ANDREW MCCARTHY: Was the Steele Dossier Used to Obtain a FISA Warrant Against Trump’s Campaign? We Need To Know The Answer. I figure that was the “insurance policy.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the U.S. Antitrust Movement. I still think we’ll see some serious antitrust action in the next few years. And I think it’s time.

YOU JUST WANT PEOPLE TO DIE!!! ON THE LEFT, IT IS ALL HYSTERIA, ALL THE TIME.

AT AMAZON, deals galore on Practical Gifts.

Plus, save on Last-Minute Deals.

NY GIANTS FINE CORNERBACK ELI APPLE FOR TWEETING DURING GAME:

Apple was inactive for the game and not in uniform. However, tweeting from the sidelines, or in the immediate aftermath of games, is prohibited by the league.

“I wasn’t confused. It was just a mistake by me,” Apple said Thursday.

Apple hasn’t played in over a month as he’s been inactive for the Giants’ last four games. While the policy against tweeting is a league rule, the Giants fining him takes care of the matter and he won’t be fined by the league as well.

Huh. I thought the NFL couldn’t enforce against inappropriate sideline behavior…

HIGH-RANKING INNER PARTY MEMBER CONFESSES TO BEING EXPOSED TO DOUBLEPLUS UNGOOD CRIMETHINK! Meryl Streep Admits She Reads Drudge, Watches Fox News.

That’s a surefire way to wind-up in Room 101. Or at least Room 102.

COUNT ME AMONG THE CRITICS: Critics alarmed at antibiotic use for livestock despite recent reduction. I’ve always felt that there’s a better case for strict controls on antibiotics than on recreational drugs. If you abuse recreational drugs, you’re hurting yourself. If you abuse antibiotics, you could create a resistant strain that will kill thousands.

EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Baby, It’s Unplayful and Ahistorical Outside. Neo-Neocon on “the current drive to ban ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ for being insufficiently PC in the sexual assault/harassment realm.”

WHERE IS NAT TURNER?

A literary anniversary passed unobserved in 2017: the 50th anniversary of the publication of William Styron’s enthralling historical novel The Confessions of Nat Turner, which tells the story of the slave who led a bloody rebellion in Virginia. While Vintage International’s 25th anniversary edition remains in print, the publisher hasn’t offered an edition honoring the book’s 50th year, and to my knowledge, no commemorative articles have appeared.

* * * * * * * *

My guess is that the nonobservance springs from reluctance to get embroiled in a replay of the controversy that erupted soon after the novel appeared. The Confessions of Nat Turner was celebrated when it was published in 1967—a Pulitzer Prize winner and Book of the Month Club selection, it made the New York Times bestseller list and scored a movie deal with Twentieth Century Fox. But Styron was soon condemned by black intellectuals for an offense more broadly condemned in 2017 than in 1967: a white novelist and native of Virginia, he had presumed to write historical fiction in the first person about a real human being who had been a rebellious black slave. He even had the temerity to lift his title from the original “Confessions of Nat Turner,” the brief document based on statements by Turner that white lawyer Thomas Gray recorded shortly before Turner was hanged in 1831, at about the age of 31.

The attacks on Styron in the late 1960s sound like a prelude to what we often hear and read half a century later. Less than a year after the novel appeared, Beacon Press published William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, a collection of essays in which the novelist was called “an unreconstructed Southern racist” suffering from “moral senility” who “dehumanizes every black person in the book” to affirm “all of the myths and prejudices about the American black man.” The attacks prompted Invisible Man novelist Ralph Ellison to declare that he wouldn’t read the novel.

In his afterword to the 25th anniversary edition, Styron recalls that he naively persisted in making public appearances before “predominantly young black audiences” to plead his case. The encounters often turned out to be “raucous sessions, where the gathering was drenched with hostility.” Styron adds that “[b]y this time, I was being stalked from Boston to New Orleans by a young dashiki-clad firebrand, who unnerved me.” Twentieth Century Fox shelved plans for the film.

“The ultimate endpoint of keeping our mitts off experience that doesn’t belong to us is that there is no fiction,” novelist Lionel Shriver warned last year in a speech at the Brisbane Writers Festival. She put on a sombrero during the speech to demonstrate that novelists were being warned by SJWs that “you’re not supposed to try on other people’s hats. Yet that’s what we’re paid to do, isn’t it? Step into other people’s shoes, and try on their hats.”

Naturally, she was crucified by the left for telling the truth.

POWER CORRUPTS: Thoughts on how industry structure affects the rate of sexual harassment. I think it’s not just that the hierarchies are “stricter,” but that the standards are less discernible, so that there’s a bigger role for favoritism and punishment of non-favorites. That’s why you see so much abuse (sexual and otherwise) not only in Hollywood or in journalism, but in graduate PhD programs, where one person can derail a career without it being obvious that they’re doing it for bad reasons.

DISPATCHES FROM THE PARTY OF SCIENCE:

The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say, officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department duties.

The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space.

On CBS’s “60 Minutes” in May, Mr. Bigelow said he was “absolutely convinced” that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have visited Earth.

—“Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program,” the New York Times today.

It’s no secret that the Hillary Clinton campaign chairman is a UFO buff, but the recent WikiLeaks dump of Mr. Podesta’s hacked account sheds new light on how deeply interested he is in extraterrestrial conspiracy theories.

Messages between Mr. Podesta and fellow alien enthusiasts — including a former Apollo astronaut and the guitarist of pop-punk band Blink 182 — came as a welcome surprise to UFO researchers. They are more convinced than ever that a Clinton administration would bring about the declassification of some of the federal government’s deepest secrets, including what really happened at Roswell, New Mexico; activities inside the notorious Area 51; and other pieces of a complex puzzle involving alien craft and space travel.

“There have been people within the community working with Podesta and the Clintons on the subject,” Jan Harzan, executive director of the Mutual UFO Network, told The Washington Times. “Just having the conversation is very positive to realize the subject is real, and these intelligences, wherever they’re from, visit us from time to time and we get reports on it. … We’re delighted to see the conversation going on. Hopefully, it will wake people up to the fact that we’re not alone in the universe.”

Within Mr. Podesta’s private account is a trove of messages related to UFOs, aliens and conspiracies. Some are relatively benign, such as links to news stories about the return of the Fox TV show “The X-Files.”

But others show a much deeper level of interest, seemingly confirming Mr. Podesta’s stated desire for secret government documents to be made public.

— “Leaked Podesta emails encourage UFO buffs seeking declassification in a Clinton administration,” the Washington Times, October 16, 2016.

As Michael Graham wrote in Redneck Nation:

After a set at a hotel in Washington State, I was dragged into a long, drawn-out discussion with a graying, balding New Ager who just couldn’t get over my evangelical background. “You seem so smart,” he kept saying. “How could you buy into that stuff?”

Here’s a guy wearing a crystal around his neck to open up his chakra, who thinks that the spirit of a warrior from the lost city of Atlantis is channeled through the body of a hairdresser from Palm Springs, and who stuffs magnets in his pants to enhance his aura, and he finds evangelicalism an insult to his intelligence. I ask you: Who’s the redneck?

Come to think of it, I’m not sure if this guy—who believed in reincarnation, ghostly hauntings, and the eternal souls of animals—actually believed in God. It’s not uncommon for Northerners, especially those who like to use the word “spirituality,” to believe in all manner of metaphysical events, while not believing in the Big Guy. “Religious” people go to church and read the Bible, and Northerners view them as intolerant, ill-educated saps. “Spiritual” people go hiking, read Shirley MacLaine or L. Ron Hubbard, and are considered rational, intelligent beings.

Speaking of “spiritual people,” maybe the Washington Post’s Sally Quinn can use her Ouija board to make contact with the aliens. The truth is out there!

STACY McCAIN ON FEMINISM’S RAPE DOUBLE STANDARD:

What happens when a rape doesn’t fit within the ideological parameters of feminist discourse? It’s as if it never happened, although feminists have sometimes devoted enormous efforts to publicizing rapes that quite literally never happened, as in the case of Rolling Stone’s infamous 2014 hoax, where the non-existent “Haven Monahan” was invented by an emotionally disturbed freshman who falsely claimed to have been gang-raped at a fraternity.

That notorious hoax “sparked a national conversation about sexual assault at elite institutions,” the Guardian said in reporting the $3 million verdict against Rolling Stone after they were sued for defamation by a university official, former associate dean of students Nicole Eramo. Why did a lurid story about rape at “elite institutions” merit such treatment, but there is no “national conversation” about university students getting raped by cab drivers? Isn’t it because these crimes — real rapes with real victims — don’t fit the feminist narrative? Say hello to Jose Angel Moreno-Hernandez.

Read the whole thing.

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS: Eric Holder warns GOP: ‘Any attempt to remove Bob Mueller will not be tolerated.’

Obama’s Ethics Czar: ‘Take The Streets’ If Trump Fires Mueller.

And they keep telling us Trump is a threat to public order.

UPDATE (From Ed): Rob Reiner tweets, “Make no mistake, by attacking Mueller,DT’s state run TV (Fox) is pushing US to a constitutional crisis. Be prepared to take the streets.”

I really, really want to see Reiner at age 70, and, err, not the most physically fit of Hollywood’s denizens, personally attempt to “take the streets.”

UPDATE (From Glenn): The senior-citizen riot swells:

It’s easy to mock this — no, really, it is — but imagine if pro-Trump celebrities were calling for riots if Trump is charged by Mueller.

WEIRD, BECAUSE HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE INVESTIGATING THINGS THAT HAPPENED BEFORE THE ELECTION: Scoop: Mueller obtains “tens of thousands” of Trump transition emails.

UPDATE: Trump lawyer: Mueller improperly obtained transition documents in Russia probe.

ROCK AND ROLL EDITOR: Andrew Ferguson reviews Sticky Fingers, Joe Hagan’s new biography of Jann Wenner, and the recent HBO documentary on Wenner.

From the first, Hagan makes clear, Wenner was as much a fanboy as a journalist, hoping to use his position as editor of a rising publication to bathe in the nimbus of his favorite rock-and-roll celebrities. The ambition often paid off editorially. Wenner’s obsession with John Lennon led to other early scoops and made Rolling Stone seem indispensable to anyone following the counterculture. In 1968 word came that Lennon and Yoko Ono had posed naked, front and back, for the cover of a new album called Two Virgins. After Wenner’s relentless transatlantic hectoring, Lennon agreed to license the photos to Rolling Stone, if only because no one else would take them. (Asked about the significance of the Two Virgins cover, Lennon’s bandmate George Harrison said everything that needed saying. “It’s just two not-very-nice-looking bodies,” said the Quiet Beatle. “Two flabby bodies naked.”) Wenner put the flabby backsides on the magazine’s cover and tucked the other, full-frontal photo inside. It made a worldwide sensation. Multiple printings of the issue sold out. “Print a famous foreskin,” Wenner said, “and the world will beat a path to your door.”

And Wenner had made a new friend. The HBO documentary gives Homeric treatment to the relationship between Wenner and the Lennons, from foreskin to aft. The friendship was transactional, as friendships between journalists and celebrities usually are. Lennon had a constant need to generate publicity, especially for the new commercial entity known as “John and Yoko,” and Wenner craved proximity to a Beatle. A few months after the Beatles broke up, Lennon agreed to grant Wenner a long interview. Coming off years of drug abuse and months of psychotherapy, Lennon was as garrulous as any ex-junkie analysand could be.

He hammered his former bandmates personally and musically and careened from self-adulation (“If there’s such a thing as [a genius], I am one”) to self-loathing (“the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth”). The interview, its extravagant profanity uncensored, appeared over two issues and again generated headlines everywhere. In his nationally syndicated column William F. Buckley Jr. referred to the interview as “How I Wrecked My Own Life, and Can Help Wreck Yours.”

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™ For my own review of the Wenner bio, click here.

HOW TO KEEP YOUR CAR BATTERY ALIVE THROUGH A FRIGID WINTER.

When the Insta-Daughter was away at college and left her car behind for 5 weeks over Christmas vacation the battery went flat. (Maybe it pulled more because it was a hybrid, my old Highlander). Anyway, the next year I got her this Noco solar charger with the adapter that lets it plug right into the OBDII connector underneath the dash. Problem solved! The next year it started right up after weeks of cold and disuse.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Toys and Games. Not just for kids!

Plus, Stocking Stuffers under $20.

PROGRESS: SpaceX has now successfully landed 20 rockets.

HOW TO BUILD A MORE RESILIENT POWER GRID.

Related thoughts from Sue Tierney. “A resilient grid is one with the following characteristics: It is one where the grid planners, operators and regulators assume that they cannot foresee and avoid every type of event that could take out the system in a very big way; where they therefore plan for how they will ride through big-impact events with as much of the system still intact as possible: where they can mobilize the resources to restore the system safely and quickly, especially to support the provision of critical services; and where the industry players learn lessons from prior disruptions and plan for how to better handle the next hit on the grid.”

AT AMAZON, Deals on Most Wished-For Items.

EMBRACE THE MACHINE: World’s First AI Citizen in Saudi Arabia Is Now Calling For Women’s Rights. What would Skynet say?

EUROPE: Exodus: Jews Flee Paris Suburbs over Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism.

THE NATION AND THE NAZIS:

If you’re ever looking for a hearty chuckle, the Nation never fails to deliver. It fashions itself as a “progressive” magazine—if your notion of progress is reviving Marxist nostrums of yesteryear.

There’s nothing much funny about white supremacists. But reading along as a left-wing Nation correspondent hangs out with white supremacists and realizes she shares some political beliefs with them? Well, this should be entertaining.

Writer Donna Minkowitz describes a secret meeting organized by alt-right figure Richard Spencer that she crashed in mid-November at an organic winery in Maryland. Upon arrival, Minkowitz writes that she was surprised to find that the discussion centered not only on the usual brown-shirt Jew-hating you might expect from neo-Nazis, but also on what she says is a “new emphasis on economic issues” that she found “seductive.”

Why seductive? Because the white supremacists’ views on economic issues sound a lot like, well, like views espoused by the Nation and Democratic party progressives. In what could pass for Bernie Sanders campaign literature, she quotes Spencer saying “I support national health care” and railing against “the trillions spent in insane wars.” Minkowitz also quotes Spencer blasting the GOP tax plan as “stupid .  .  . Reaganite nostalgia” and supporting a universal basic income. Another speaker decried that everything is seemingly becoming “corporatized and capitalized.” Wait—is this a white supremacist conference or a New York Times editorial board meeting?

Ahh, it’s always amusing to watch international socialists and National Socialists court each other and stumble upon how much they have in common (and not just on economic issues). The inevitable breakup is going to be awfully painful, however.

IN THE FUTURE, EVERYONE IN THE MSM WILL BE DAN RATHER FOR 15 MINUTES. And the future is now! These Media Screw-Ups Would Make Dan Rather Proud.