FAKE NEWS: Huffington Post Slam of Ted Cruz Accidentally Proves Him Right.

Forget it, Ted — it’s HuffPo.

SUZANNE VENKER: Society is creating a new crop of alpha women who are unable to love.

She has a new book, The Alpha Female’s Guide to Men and Marriage: How Love Works.

GOOD LORD: Single mother arrested, kids taken after she began homeschooling them—and one official is ticked off.

Harris told the station Child Protective Services called a week later wondering why her kids weren’t in school.

“I told them that my kids were homeschooled now and that I could furnish the documents if they need to see them,” Harris told WKBW.

Then she told the station that less than a month later CPS officials and police confronted her and said they had a court order to take her children.

Harris told WKBW she asked to see the court order, and when that didn’t happen, she refused to give up her kids — so she said she was arrested for obstruction and her children were placed in foster care. But in a video Harris posted to Facebook on Jan. 18, she said she was handed a court order, noting charges of “neglect.”

Buffalo Councilman Ulysees O. Wingo Sr. is calling on Family Court to return Harris’ children to her immediately, WKBW-TV reported in a separate story. He added that it’s “utterly unacceptable” that a mother was arrested for “educational neglect” because she decided to homeschool her children.

“Someone, somewhere messed up,” Wingo said at a Buffalo Common Council meeting Tuesday afternoon, the station said, “and that someone needs to face the music.”

Good and loud, so to speak.

Homeschooling parents need legal protection from this kind of harassment, and stiff punishment for the harassers — perhaps codify it as the equivalent of criminal mischief.

IN 2005, HE PUBLISHED THE “MUHAMMAD CARTOONS.” Now, he’s on al-Qaeda’s hit list and must have security when he appears in public. A new episode of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast explores the “assassin’s veto” with journalist Flemming Rose.

SIGNS AND PORTENTS: A full moon, lunar eclipse and comet all in one night? Here’s how to watch it Friday.

AT AMAZON, save on Cellphones and Accessories.

Plus, deals on Bestselling Office Products.

BETTER THREE YEARS LATE THAN NEVER, I SUPPOSE: ISIS Now Has ‘Too Many Problems for Them to Solve’

“We’re not gonna give the exact timing of the effort to seize the city, but we do believe that excellent progress is being made and we’ll continue to pressure the enemy on multiple fronts,” he said.

“…They’re completely surrounded in Mosul. So what we see is the enemy being overwhelmed anywhere that they are. It’s too many problems for them to solve at any given time.”

On America’s role, Dorrian said the coalition has trained “more than 70,000 forces of various types — army, police, tribal fighters, popular mobilization fighters — that we can vet and work with.”

“And we continue to do all of that as Mosul is liberated,” he said. “Because ultimately, when we talk about dealing ISIL a lasting defeat, it’s all these forces that go in behind our forces and the Iraqi security forces that are going to make sure that ISIL is not able to re-infiltrated; they’re not able to get any traction on any type of insurgency effort.”

Faster is better. The longer ISIS is seen “bravely resisting,” the longer and more effective their recruiting goes.

SALMONELLA, IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T… WAIT, WHAT? GM Salmonella destroys cancer.

Using mice and cultures of human cancer cells, a South Korean-led scientific team demonstrated that Salmonella typhimurium engineered to make a foreign protein caused immune cells called macrophages and neutralizes to mobilize against the cancer.

The bacterium came from an attenuated strain that has little infectious potential. Such strains have been tested as vaccines. The protein, called FlaB, is made by a gene in the estuarine bacterium Vibrio vulnificus, a close relative of the cholera bacterium, Vibrio cholerae.

Tumors shrank below detectable levels in 11 out of 20 mice injected with the modified Salmonella, said the study, published in Science Translational Medicine.

Faster, please.

TRIBUTE: Soccer Ball From Challenger Explosion Makes It to Space 31 Years Later.

According to the NASA’s website, Ellison Onizuka, one of the seven astronauts who died in the accident, stashed the item aboard the shuttle in 1986, before the craft’s external fuel tank ruptured.

The ball was from his daughter’s high school soccer team at Clear Lake High School in Houston.

“It was amazing, the condition it was in after the explosion,” Janelle Onizuka, the astronaut’s daughter, told ABC News affiliate KTRK on Tuesday.

“By virtue of the catastrophic days that followed, it is quite literally my last fond memory of my dad face to face,” she said.

NASA returned the soccer ball to the Onizuka family after it was discovered in the Atlantic Ocean among the shuttle’s wreckage.

It was on display at Clear Lake High School until astronaut Shane Kimbrough, whose daughter now attends the school, asked if it wanted anything sent up when he launched in October to the International Space Station, according to KTRK.

Last week Kimbrough posted a picture of the ball, finally in space.

It really isn’t possible to add anything to that.

JOE PAPPALARDO: Inside A Stealth Bomber Strike Against ISIS.

LIGHT READING: 12th Dead Sea Scrolls Cave Found in Israel.

GOOD: Congress Tries Once Again To Require Warrants To Search Emails.

WE LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES: Conservative Grassroots Leaders Plan Massive Pro-Trump Demonstrations Nationwide. I wonder if the Black Bloc will show up.

ZEITGEIST: Why Audi Lost the Super Bowl of Advertising.

BE CAREFUL WITH THOSE HEADPHONES: 1 in 4 Americans have noise-induced hearing loss.

IN SOVIET VERMONT, ACTION FIGURE PLAYS WITH YOU! Coming soon: The Bernie Sanders action figure?!

HEH:

WELL, THERE’S CERTAINLY ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT: Artificial intelligence will increase productivity by sharpening human minds.

INDEED: Want Your Husband To Step Up? Try Getting Out of His Way.

Suzanne Venker, author of The Alpha Female’s Guide to Men & Marriage:

I’d been on my husband for years about his eating habits and considered it my job to educate him about how to be healthy, just as I do with our kids. When I first met my husband, he was going to the gym every morning at 5:30am. He was also 40 pounds lighter. But after years of harping on him with no results, I couldn’t shake the feeling it was my fault my husband wasn’t taking care of himself.

Naturally, I didn’t see it this way at first. Why is it my fault if my husband makes bad choices? He’s lucky to have me guiding him! I’m just being helpful! But what controlling wives call helpful, husbands call something else. A man’s reaction to being told what to do by his wife is to do the exact opposite.

Indeed, it wasn’t until I stopped getting on my husband’s case that he began to take care of himself. Huh — go figure.

My light bulb moment didn’t end there. Once I saw the connection between the two — my dictating and my husband’s lack of motivation — I started thinking about other ways I was behaving that would cause him to react negatively. Like the times I’d tell him how to drive, or I’d correct his language, or I’d complain about whatever he wasn’t doing well and tell him how he could improve.

Read the whole thing.

For what it’s worth, my wife and I allowed our chores list of who-does-what grow organically — over the years we each have taken on what best fits within our skills and schedules. It probably helps that we’re both “see something, do something” types, but the net result is that I can’t recall us ever once fighting about household stuff. And I’ve found that in a smoothly functioning house, the desire to nitpick or complain is substantially reduced.

Best of all, you’re left with more time to enjoy one another’s company — which hopefully is why you’re together in the first place.

ANALYSIS: MOSTLY TRUE. Politics Have Turned Facebook Into a Steaming Cauldron of Hate.

WHY ARE BLUE-STATE UNIVERSITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF MISOGYNIST VIOLENCE? Woman: I Was Assaulted By The Thugs At Berkeley. “As the crowd grew, she and her husband both suffered concussions, she by falling hard trying to climb over two barricades to escape the crowd, he by being beaten with a heavy metal rod while lying helpless on the ground. She says she was separated from him and thought he was dead. He spent the whole next day at a hospital, fearing permanent liver damage but, Katrina says, it was ‘only’ two broken ribs.”

Seems like a felony conspiracy to deprive this couple of their civil rights. There are also money damages for civil rights conspiracy. Maybe she should get in touch with a hotshot lawyer like Kurt Schlichter. I think he needs a new BMW. And it’s not like the organizers haven’t been publicly bragging about what they did.

SCHADENFREUDE: Twitter Shares Drop as Pace of Growth Slows to 1 Percent.

Twitter has had trouble persuading advertisers to spend more money on its social-media platform as fewer people join. Pressure on the company mounted in the fourth quarter when its search for a potential buyer failed, forcing Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey to focus on reaching profitability as an independent business. Twitter cut 9 percent of its staff, sold its Fabric developer business to Google and shut down its Vine short-video app. It also lost both its chief operating officer and chief technology officer, increasing the load on Dorsey, whose time is divided because of his other job — as CEO of Square Inc.

“The fact that they’ve tolerated having a shared CEO is remarkable given the situation they’re in,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group. “Unfortunately, it’s a situation of investor indifference — everyone is used to Twitter’s troubles by now.”

Square isn’t doing very well, either.

POSSESSION IS NINE-TENTHS OF THIS UNJUST LAW: Hempstead, NY Drone Law Presumes Guilt.

The law states that “The Town Board … finds that the flying of these drones presents a noisy and potentially dangerous condition to the public and wildlife that may be present at Town facilities and that drone use at Town facilities is inconsistent with the establishment and maintaining of a safe and pleasing public environment.

“The Town Board further finds that it is in the public interest to limit the private use of such UAS in the vicinity of Town of Hempstead facilities.

But then there is this kicker: “The possession by any person of a UAS while on or in the vicinity of any Town of Hempstead facility creates the presumption that such UAS has been used in violation of this chapter subjecting the possessor of such UAS to all penalties provided for herein.”

Good luck getting that provision to survive the first court challenge, which ought to come with the first attempt at enforcement.

CONFIRMATION QUESTIONS: So back in 2005, I suggested these questions for Justice Roberts’ confirmation hearing. They might be good for Neil Gorsuch’s, too.

DAVID HARSANYI: Republicans Should Make Elizabeth Warren The Voice Of Democrats.

It seemed pretty obvious to me that the nomination of Jeff Sessions as attorney general was likely a done deal. So it was unlikely any persuadable voter would have even heard about Warren’s grandstanding if it weren’t for the kerfuffle. If it were up to me, however, I’d let Warren speak whenever she wanted to — ceding my time, if necessary — for as long as she wanted on any stage she demanded. The more she speaks, the better for conservatives.

As The Washington Post points out, however, McConnell probably gave Warren’s 2020 presidential aspirations a huge “in-kind contribution” by forcing her to follow rules of decorum. It’s possible, I suppose, that the GOP is playing the same 3D chess mastered by Donald Trump. Maybe shutting down Warren was a surreptitious means of making her the de facto voice of the Democratic Party and #TheResistance (formerly known as “unprecedented obstructionism”). Maybe it was just good luck.

Warren as the voice of the Left might be the best-case scenario for Republicans. For one thing, Warren is no Barack Obama on the charisma front. For another, Warren saves conservatives the trouble of going after socialist strawmen. They’ll have a real one.

Right now it looks like Republicans won’t have to do anything at all — Democrats seem to think they have a real winner on their hands.