IT’S ALWAYS NICE to make Twitchy.

THAT WAS FAST: Trump State Department Comes Out In Support of Iran Protests. Sharp contrast to the Obama response in 2009.

HE SHOULD FIT RIGHT IN: Philly Judge Who Resigned over Sex Scandal and Was Jailed for Lying to FBI Now Running for Congress as Democrat.

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GET WOKE, GO BROKE: DC Finally Overtakes SJW Marvel as Top Comic Book Company of 2017.

WHAT’S WEIRD IS THAT HE DIDN’T SEE IT COMING: “The reason conspiracy theories resonate so much is precisely that people have learned—rationally—to distrust government actions and statements. Sunstein’s proposed covert propaganda scheme is a perfect illustration of why that is.”

TAKE A BOW, SILICON VALLEY: The Top Six Worst High-Tech Disasters of 2017.

SETH LIPSKY: Steven Spielberg’s ‘The Post’ Fails To Land the Real Scoop On the Fate of Free Vietnam.

The Supreme Court allowed the Times and Washington Post to proceed. Nixon launched his hunt for leakers. The movie ends with the discovery of the Watergate burglary that eventually cost Nixon the presidency.

It fell to President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger to try — heroically, in my view — to keep Congress from abandoning Vietnam. Early in 1975, though, Congress cut off supplies of ammo and materiel to our ally.

The Communist conquest quickly followed.

Let President Trump — and his critics — remember: When Congress cut off Vietnam, it wasn’t about saving our GIs. They’d long since been withdrawn.

No, the decision by Congress was to retreat in the face of Soviet Communism. It was about abandoning the hope of free Vietnam itself.

Vietnam’s democracy died in broad daylight.

And that’s just how the American left, who then had complete control of Congress, wanted it.

Also regarding The Post, Peggy Noonan writes “What is bad is the lie at the movie’s heart. President Nixon is portrayed as the villain of the story. And that is the opposite of the truth:”

Nixon did not start the Vietnam War, he ended it. His administration was not even mentioned in the Pentagon Papers, which were finished before he took office.

When that dark, sad man tried to halt publication of the document, he was protecting not his own reputation but in effect those of others. Those others were his political adversaries—Lyndon Johnson and Ben Bradlee’s friend JFK—who the papers revealed had misled the public. If Nixon had been merely self-interested, he would have faked umbrage and done nothing to stop their publication. Even cleverer, he could have decried the leaking of government secrets while declaring and bowing to the public’s right to know.

Instead, he did what he thought was the right thing—went to court to prevent the publication of secrets that might harm America’s diplomatic standing while it attempted to extricate itself from a war.

Being Nixon, of course, he had to crow, in a way that became public, that he was sticking it to those liberals in the press. His attempt to stop publication was wrong—the public did have a right to know. But he did what he thought was the responsible thing, and of course pays for it to this day.

Were the makers of “The Post” ignorant of all this? You might think so if it weren’t for the little coda they tag on to the end. Suddenly a movie about the Pentagon Papers is depicting the Watergate break-in, which would take place a year later. As if to say: OK, Nixon isn’t really the villain of our story, but he became a villain soon enough. It struck me not as a failed attempt at resolving a drama but an admission of a perpetrated injustice.

Why does all this matter? Because we are losing history. It is not the fault of Hollywood, as they used to call it, but Hollywood is a contributor to it.

And so is the Washington Post. As Ann Hornaday, whose bio describes her as “the Post’s chief film critic” wrote in 2010, defending Sean Penn’s Richard Armitage-less Valerie Plame film Fair Game, “In Washington, watching fact-based political movies has become a sport all its own, with viewers hyper-alert to mistakes, composite characters or real stories hijacked by political agendas. But what audiences often fail to take into account is that a too-literal allegiance to the facts can sometimes obscure a larger truth… ‘Follow the money*,’ then, assumes its own totemic truth. Ratified through repeated viewings in theaters, on Netflix and beyond, these films become a mutual exercise in creating a usable past. We watch them to be entertained, surely, and maybe educated. But we keep watching them in order to remember.”

George Orwell, call your office.

* Which Mark Felt, the real-life Deep Throat, never said to the real-life Bob Woodward.

POSSIBLE SWATTING VICTIM KILLED IN RAID IN WICHITA, KANSAS: “A man was killed by police Thursday night in Wichita, Kansas, when officers responded to a false report of a hostage situation. The online gaming community is saying the dead man was the victim of a swatting prank, where trolls call in a fake emergency and force SWAT teams to descend on a target’s house. If that’s true, this would be the first reported swatting-related death.”

WHY ARE LEFTY-DOMINATED INDUSTRIES SUCH CESSPITS OF SEXUAL ABUSE? Academia faces #MeToo movement over sexual harassment.

It is amazing to me that the weaponized female anger that Dems thought was going to propel Hillary into the White House — or Trump out of it — is instead going through lefty institutions like a wrecking ball. I can’t think of another example of political messaging backfiring this badly in my lifetime.

ROCKET MAN SENDS HIS NEW YEAR’S WISHES: North Korea soldier who defected had immunity to anthrax: “A North Korean soldier who defected to the South was found to have antibodies to anthrax — triggering concerns that the rogue regime has weaponized the deadly bacteria, according to reports Tuesday. The man, who was either exposed to or vaccinated for anthrax, had developed immunity to the deadly disease before defecting, UPI reported, citing local Channel A.”

HOLIDAYS IN HELL. Or, Answers to Questions No One is Asking: Reasons to visit Oakland (San Francisco’s younger brother). And note this line in the London Telegraph article:

San Francisco would sashay through the 20th century as one of the emblems of the thriving USA, swirling with gorgeous beaux-arts architecture in the 1910s, completing the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937 even as the Great Depression bit hard elsewhere – and embracing the giddy brightness of the 1960s as the hippy movement filled the Haight-Ashbury district of the city with flowers and optimism.

Oakland, as is often the way with younger brothers, was overshadowed, growing up swarthy and industrial, constructing ships for the Second World War effort – then falling in with a bad crowd.

“Swarthy?” Wow, I’m glad I didn’t type that. And speaking of a bad crowd: “Oakland Is California’s Most Crime-Ridden City: FBI.”

Oakland’s last Republican mayor left office in 1977.

QUESTION ASKED: Why Are Accused Sexual Harassers Overwhelmingly on the Left?

WELL, THE WHOLE BOGUS “FOOD DESERT” THING PLAYED OUT, SO NOW THEY HAVE TO HAVE ANOTHER PHONY WAR: Food Swamps Are the New Food Deserts.

Anyway, if you want minority neighborhoods to have more farmer’s markets, you’re just promoting white privilege, so shut up, racist.

IT”S TRUE: You always hurt the one you love. There’s also one of those insane Taiwanese video animations, if you are so inclined, but definitely NSFW.

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MORE, PLEASE: Iran Hit By Second Day of Protests.

IT’S LIKE THE POLL HEADLINES ARE BULLSHIT: Gallup Poll’s New Math: Hillary’s ‘Most Admired’…at 61 Percent Disapproval.

WILL TRUMP’S TAX BILL PRODUCE A GLOBAL SHIFT IN THE BALANCE BETWEEN MAKERS AND TAKERS? China to offer tax breaks to foreign companies after GOP tax bill.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON THE INTERNET EXECUTIONER:

Almost daily, another public figure is accused of sexual assault or harassment–Dustin Hoffman, Tavis Smiley, Larry King, Ryan Lizza, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer… The list goes on. The charges can go back decades, or at least precede the current statute of limitations, and often we lump together the accusers without much regard for the individual nature of the charges lodged against unique individuals.

Outrage can instantly give way to the outrageous. New York Times journalist Glenn Thrush condemned the predations of fellow journalist Mark Halperin–until he was likewise called out as a harasser a few days later. Actor Richard Dreyfuss grew furious after learning about Kevin Spacey’s groping of his son–and then old accusers stepped forward to make similar charges from his own distant past. Omar Ashmawy, staff director and chief counsel of the Office of Congressional Ethics, was revealed to be under investigation for verbally abusing and physically assaulting women, the sort of allegations he is supposed to be probing.

The victims of harassment and assault–many justifiably infuriated by efforts to suppress their voices and stories–have come forward because they feel safe and secure, in part thanks to the sheer number of cases that appear in the news. The targets of their allegations are usually marquee journalists, movie or television celebrities, or prominent politicians or officials, and thus bound to garner attention of the sort felt necessary to change the larger cultural landscape.

Read the whole thing.

Related: “A powerful person has been accused of misconduct at a rate of nearly once every 20 hours since Weinstein. Since Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual harassment and assault on Oct. 5, nearly 100 powerful people have been accused of sexual harassment. Here’s where these accusations currently stand.”

CHANGE: Cargo Industry Tests Seaplane Drones to Deliver Freight.

CAN A CASE BE MADE THAT TRUMP IS OUT-GIPPERING THE GIPPER? Check out these five ways President Donald Trump shook up Washington in 2017, then compare them with President Ronald Reagan’s first-year record. Reagan cut taxes, scared the Iranian Mullahs so much they quickly released 52 American hostages they’d held hostage for more than a year, began reversal of the Carter-era defense readiness decline and launched major spending and regulatory reforms. Speaking as a former Reagan political appointee, I have to say Trump is, at the very least, following very closely in the Gipper’s hallowed footsteps.

MODONS: Scientists Observe Bizarre ‘Double Whirlpools’ in The Ocean For The First Time. “Further investigations revealed this double whirlpool was no fluke. It turns out satellites had been recording these phenomena swirling below them for a quarter-century at least, just nobody had realised what they were.”

I wonder what else we’re observing, but not seeing.

STOP THE HAMMERING! STOP THE HAMMERING!!! Video Supercut: the Worst of MSNBC in 2017.