ANALYSIS: FALSE. If The Comey Letter Sank Hillary, It’s Her Own Fault.

It can’t be her fault — because strong, independent woman or something.

NEIL CAVUTO TO CNN: HOW DOES IT FEEL TO GET PRESIDENTIAL BELITTLING?

COMING TO A CHEST NEAR YOU: Completely Artificial Hearts. Faster, please.

CLASS ACT: The Bush Sisters Wrote the Obama Girls A Letter.

AT UALR LAW, ANOTHER UNHAPPY FACULTY MEMBER SUES: “I waited to see if Dean Schwartz would address the situation. Instead, I have experienced nothing but retaliation from the Dean since. I think this is because I am sort of ‘old-school’ and don’t agree with the departing Dean’s ‘new age’ approach to legal education. In my view, his approach explains, at least in part, the fact that a third of our graduates failed the law Bar examination. I decided to file with the Claims Commission only after Dean Schwartz gave me the lowest raise of any member of the teaching faculty last summer. I appealed his decision to the Provost, who ruled in my favor and increased my raise for this year to average level.” Dean Schwartz is now departing.

SONNY BUNCH ON THE LEFT’S L.L. BEAN FREAKOUT: You People Wanted the Politicized Life? Congrats, You Got It.

As Ben Shapiro warned DNC-CNN in November, if you’re going to turn it up to 11 over a tweet by Donald Trump, “this is going to be a long presidency for all of you.”

ASTRONOMY: Alien megastar more hungry than mysterious, scientists say it ate a planet.

You might recall last month’s report about a mysterious star which had “dimmed dramatically multiple times over the past seven years.”

Mystery solved?

Now a more convincing theory about KIC 84622852 suggests the star consumed a planet about 10,000 years ago.

“We propose that the secular dimming behavior is the result of the inspiral of a planetary body or bodies into KIC 8462852,” researchers from Columbia University and UC Berkley said in a new research paper.

If the star did consume a planet, it could explain the unusual light pattern, researchers said.

It would have caused Tabby’s Star to suddenly brighten erratically, especially if a detached moon system from the engulfed planet was still circling the star irregularly blocking its light. The star would show a dimming pattern of light as it returned to normal, the research suggested.

My money is still on an enormous mutant star goat.

CORY BOOKER, ET AL., IN THE POCKET OF BIG BUSINESS: HuffPo: Cory Booker And A Bunch Of Democrats Prove Trump Right On Big Pharma: Democrats Did The Industry’s Bidding Last Night.

HEALTH: Smartwatches Know When You’re Getting Sick Before You Do.

During tests on wearable tech to discover how they could be used in health matters, professor Micheal Snyder noticed the readings showed a higher than usual heart rate, higher skin temperature, and lower blood oxygen levels. The unusual activity was striking because he felt fine. The sudden onset of a low fever convinced him to see a doctor, and he wondered if it was the onset of Lyme disease, having recently spent some time in a rural area where he may have picked it up.

After taking the right antibiotic the symptoms cleared up, and medical tests soon confirmed his diagnosis had been correct. The wearable devices had given him enough pre-warning to catch a potentially very unpleasant disease early on, get the right treatment, and stop it before more serious problems occurred.

Snyder went on to write a paper on the subject, showing that elevated heart rate and skin temperature coincided with sickness in himself and three other people. Monitoring and noting abnormalities in both may help identify and pre-warn the wearer of changes in health.

Paired with smartphone diagnostic apps, and the free market will provide medical cost-savings long promised by Washington’s central planners.

ROD DREHER: THE ESTABLISHMENT LEFT IS THE ALT-RIGHT’S MIRROR IMAGE:

The language of fairness and respect, when deployed by many on the left (especially in the Cathedral), is not about fairness and respect at all, but is a cover for a naked power grab, in classic Marxist-Leninist “Who, Whom?” style. In the case of race, the Cathedral and its favorite sermonizers demand that white people behave more humanly, while simultaneously denying their capacity to do so. And it holds academic and media elites like Michael Eric Dyson up as oppressed, simply because of the color of his skin, while framing poor and dispossessed whites as oppressors, solely because of the color of their skin.

(This, by the way, is why Meryl Streep’s speech got on my nerves: the way she began it by flattering herself and her audience as “vilified”; it takes real nerve to tell a room full of Hollywood millionaires that they are in league with the oppressed.)

I don’t believe the alt-right’s view of the world any more than I believe the Cathedral’s. If the alt-right’s racist ideas are going to gain ground in American politics, they aren’t going to do it through my agency. But here’s what the Cathedral left needs to know: you aren’t going to be able to count on conservative people like me to help you oppose the alt-right, because you are their “respectable” left-wing mirror image.

Read the whole thing.  And for background on Dreher’s “Cathedral” reference (shorthand for the DNC-MSM-academia-Hollywood overculture), click here.

UH-HUH: State Dept. Says It’s Going to Paris Conference to Defend Israel.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Thursday that Secretary of State John Kerry is going to this weekend’s Middle East peace conference in Paris to defend Israel, despite the Obama administration allowing a resolution condemning Israeli settlements to pass through the United Nations Security Council.

Kerry is going to Paris for the conference on what will probably be his last foreign trip as secretary of state.

Associated Press reporter Matt Lee asked Toner if Kerry was going to the conference to protect the Jewish state from an anti-Israel conclusion.

“I think we feel obliged to be there, to be part of the discussions, to help make them into something that we believe is constructive and positively oriented towards getting negotiations back up and running and doesn’t attempt to in any way kind of dictate a solution,” Toner said.

We’ll see.

THIS IS HOW THE MOVIE STARTS: These Brazilian vampire bats have started feeding on humans for the first time.

DAVID SATTER: The ‘Trump Report’ Is a Russian Provocation.

The recently released report that asserts that Russian president Vladimir Putin has been “cultivating assisting and supporting Trump” for years and that the Russians have compromising information (kompromat) on him is, I believe, a deliberate Russian provocation. Trump has denounced the report as “fake news” and has even cited Russian denials of the report in his defense. His opponents suggest that the report is credible and are demanding an investigation of the allegations.

In both cases, however, the report is accepted as the product of a private investigation that may or may not have been honest rather than what I believe it to be — a carefully constructed attempt to disrupt American political life for years to come.

Moscow doesn’t need a Manchurian Candidate in the White House, and probably couldn’t get one anyway. But a politically paralyzed “main enemy” gives Putin the freedom of action and near-superpower status his country can’t earn on its own merits.

WHY EYES WIDE SHUT IS STANLEY KUBRICK’S BEST FILM.

I wouldn’t call it his best; it’s not up to the standard set by his incredible run from 1964’s Dr. Strangelove through 1975’s Barry Lyndon, but like all of those films, there’s a lot going on under the surface that rewards repeated viewing and dedicated Kubrickologists (my unofficial minor in college), as this L.A. Weekly article hints.

UPDATE: No, I did not coordinate this post with Steve’s last item, but they do have an excellent Kubrickian symmetry when combined. Now I must get back to blogging on my CRM-114 over in Room 237.

NICOLE KIDMAN: Support President Trump.

I did not see that coming.

MAD DUCK: Obama Kicks Cuban Refugees In The Teeth But Gives Money To Sanctuary Cities.

WHITTLE, OTT, GREEN: Meryl Streep wins the Golden Globe for Virtue Signalling, and this time there is an actual response. Can the glitterati handle a moving target?

Full Disclosure: I’m Green.

Update: Another gremlin may have infested the YouTube embed, causing the video to play incorrectly for some. Here’s a direct link for you.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Rosie O’Donnell Unveils New Plan to Stop Trump: Martial Law.

My paper on military coups just gets more timely every day.

UPDATE: O’Donnell link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!

PHILADELPHIA MAYOR BLAMES ‘PRICE GOUGING’ FOR OUTRAGE GENERATED BY CITY’S NEW SODA TAX: Businesses are passing along the cost of the tax to consumers, because that’s how taxes work. Someone get Jim Kenney an economics textbook.

Philadelphia’s last Republican mayor left office at the beginning of 1948.

DUDE: College Declares ‘You Guys’ to Be Offensive.

STARSHIP TROOPERS: Marines study sci-fi to plan for future battlefield needs.

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF OFFICIAL VIOLENCE: Feds Release Scathing Report on Chicago Police Abuse.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Oikophobia on the rise after Trump win: Irrational fear of fellow countrymen is spreading among America’s ruling class.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1345: Donald Trump, The Intelligence Community, And Lois Lerner.