MORE NEWS ON THE INTELLIGENCE PROBE: Fox News is reporting that the individual who unmasked Trump associates is “very high up…in the intelligence world.”

Intelligence and House sources with direct knowledge of the disclosure of classified names told Fox News that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., now knows who is responsible — and that person is not in the FBI.

For a private citizen to be “unmasked,” or named, in an intelligence report is extremely rare. Typically, the American is a suspect in a crime, is in danger or has to be named to explain the context of the report.

“The main issue in this case, is not only the unmasking of these names of private citizens, but the spreading of these names for political purposes that have nothing to do with national security or an investigation into Russia’s interference in the U.S. election,” a congressional source close to the investigation told Fox News.

MORE:

“Unmasking is not unprecedented, but unmasking for political purposes … specifically of Trump transition team members … is highly suspect and questionable,” an intelligence source told Fox News. “Opposition by some in the intelligence agencies who were very connected to the Obama and Clinton teams was strong. After Trump was elected, they decided they were going to ruin his presidency by picking them off one by one.”

Stay tuned.

THIS REALLY DOESN’T FIT THE NARRATIVE: Cesar Chavez — border hawk, illegal immigration foe.

Related: The Jonestown-like madness of Chavez’s final days.

VIDEO UPDATE: Evelyn Farkas Walks Back MSNBC Comments, Blames Russian ‘Fake News’ for Spreading Story.

It’s always the Russians with these people.

ARE WE ABOUT TO lose South Korea?

RECOVERY: Tiny fish with a funny name could help with opioid crisis.

The fang blenny, a fish found in the Great Barrier Reef, has potent venom that acts the same way as opioid drugs for killing pain. It could represent a new way to look at our most effective — and problematic — pain drugs.

Why do we need new opioid drugs?

Mostly because the ones currently on the market aren’t that good. We have potent opiods that are incredibly addictive and have lots of other side effects, including constipation, dizziness, nausea and altered mental condition. Or we have weak ones that simply aren’t that helpful for deep and chronic pain.

As things stand, we can go into the lab and tinker with existing drugs, and hope we can decrease addictiveness while maintaining potency. But so far, that hasn’t exactly been very successful.

Another approach is to look to nature. Nature has had millions of years to tinker with biologically active chemicals. We don’t necessarily know where to look for these, nor have the tools to begin a search. But chemicals that have evolved to kill pain without killing you are out there somewhere — in the fang blenny fish, for example.

Faster, please.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Wayne State Moves To Fire Five Underperforming Tenured Professors; President Seeks ‘Accountability For Individuals And Excellence For The University.’

DUDE, WHERE’S MY UBER? Nevada Kills Plan To Force Ridesharing Apps To Stall for 15 Minutes.

In what can best be described as a rare moment of clarity for a government, the state of Nevada has ditched a plan to require ridesharing apps to delay pickup times by 15 minutes.

This effort was pushed by the taxi lobby in an effort to compete with companies like Uber and Lyft and their growing market share.

Rent-seeking… denied!

Read the whole thing. Apart from the happy ending it’s about as sickening and corrupt as you’d imagine.

FIGHT FOR 15! GE’s Jeff Immelt: Robots won’t kill human jobs.

Robots from GE, which went all-in to elect Obama and give us Obamacare? What could go wrong?

Immelt, one of Obama’s biggest cheerleaders, served as his head of the President’s Council on Jobs. Until mid-2013 GE co-owned NBC and its subsidiary networks, which were essentially propaganda farms for the 44th president and his “If you like your plan you can keep your plan” lies, lending even more creepiness to his corporation’s 2013 Matrix-inspired ad.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Looking for Something to Netflix this Weekend? Here Are the 10 Best Films of the 2010s.

FAKE NEWS: GIULIANI EXPLAINS THAT TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION ORDER ISN’T A MUSLIM BAN, headline says Giuliani admitted that Trump’s executive order on immigration is a “Muslim ban.”

So, no, Giuliani did not say that President Trump asked him how to do a Muslim ban legally, but how to exclude jihadists without banning Muslims generally. And in fact, both of Trump’s executive orders (temporarily) exclude people from countries whose Muslim populations make up less than 10 percent of the world’s Muslim population.

This is not a commentary on the wisdom of the executive orders, which I find to be both over-inclusive in excluding people who are no threat to the United States, and under-inclusive in that they fail to cover countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia that are home to many radical Islamists. But the idea that Giuiliani “admitted” that the executive orders were “really” a Muslim ban relies on what is at best a tendentious interpretation of his interview.

At best.

PARTY OF YOUTH: President Jerry Brown? ‘Don’t rule it out’

NEWS FROM KNOXVILLE: Sex offender finds father armed when trying to enter teen’s bedroom.

FAHRENHEIT 451 — A WARNING FOR THE REST OF US; A HOW-TO GUIDE FOR THE LEFT:

In the current Whitney Biennial, a very big-deal art show in New York, there is a 2016 painting depicting the body of Emmett Till, the Mississippi teenager murdered by white supremacists in 1955. Artist Dana Schutz, who is white, created the highly abstract image from famous open-casket photographs of Till at his funeral. Till’s mother wanted the world to see what white supremacists had done to her son. Those photographs served as a catalyst for civil rights protest, and are now an icon of American history.

Schutz’s painting has been denounced by some black artists and others, because the painter is white. Hannah Black, a British-born black artist, has written an open letter demanding that the Whitney Museum not only take the painting down, but also destroy it. Here is the full text of her letter, which is drawing a number of signers:

— ‘Destroy That Art!’ Cried The Woke Artists, Rod Dreher, yesterday.

You see something similar at work in this little bit of silliness from io9, in which the author suggests “Ted Cruz Has Forever Tainted ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.’ ” Cruz’s desecration of this sacred text? Asking Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch the meaning of life, the universe and everything — the correct answer, of course, being 42. Cruz’s nominal crime, according to Katharine Trendacosta, was not taking the dog-and-pony show of a SCOTUS nomination hearing with the seriousness it is due. His real offense? Ruining a piece of culture for everyone who doesn’t like Cruz: “You will never be able to enjoy the fun—and easy—question ‘What’s the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything?’ again.”

When someone says “you will never be able to enjoy” a piece of art because another person with different politics also enjoys that piece of art, I’m overwhelmed with feelings of pity: How strange, how sad that one could stop liking, even a little bit, a renowned work because a person with politics different from your own also likes it. I feel pity, but little in the way of surprise. After all, there’s nothing the partisan apparatchik who has chosen to politicize everything hates more than being reminded that his or her opponents are, well, human.

—Jane Austen and Douglas Adams don’t belong to the left — or to the right, Sonny Bunch, yesterday.

“You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right?…Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, to the incinerator.”

—Captain Beatty, fireman Guy Montag’s boss, in Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451, 1953.

As Ryan Holiday noted in a 2015 New York Observer article titled “The Real Reason We Need to Stop Trying to Protect Everyone’s Feelings,” “In the 50th anniversary edition, Bradbury includes a short afterword where he gives his thoughts on current culture. Almost as if he is speaking directly about the events above, he wrote: ‘There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.’”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Cincinnati Law Dean Is Put on Leave After Proposing Ways to Cut Budget. I think something’s missing from this account: How likely is it that the university’s Provost would step in and remove a dean who was hired to cut budgets just because faculty complained that she was . . . cutting budgets? And you don’t mandate mediation to “restore mutual trust and respect” just because of budget cuts. But although I feel like we’re missing something, I don’t know what’s going on.

COUNTERCOUP: Top Venezuela official breaks with government, protests escalate.

Venezuela’s powerful attorney general on Friday rebuked the judiciary’s takeover of congress, breaking ranks with President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government as protests and international condemnation grew.

“It constitutes a rupture of the constitutional order. It’s my obligation to express my great concern to the country,” said Luisa Ortega, usually considered a key ally of the Socialists who have ruled Venezuela for the last 18 years.

While various prominent political figures have leveled criticism after leaving the government, it is extremely rare for a senior official to make such criticism. It may be interpreted by opponents that Maduro’s internal support is cracking.

And:

Maduro, 54, a former bus driver and self-declared “son” of late leftist predecessor Hugo Chavez, was narrowly elected in 2013 amid widespread support for the ruling Socialist Party’s oil-fueled welfare programs.

But his ratings have plummeted to just over 20 percent as Venezuelans struggle with a fourth year of recession, scarcities of food and medicines and the highest inflation in the world.

Unexpectedly.

RETIREMENT: Center Fuselage Rebuild Could Be F-15C/D Achilles’ Heel.

The F-15C may still have an undefeated aerial combat record, but the 38-year-old aircraft could be slated for retirement if the U.S. Air Force decides not to fund a major structural life-extension program. Air Combat Command (ACC) chief Gen. Mike Holmes says it could cost $30-40 million per aircraft to keep the Eagle soaring beyond the late 2020s, including rebuilding the center fuselage section, among other refurbishments. “We’re probably not going to do that.”

With fewer than 200 F-22s to fulfill the role of about 450 F-15Cs, retirement next decade could leave an awfully big hole in our Air Force lineup.

CIVIL RIGHTS: Knife Rights Update: Georgia and Michigan bills advance.

BEN WEINGARTEN: How Conservatives Can Convert the Healthcare Failure into a Win for Trump and the American People.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Single-payer, here we come.

A broad national consensus is developing that health care is indeed a right. This is historically new. And it carries immense implications for the future. It suggests that we may be heading inexorably to a government-run, single-payer system. It’s what Barack Obama once admitted he would have preferred but didn’t think the country was ready for. It may be ready now.

As Obamacare continues to unravel, it won’t take much for Democrats to abandon that Rube Goldberg wreckage and go for the simplicity and the universality of Medicare-for-all. Republicans will have one last chance to try to convince the country to remain with a market-based system, preferably one encompassing all the provisions that, for procedural reasons, had been left out of their latest proposal.

Don’t be surprised, however, if, in the end, single-payer wins out. Indeed, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if Donald Trump, reading the zeitgeist, pulls the greatest 180 since Disraeli dished the Whigs in 1867 (by radically expanding the franchise) and joins the single-payer side.

That would be a less than 180-degree turnaround, given that Trump has on more than one occasion talked about “insurance for everybody” as part of his repeal & replace promise.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Team creates triple-threat cancer-fighting polymer capsules for guided drug delivery.

CHANGE: Trump to Sign Executive Order Targeting Trade Abuses.

On Friday, the president will sign a pair of executive orders aimed at cracking down on trade abuses, according to top administration officials. The first calls for the completion of a large-scale report to identify “every form of trade abuse and every non-reciprocal practice that now contributes to the U.S. trade deficit,” said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Officials will have 90 days to produce a country-by-country, product-by-product report that will serve as the basis of future decision-making by the administration on trade-related issues, Ross told reporters at a Thursday night briefing.

“It will demonstrate the administration’s intention not to hip-shoot, not to do anything casual, not to do anything abruptly, but to take a very measured and analytical approach, both to analyzing the problem and therefore to developing the solutions for it,” he said.

Seems sensible enough.

GRAVITY: Spacewalkers improvise after fabric shield floats away.

WHEN AND HOW DID PEOPLE ENTER THE AMERICAS?: The BBC article covers new evidence and revised theories.

PETER HIGGS ON knowledge, immortality, and the future of physics.