I’M CONFUSED. DIDN’T THEY JUST MAKE A LARA CROFT MOVIE? Spielberg: Next Indiana Jones Could Be A Woman.

DEEP STATE BLUES: Nunes Demands FBI and DOJ Turn Over Un-Redacted Documents. “Committee will pursue ‘all appropriate legal remedies, including seeking civil enforcement’ for noncompliance.”

BOYS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN (WITH SPHERICAL OBJECTS OF VARIOUS SIZES): Last week, I posted that modern feminists don’t seem to care that women are now routinely discriminated against in college admissions, especially at small liberal arts colleges that complain of “too many women.” Indeed, this may be the most blatant form of discrimination that women face today. But women’s organizations ignore it, often in favor of fighting much less obvious wrongs. Why?

Part of the reason is that their own Title IX in athletics policies—which make it very difficult for small schools to entice men to enroll by offering them a chance to play on a varsity team—helped create the problem.  These policies require schools to spend proportionally on men’s and women’s athletics, unless they can absolutely, positively, no-doubt-about-it, prove that women have all the athletic opportunities they want.  So schools that think they don’t have “enough men” just discriminate at the intake level instead.

Another consequence of these Title IX policies is that they make it harder for schools to spend money on non-athletic extracurricular activities that many women would prefer.   The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.

WELL, THAT’S WHY HE WAS SENT THERE: A year in, Trump’s pick makes waves at high court. “Nearly one year into his tenure, Neil Gorsuch seems to be having the time of his life. The Supreme Court’s newest justice is reveling in his role, diving into arguments with gusto and so far fulfilling the expectation that he would be a rock-ribbed conservative in the mold of his predecessor, the late Antonin Scalia. In doing so, he’s shaken up the dynamics of the highest court in the land.”

THAT’S ALWAYS THE CHOICE: Cuba’s next president faces choice between economy and communism.

Diaz-Canel will face serious challenges from the moment he takes over. Cuba’s Soviet-style economic model is not working. Raul has acknowledged as much and in 2011 began to implement economic reforms that allowed many Cubans to become self-employed and buy and sell residences. These changes have allowed some Cubans to achieve relative prosperity, while the majority is stuck in low-paying jobs.

Although the self-employed and small entrepreneurs have little interest in politics, they became advocates of additional economic structural reforms that would facilitate their business activity. Their success caused a reaction from inside the Communist Party that saw the rise of these non-state workers as a threat to the system. Recognizing these concerns, Raul told the National Assembly last summer that he took personal responsibility for “errors” and froze the concession of most new business and self-employment licenses.

Diaz-Canel faces a dilemma. To pull Cuba from its economic morass, he must introduce urgent reforms to eliminate economic distortions such as the use of two national currencies and inefficient state industries. He must also attract private foreign investment to generate new exports and rebuild Cuba’s decaying infrastructure, and allow Cuba’s incipient private sector to grow.

Many in the Communist Party fear that if Diaz-Canel implements a comprehensive economic reform agenda he could become a Cuban Mikhail Gorbachev whose actions would destroy the party and the revolution.

Fingers crossed!

WELL, IT’S NICK KRISTOF: Nick Kristof Argues with Straw Men about Guns; Straw Men Win.

ON JANUARY 21, 2025. NEXT QUESTION? When will the media accept that Trump is not a criminal target?

CHANGE: Trump to deploy National Guard to southern border.

FEMALE PRIVILEGE: UC Davis to Hand Out $10,000 Grants to ‘Feminist Researchers.’

NANCY PELOSI: Democrats Will Repeal the GOP Tax Law When We Retake the House.

Either Pelosi thinks this is a winning issue, or she’s already written off November but is trying to keep the base rallied.

Or perhaps it’s just one of those ironclad promises like the one about repealing ObamaCare.

CONRAD BLACK: The Midterm-Year Whirlwind:

Eighty-five percent of Americans are currently contemptuous of the Congress, but they are not so angry as to become revolutionary about it, so the legislators, almost all of whom were subjected to withering ridicule by candidate Trump, are radically divided. The House Democrats would impeach the president, for no cause, but for the fun of it and to immobilize him while the infantile nonsense of a Senate trial failed to remove him. This is the Maxine Waters/Jerrold Nadler/Red Queen Law School. The Republicans would spare the president, the country, and the world that indignity, but lack the energy or imagination to do anything about health care, immigration, infrastructure, welfare reform, the deficit, or anything else of any significance. The Congress claims to have just 75 work days left before the November elections, and the Senate, strangled by Democratic intransigence, will do brilliantly by its recent standards if it confirms the nominees to the present cabinet vacancies (State, Veterans Affairs, CIA). The many vacant embassies and judgeships will have to wait, for the voters. . . .

Before we get to the first week in November, I think approximately the following events will occur. There will be a four-power agreement between the two Koreas, China, and the United States that the Korean peninsula will, as verified by believably rigorous inspection, be denuclearized and it will be agreed that the Peninsula will be reunified only by spontaneous consent between the two Koreas without outside influence. Kim Jong Un can claim this is a victory of legitimization, but the removal of the North Korean nuclear threat will be a clear victory for President Trump also. If the talks with North Korea do not produce such an outcome, the administration will achieve the denuclearization by direct air attacks at minimum cost in lives and without a land war, yielding no concessions at all to the North, so the agreement described is likely.

Hysteria about trade wars will settle down and it will become clear that the administration is negotiating toward trade arrangements that do not yield such lopsided deficits for the United States as do the present arrangements with China, Japan, and Mexico. Everyone will see that the Russian-collusion argument, which was the Holy Grail of the Democratic party and the media for 18 months, is a gigantic canard. In fact, as any historically informed person would agree after two seconds’ reflection, no one ever nominated by a major party to the presidency of the United States would have entertained for an instant colluding with a foreign power to rig or influence an American presidential election. It is too outlandish a suggestion to be taken seriously, or even made the stuff of a novel. The attempts to present Donald Trump as a Manchurian Candidate, “groomed for the presidency by the Russians” (as the DNC-funded Steele dossier claimed), and promoted by $1 million a month on Facebook (most of which went to decry the condition of the country with nonpartisan impartiality, or to promote Bernie Sanders or the Greens), is a descent to the ahistorical, inconceivable nether region of outright madness.

Well, stay tuned.

COPYRIGHT LAW AS A POLITICAL WEAPON: My Daily Caller Op/Ed this week, explaining how the DMCA is used to silence political speech.

LIKE PUTTING A BAND-AID ON A TUMOR: Facebook restricts APIs, axes old Instagram platform amidst scandals.

That’s why it’s moving up the shut down of part of the Instagram API. It’s significantly limiting data available from or requiring approval for access to Facebook’s Events, Groups, and Pages APIs plus Facebook Login. Facebook is also shutting down search by email or user name and changing its account recovery system after discovering malicious actors were using these to scrape people’s data. “Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we’ve seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way” Schroepfer writes.

Instagram will immediately shut down part of its old platform API that was scheduled for deprecation on July 31st. TechCrunch first reported that developers’ Instagram apps were breaking over the weekend due to a sudden reduction in the API call limit. Instagram refused to comment, leading to developer frustration as their apps that analyze people’s followers and help them grow their audiences stopped working.

With all this confusion and broken features, this might be a good time to drop Instagram and cut back on your Facebook usage.

MIA LOVE: DACA Not ‘Dead,’ Allow Votes on Existing Proposals.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Supersonic Flight Prepares For Takeoff Again.

The first commercial supersonic era, from 1969 to 2003, had some well-documented issues. There was the tragic crash of Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde jet that went down in flames just after takeoff in July 2000. There was the window-rattling sonic boom produced by successful flights, which precluded airlines from scheduling overland routes. And there was the cost of fueling four gas-guzzling turbojet engines, which required 6,770 gallons of fuel an hour to reach and maintain a cruising speed of Mach 2—just under 1,500 miles per hour. The new breed of supersonic aircraft brings a reduction in both noise and environmental pollution. Aviation startups are developing planes with two engines (compared with the Concorde’s four) and lower cruising speeds of Mach 1.1 to Mach 1.6. Along with thinner noses, this will minimize sonic boom and possibly allow for overland flights. Here’s how the three leading startups are preparing for takeoff.

I wrote something about this last summer.

FRANK FLEMING’S BOOK NOW IN AUDIO:  Sidequest: In Realms Ungoogled.
For those not familiar with Frank’s work, he was the founder of IMAO.US and the genius behind “Nuke the Moon.”

Yeah, okay, he also accused boss of blending puppies.  And it’s totally not true.  We have domestic help for that, here at the instapundit headquarters.  But you know… give the dog a bite sip and all that.

AGAIN I SAY ONTO THEE… WAIT, WHAT?  Ever heard of a ‘curse tablet’?

CHILD OF HOLLYWOOD, POLITICAL IDIOT:   ‘Buffy’ Creator Joss Whedon Wishes Death for President Trump.

YEAH, ALMA, I TOO AM GETTING A CREEPY FEELING:  First they Came for…

AMERICA’S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS WORKING!  In a disturbing first, young Americans are less optimistic than their parents.

IT’S GOOD TO HAVE OPTIONS!  Banning semi-auto firearms? There are alternatives.

WAIT, WHAT?   The signs you could be allergic to sex.

SCIENTISTS DESPERATELY WORKING TO FIND A WAY TO BLAME THIS ON WESTERN CIVILIZATION: The universe could end the same way it started — with a big bang.

AUSTRALIA WELCOMES AMERICAN PROGRESSIVES FLEEING TRUMP’S AMERICA!  Matt Damon gets pooped on by bird in Australia.