COULD YOU TEXT SOMEBODY EVERY FOUR MINUTES FOR FIVE MONTHS? That’s what those FBI lovers, Counter-Intelligence agent Peter Strzok and bureau lawyer Lisa Page, did during those now-formerly missing five months. Think about that for a moment:

• There are 12,960,000 seconds in five 30-day months.
• 12,960,000 divided by 50,000 equals a new text message every 259.2 seconds.
• That means Strzok and Page texted each other on average every 4.32 minutes.
• Every day of every week of every month for five months!
• Give or take a few here and there, of course.

More at LifeZette.

EVERYBODY’S GOT NICE PAY RAISES BUT ME: WaPo Staffers Fighting for Better Wages Told to Sit Down, Shut Up, and Be Grateful for Jeff Bezos.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Coming: Hypersonic Biplanes?

PRIVACY: Germany threatens curbs on Facebook’s data use.

Andreas Mundt, head of Germany’s main antitrust agency, the Federal Cartel Office, said Facebook could be banned from collecting and processing third-party user data as one possible outcome of an investigation that in December concluded the US technology group was abusing its dominant market position.

“We are blazing a trail in this case,” Mr Mundt said in an interview. “We are looking very closely at the connection between data and market dominance, data and market power, and the possible abuse of data collection.”

The German probe goes to the heart of the way Facebook makes money from the personal data of its 2bn users and reflects growing disquiet in Europe about the influence of the big US technology groups.

Probably the only way to maintain even a modicum of privacy with Facebook is to avoid their mobile apps altogether, and visit their website in browser in a virtual machine where you do absolutely zero other activity.

PEAK CALIFORNIA REACHED: In California, Where Cancer Warnings Abound, Coffee Is Next in Line.

A California court case could turn every cup of coffee here into a jolt of reality on the risks of cancer.

Under a state law, cancer warnings already follow Californians when they enter the lobby of apartment buildings, drive into parking garages and sit down at restaurants. They also pop up on products including kitty litter, ceramic plates and black licorice.

Now, a state judge in Los Angeles is expected to rule in the coming months whether coffee should be labeled as carcinogenic under the three-decade old law, which is meant to warn Californians of potential harms.

“They should just put the label inside my door so I see it when I leave the apartment in the morning,” said doctoral student Steve Haring, who moved to Northern California from Virginia in August. “It’s literally everywhere.”

Joe Jackson, call your office!

OH, THAT BIASED MEDIA: Media dub drop in tourism that began under Obama ‘Trump slump.’

The United States is seeing a decline in tourism, though media outlets blaming President Donald Trump are ignoring that the drop preceded his presidency.

Travel to the United States increased between 2010 and 2015, but began declining in 2015. The trend continued in 2017, and now media outlets are branding the steady decline as the “Trump slump.”

Shameless.

HOW MANY ELECTRIC CARS CAN THE GRID TAKE? It depends on your neighborhood.

WEIRD THAT NOBODY’S TRIED THIS BEFORE: Trump: No more aid unless Palestinians talk peace; Jerusalem is ‘off the table.’

KU STUDENTS CREATE MULTICULTURAL ALTERNATIVE STUDENT GOVERNMENT and it turns into a “dictatorship model of government.”

SO IT MIGHT COME TO THIS: California lawmakers considering fines and jail time for waiters handing out drinking straws without customers asking.

TO BE FAIR, THAT’S HOW IT’S INTENDED TO WORK: How Believing In Socialism Can Make You Miserable. Of course, the only thing worse than believing in it, is putting it into practice.

I’M SO OLD I CAN REMEMBER WHEN PAYING HIGHER TAXES WAS PATRIOTIC: Pelosi Tries to Extend $137,000 Tax Break for Two of Her Multi-Million-Dollar Homes.

SIMPLE JUSTICE: “Larry Nassar is a despicable human being for the things he did to so many young women under his care while working under the mantle of the United States Olympics Gymnastics team. That doesn’t give Judge Aquilina the right to throw away her duties to be fair, impartial, and promote public confidence in the judiciary in an attempt to correct what she perceived as manifest injustice.”

SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP: President Trump predicts ‘tremendous increase’ in UK-US trade.

He also said the US and UK were “joined at the hip” on military matters, while Mrs May said they stood “shoulder to shoulder” in facing shared threats.

In a series of warm exchanges in Davos, Switzerland, President Trump also told the UK PM: “We love your country.”

He also rejected “false rumours” of differences, saying that the two leaders “like each other a lot”.

It seems like only a day or two ago that David Frum claimed we had a President who was “smashing apart America’s alliance structures.”

Unlike some US presidents I could name, whose administration referred to one of our allies as a “chickenshit” and a “coward,” ungraciously dismissed Great Britain fairly regularly, stripped planned missile defenses from our NATO allies in vain pursuit of Putin’s friendship — all before taking Iran’s mullahs into his warm embrace.

I seem to recall Obama promising an “Asia pivot” to strengthen our position there, but failing to deliver. Trump however might actually be achieving it by improving military relations with Japan and even Vietnam.

And it was Obama who poisoned relations with Egypt, and whose strategic spinelessness over Syria that made Russia a power player in the region for the first time in decades.

But Trump is the one upsetting our alliance structure because reasons.

CHANGE: U.S. aircraft carrier to visit Vietnam in post-war first.

The proposed visit is set for March at the central port of Danang, Vietnam’s defence ministry said in a statement. Such a visit by a U.S. aircraft carrier could bring the most U.S. forces to Vietnam since the conflict ended in 1975.

Mattis cheered the planned port visit during talks with Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam.

“Thank you for the increasing partnership, with our aircraft carrier coming into Danang here in March,” Mattis said.

Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed the carrier visit was discussed by Mattis and Defence Minister Ngo Xuan Lich, and Vietnam’s defence ministry was seeking final approvals from national leaders.

“We expect it will be approved,” Davis said.

The arrival of a U.S. aircraft carrier in Vietnam will be welcomed by an emerging network of countries that are nervously eyeing China’s military rise, particularly its assertive stance and island-building activities in the South China Sea.

As I wrote earlier today, if Beijing doesn’t like these developments, well, tough — they have no one to blame but themselves.

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 1722: The IRS Apologizes For Targeting Tea Party Group. Congrats to Prof. (now Dean) Caron for keeping after this, and shame on his fellow tax professors who accused him of peddling fake news by following this scandal closely on his blog.

RICK MORAN: DoJ to Play Hardball with Sanctuary Cities.

WAIT, I THOUGHT SLUT-SHAMING WAS BAD: ‘Sexually Promiscuous’ Professor at the University of Rochester Faces Censure Vote. “Largely absent from the conversation is one inconvenient fact: Jaeger was cleared of any wrongdoing. Not once, not twice, but three times. It’s easy to see why investigators repeatedly reached this conclusion: University policy did not bar professors from engaging in sexual relationships with their students until 2014, by which point Jaeger’s objectionable behavior had ceased. That’s why Rochester determined that while Jaeger may have crossed certain lines, there was no grounds to terminate him—a decision the university stood by even after the complainants appealed. Moreover, some significant factual assertions made at various stages of the investigation were deemed false during a subsequent, independent investigation conducted at the university’s request by the law firm Debevoise and Plimpton.”

Oh, wait, it’s only women’s sexual choices that are beyond criticism.

Now the vote has been postponed.

WEIRD, ALL THE EXPERTS TOLD ME THAT THE TAX BILL WOULD ONLY BENEFIT A HANDFUL OF BILLIONAIRES: Home Depot awards $1,000 bonuses to hourly workers due to Trump tax cuts.

THE DARK NIGHT OF FASCISM IS ALWAYS DESCENDING IN THE UNITED STATES AND YET LANDS ONLY IN… THE WORLD OF HIP-HOP? Singer-Songwriter Erykah Badu Says She ‘Saw Something Good’ In Adolf Hitler.

THE DEMOCRATS’ BIG PROBLEM: The claims that Trump and his allies make about the FBI’s history of political retaliation, however cynically lodged, ring uncomfortably true.

For the most part, this includes President Trump himself, Republican lawmakers aligned with him, and conservative media, but it also includes (for example) the left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald. Their critique is built, with a range of sincerity, on an argument about the FBI being untrustworthy, scheming, and prone to exacting revenge on political opponents. The critique draws its force from the fact that this has, in fact, historically been true of the Bureau.

To be trusted, be trustworthy.

BE CAREFUL OUT THERE: Over 600 Malicious Crypto Apps in Official Stores.

ABOUT THAT LOGAN ACT: Kerry to Abbas Confidante: ‘Stay Strong and do not given in to Trump’. Remember how many progressives wanted to prosecute members of the Trump transition team under the Logan Act for warning U.S. allies that the U.S. would not look kindly upon them if they voted for a pending anti-Israel UN resolution? Strangely enough, those same progressives have been silent about Kerry’s much more egregious interference in U.S. foreign policy.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UA recruiting ‘feminist’ interns to fight ‘heterosexism.’