NO NAMES YET, BUT APPARENTLY WE’LL KNOW ON MONDAY: Exclusive: First charges filed in Mueller investigation.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Will Microwave Popcorn Ruin My Lungs? I dunno, but I find the artificial-butter smell nauseating.

THE GUILD PROTECTS ITS OWN:

At The New Republic, Wieseltier’s behavior became increasingly erratic. Blaming his often disheveled appearance on the stress of his collapsing marriage, he began to attract notice for all the wrong reasons. Staffers recall that by three P.M., often after a long lunch at i Ricchi, the Italian restaurant downstairs, he would be seen negotiating the corridors with a tumbler of whiskey in his hand. During a New Republic lunch for New York governor Mario Cuomo, Wieseltier, according to a participant, extravagantly gulped down his drink. When he finally asked Cuomo a question, the governor, in typical style, picked apart the premise, leaving nothing but rubble. “Well, you’ve got me,” Wieseltier weakly rejoined. “I’m two ahead of you,” he added, indicating his whiskey.

According to witnesses, Wieseltier was soon bringing to the office another habit that he also enjoyed outside the workplace: frequent cocaine use. A person familiar with Wieseltier’s indulgence estimates that at one point in 1993 he was snorting—from a petite silver spoon, dangling from a chain attached to a vial—an entire gram a day. To support this expensive pastime—all but impossible on his salary, which is in the high five figures—he regularly loaded dozens of books he received as literary editor into the trunk of his Honda Accord and hauled them to Washington bookstores, selling them to finance purchases of “truth serum.” A colleague who has witnessed Wieseltier’s snorting recalls being embarrassed into silence by the brazen display. “He dares you to tell him to stop it,” the colleague says, adding that Wieseltier’s co-workers even discussed the possibility of staging an intervention. At a New York lunch for Wieseltier’s friend Leonard Cohen, thrown by Sonny Mehta to celebrate the publication of a volume of the singer-songwriter’s poetry, Cohen passionately remonstrated with Wieseltier to stay clean, a participant in the lunch recalls. “I’m 20 years older than Leon and I do feel a certain avuncular responsibility to the man,” Cohen says when asked about the June 1993 lunch. Since late 1993, when Wieseltier began dating Twyla Tharp—a woman of daunting discipline, physical and otherwise—he has been telling friends that he quit cold turkey.

“I have nothing to say about that,” Wieseltier snaps when asked about past cocaine use.

—“The Very Busy, Very Unproductive Life of Leon Wieseltier — New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier is the egghead boy toy of such glamorous powers as Barbra Streisand, Shirley MacLaine, and Tipper Gore. But has he abandoned the life of the mind to be the life of the party? (This article first appeared in the March 1995 issue of Vanity Fair.)”

And curiously, was never uploaded to the Internet until yesterday, now that Wieseltier has seen a magazine deal with Steve Jobs’ widow scuttled, his job as a contributing editor at the Atlantic terminated, and multiple women coming out of the woodwork to complain about his allegedly skeevy past behavior at TNR. Speaking of which, in article titled “Leon Wieseltier: A Reckoning,” Michelle Cottle of the Atlantic shares a few of what she calls her “Leon stories,” along with this detail:

Seyward Darby, the executive editor of The Atavist Magazine, who held a couple of different editorial positions at the New Republic from 2008 to 2011, recalls a 2009 column Leon wrote on circumcision, its place in Jewish culture, and its effects (or lack thereof) on male pleasure. Leon sent her the document, titled “foreskin,” and then went into her office to watch her read it: “When I told him that the word foreskin as a document title had raised my eyebrows, he said sarcastically, ‘Oh, report me to HR!’ Then he left. In the same time frame, he gave a fellow female colleague ‘a book of portraits of Jesus with hard-ons.’ He told her to ‘take it home and really have fun with it tonight.’”

Of course, Wieseltier wasn’t the only powerful man whose career was protected by those with associations to TNR. As Stephen Miller tweets, “Sure are a ton of open secrets in the media/entertainment industry.”

SEE, EVERYBODY WHO HAS EVER HIRED — OR WHO IN THE FUTURE HIRES — FUSION GPS WILL GET AWKWARD QUESTIONS LIKE THE ONES THE FREE BEACON FACES: “During the 2016 election cycle we retained Fusion GPS to provide research on multiple candidates in the Republican presidential primary, just as we retained other firms to assist in our research into Hillary Clinton. All of the work that Fusion GPS provided to the Free Beacon was based on public sources, and none of the work product that the Free Beacon received appears in the Steele dossier. The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele. Nor did we have any knowledge of the relationship between Fusion GPS and the Democratic National Committee, Perkins Coie, and the Clinton campaign.”

HMM: What Australia’s bad flu season might mean for us and other flu facts you need to know.

INVESTIGATE THIS: “Jennifer Kerns calls for an investigation into the placement of the Trump Dossier into the hands of the Obama administration — the hands of John Brennan in particular.”

AT AMAZON, save in Arts, Crafts, and Sewing.

Plus, fall deals on Wheels and Tires.

Winter is coming.

AMERICA FACES AN EPIDEMIC OF FATTY LIVER DISEASE, and it’s not because people are drinking too much.

Some 65 million Americans have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and that number will reach 100 million by 2030, according to Scott Friedman, MD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.

And currently 16.5 million people have the most serious subtype of NAFLD, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a number that will rise to 27 million, he told reporters at the Liver Meeting, the annual conference of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.

The numbers will drive — among other things — a 178% increase in the incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), Friedman said during a media briefing aimed at raising a red flag over the issue.

“An epidemic is upon us that we have not fully recognized,” he said, adding “primary care providers don’t appreciate that many of their patients are harboring a silent disease.”

But it’s not just that doctors themselves don’t recognize the issue, commented Arun Sanyal, MD, of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “This is a social problem” that needs greater awareness on the part of healthcare providers, the public and the politicians, he said.

Rising rates of obesity are the force behind the epidemic of NAFLD, an umbrella term covering a spectrum that begins with accumulation of fat in the liver, followed by ballooning, scarring, cirrhosis, and eventually liver failure, cancer, and death.

Try eating more eggs and going Gary Taubes.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

● Old and Busted: “We Are All Socialists Now.”

—Headline, Newsweek, February 9, 2009.

● The New Hotness: “Why Are All the Conservative Loudmouths Irish-American?”

Just as they used to play an outsize role in the Democratic Party’s apparatus, and in organized labor, putative Irishmen are now the face of the hard Right.

Once the biggest names, faces, and voices on television were Huntley and Brinkley, Cronkite, Murrow, even John Chancellor and Dan Rather, all sober, serious Americans—and all Protestants too.

Now we have angry loudmouths with names like O’Reilly, Hannity, Buchanan, and, lurking back there with his Cheshire smile, the dissolute but scary Bannon.

Yet no one has noticed this obvious fact, and the sheer lack of attention may be the most important thing about it. Why has the ascent of a bunch of people who in an earlier period might have been called Micks drawn no notice at all?

—Newsweek, Tuesday.

As Jim Geraghty tweets, “Go ahead, try it: ‘Why are all the [insert political label here] loudmouths [insert ethnic group]?'” Why are Democrat-monopoly publications such cesspits of xenophobic bigotry?

Steve noted earlier today that the byline of the piece notes that Van Gosse, its author, “teaches history at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.” Curiously though, CTL-F “Buckley” brings up zero results on the article.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey, who like me is half-Irish (and like me, is named Ed) writes that Newsweek is taking its cue from Blazing Saddles: “Newsweek channels Rock Ridge: We don’t want the Irish.”

Very funny, very NSFW video at link.

SIGN ME UP, I DON’T WANT SHINGLES. CDC recommends new shingles vaccine for people over 50.

GO NAVY! Navy rescues 2 Americans and their dogs who were lost at sea for months.

WHAT’D HE DO? Sexual Assault Allegations Make Bill O’Reilly ‘Mad at God.’

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS. Problem at sex doll brothel: The johns are getting too weird.

CTRL-F “Ficus” brings back zero results on the article, so evidently Harvey Weinstein hasn’t dropped by there yet.

SPENGLER: Catalonia Declares Independence and Deserves Support.

CAN’T THEY DO ANYTHING RIGHT? Millennials Are Blamed For Falling Beer Sales In The U.S.

OUT: MUSCLE CAR. IN: MUSCLE SUV.

AT AMAZON, deals on DVDs.

Plus, save on Cookware.

ATTENTION ALL TRUMP VOTERS, IMMEDIATELY EXIT HOLLYWOOD STAGE RIGHT: “This ploy keeping Hollywood a liberal bastion is subtle, but extraordinarily effective – smoke out right-wingers and their sympathizers, spread the word of their apostasy, freeze them out, repeat. This process is seen in every crevice of Tinseltown, and it quietly teaches a lesson to all watching… The Deep Hollywood enforcers are everywhere, at every level…ejecting the deplorables while fortifying the liberal wall. It’s a process they’ve been employing and perfecting since the 1930s, with undeniable results.”

The second part of Patrick Courrielche’s “Tinseltown Travelogue – a deplorable’s adventures in la la land” is now online. If you read Roger Simon’s Blacklisting Myself, definitely read the whole thing for another insider’s look at how Hollywood has moved further and further left since the end of WWII.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): You know the difference between a Republican and a pedophile? Hollywood will work with a pedophile.

RON RADOSH: Will Bannon or the GOP Establishment Prevail? The Internal Fight Deepens.

HOLLYWOOD ENDING: The Next Big Hollywood Sex Scandal is Already Breaking…at Nickelodeon.

Related Flashback: Disney Buys Miramax In Leap Toward Industry Lead — 60 Movies A Year Goal For Studio.

Miramax has had limited success producing its own movies, instead buying distribution rights to finished films produced by others. It has frequently been cash-strapped and considered a public offering two years ago to raise much needed capital.

“Those problems are over with,” Miramax Co-Chairman Harvey Weinstein said yesterday. He said Miramax now has Disney’s checkbook.

Gee, I wonder what else Harvey did with that checkbook?

TO BE FAIR, THE OVARIES DID SEEM LIKE THE OBVIOUS PLACE: We May Have Been Looking For Ovarian Cancer in The Wrong Place, Says Study.

OUCH: iPhone X screen repair will cost $279.

By all accounts it’s a gorgeous screen, but you’ll want a case for it.

PRIORITIES: Exponential industrialization of space is more important than combat lasers and hypersonic fighters.

TRIGGER WARNING: The 5 Most Inappropriate Halloween Displays of 2017.