also for understanding why they are so utterly oblivious to how they appear to the rest of America.”

Plus: Mueller and Trump Prepare for War with America the Loser.

Watergate ended with a whimper, not a bang. After months of sturm und drang, Richard Nixon finally mounted that helicopter, gave that famous farewell peace sign and flew away. Most Americans were relieved to see him go. Our long national nightmare was over.

If something similar happens to Donald Trump, it will be entirely different. A significant portion of the American public — myself admittedly among them — will be convinced he has been railroaded in a partisan hatchet job. The voters who elected the president are going to feel, at the very least, undermined, more likely betrayed, by their own government and public officials. Many are going to feel this has nothing to do whatsoever with justice and will act accordingly.

The exact results of this mammoth national split are not easy to predict but they could range from massive civil disobedience to outright civil war.

Our political class, oblivious to this — see above — is playing with fire, but it is too foolish and self-obsessed to realize it.

AS KURT SCHLICHTER SAYS, THEY’RE REALLY GOING TO HATE THE NEW RULES: Americans Protest ‘Very Fake News’ CNN Outside of Atlanta Headquarters. “More than 150” is more than Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson generally deliver.

RUNNING OUT OF ROAD FOR CAN-KICKING: Experts: North Korea Will Be Able to Strike L.A. Within a Decade.

THIS ISN’T A HUGE SURPRISE FOR THOSE WHO HAVE FOLLOWED GARY TAUBES’ WRITINGS, ETC.: Study: Regular soda causes body to store more fat after high-protein meals. “Folks who had a sweetened drink with a high-protein meal stored more unused fat, compared to others who ate the same food with a sugar-free beverage, laboratory tests revealed.”

GOOD NEWS! Well, maybe. Many people being treated for Alzheimer’s may not actually have it.

AT AMAZON, save on Vitamins and Dietary Supplements.

Plus, deals on bestselling Office Products.

FAT-SHAMING SAVES ANOTHER LIFE: Size 20 woman gets back at fat-shaming ex with size 8 revenge body. If she’d lost it sooner, he might not have been an ex.

Related: Man loses 70 pounds after his poker buddies bet him $1M that he couldn’t.