THANKS TO AN EMAIL FROM THE B612 FOUNDATION, I’m reminded that today is the 5th anniversary of the Chelyabinsk meteor strike. A good reminder — especially after the more-recent Michigan explosion — that we need better space defenses.

THIS IS WHY I KEEP SAYING GOP DONORS NEED TO SET UP A SORT OF “WELCOME WAGON” TO TARGET BLUE-STATE EMIGRANTS AND EXPLAIN WHY THE RED STATES THEY’RE MOVING TO ARE BETTER THAN THE PLACES THEY LEFT: Democrats Fleeing Blue States, Infecting Red States With Failed Liberal Disease. It would be inexpensive, and with today’s data, easy to spot the movers.

DISGRACE: Kansas wrongfully convicted these men. The state owes them more than an apology.

All told, they served 55 years. Floyd Bledsoe, Richard Jones and Lamonte McIntyre have an unfortunate bond, knowing what was taken from them and struggling now to find their footing as free, exonerated men.

Their losses are financial, familial and deeply personal.

McIntyre will testify that the day he entered prison as a teenager was the most terrifying of his life. As his peers were finishing high school and choosing career paths, McIntrye awoke worrying about the violence he would encounter each day, questioning how he would survive.

At 23, Bledsoe was earning $26,000 a year as a dairy farmer. He lost everything — the land, the livestock and opportunities to grow his business. Then, the legal costs to prove his innocence began to mount.

Prison robbed Jones of time with his two young daughters. He struggled with not being able to care for them financially or emotionally.

Like the other men, Jones is grateful for the community support he’s received, but he pointedly notes that everyone but the state of Kansas has been generous.

Kansas has paid them nothing.

Senate Bill 336 would provide $80,000 for each year served. The compensation mirrors Texas’ approach and is in line with other states. Colorado pays $70,000 for every year served, and Minnesota pays as much as $100,000. Kansas is one of 18 states with no compensation for the wrongfully convicted.

Honestly, it’s not enough. And there should be accountability for the wrongful convictions, too.

BANG-UP JOB THERE, G-MEN: REPORT: YouTuber alerted the FBI about Nikolas Cruz in September 2017.

AMER TAHERI: Speaking Swedish, Acting North Korean.

[In 2013] the new administration of President Hassan Rouhani felt confident that, thanks to support from US President Barack Obama, the Khomeinist regime could talk like Sweden but act like North Korea.

However, it seems that the arrival on the scene of an unknown quantity named Donald J Trump has confused the mullahs, forcing them to ponder whether it is still possible to hoodwink the Americans and the rest of the world while pursuing repression in Iran and destabilizing policies abroad.

Strictly speaking Trump hasn’t yet done anything concrete against the mullahs apart from expressing sympathy with recent mass protests in Iran.

However, the fact that Trump has kept the mullahs guessing about his intentions has already impacted their behavior.

To start with Tehran has ended provocative naval acts in the Strait of Hormuz and its environs, winning praise from the Pentagon. Throughout the Obama presidency the Iranian navy operated “swarming sorties” against US naval units in the region with small speedboats approaching American battleships like so many gnats trying to sting an elephant.

Under Trump, however, the “gnats” are keeping away from the American elephant.

In another register, Tehran has also shelved its annual “End of America” and “A World Without Israel” shows.

I wonder why that is…

THEY’LL QUIT WHEN IT QUITS WORKING, AND WHEN THERE’S A PRICE: Kurt Schlichter: Progressives Must Stop Using Terror To Try And Intimidate Conservatives.

It should be no surprise that less than a year after a Bernie Sanders fan took a rifle and attempted to erase the Congressional GOP for the crime of having different political views that some cretin decided to send Donald Trump Jr. a packet of mystery white powder. After all, Don Jr. is not a progressive, so don’t his and his family deserve to be terrorized, if not murdered?

Or did I misunderstand the progressives’ stand by their near total silence?

Well, not total silence. The Twitter left sure had a ball with it, yukking it up. Dousing someone in fake anthrax – hilarious! And totally justified, in their minds, because Don Jr. supports his father and is conservative. That makes it okay. In fact, let’s help by posting his home address!

That’s who they are, that’s what they do.

BYRON YORK: Why Are The Comey Memos Secret? “Portions of them have been leaked to the press, given to a Comey friend, discussed in congressional testimony, and read by a few Capitol Hill lawmakers and staff. Sometimes it seems the only people who have never had a chance to see the Comey memos are the millions of Americans who are trying to make sense of the daily firehose of Trump-Russia news. They’re not likely to see the memos anytime soon. The FBI and the office of Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller have imposed tight restrictions on access to the memos, holding them even more closely than some documents that are classified at a far higher level. Now, with speculation about obstruction ever present in the media, some lawmakers are calling for the memos to be released. It’s time for Americans to know what’s going on, they say.”

MAYBE NOT HA-HA FUNNY, BUT STILL FUNNY: U.S. spokeswoman says Erdoğan’s “Ottoman slap” threat funny.

The United States and Turkey are at odds over U.S. support for Kurdish forces in Syria. The U.S. military has backed the mainly Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and together they have pushed Islamic State (ISIS) out of most of northern Syria to a remote area astride the border with Iraq.

Turkey sees the YPG as an arm of Kurdish rebels in Turkey and launched an operation against the group in the northwestern Syrian enclave of Afrin three weeks ago. Erdoğan has also threatened to pursue the offensive to into the area around the Syrian town of Manbij where U.S. troops are training the Kurdish forces.

U.S. Lieutenant General Paul Funk, the commander of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS, said last week on a visit to Manbij that U.S. forces would defend themselves if attacked. “You hit us, we will respond aggressively. We will defend ourselves,” he said.

Erdoğan hit back on Tuesday. “Those who say ‘if they hit us we will respond harshly’ have clearly never received an Ottoman slap.”

I’m not sure the Ottomans successfully slapped the West after taking bits of Ukraine from Poland in 1676.

WELL, #METOO IS ABOUT THE PREFERENCES OF A FAIRLY NARROW SLICE OF WOMEN: ‘They Don’t Want to Include Women Like Me.’ Sex Workers Say They’re Being Left Out of the #MeToo Movement. “Sex workers say they have often been marginalized by mainstream feminist movements.”

FIRST, WE COULDN’T DRILL OUR WAY OUT OF PROBLEMS. NOW, WE ARE DRILLING OUR WAY INTO PROBLEMS: Donald Trump’s Extract-Everything Energy Policy Dooms Us All.

Doomed if you drill, doomed if you don’t.

WHY ARE DUKE PROFESSORS BIGOTED ABOUT NEURODIVERSITY? Democracy in Chains Author Nancy MacLean Calls Autism a Leading Cause of Libertarianism. Her book is bogus, and her public persona is pathetic.

THIS IS GOING TO BE ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE “EVERYONE KNEW” THINGS, ISN’T IT? Mayor Megan Barry’s chief of staff began approving bodyguard travel expenses after affair began.

TONI AIRAKSINEN: Conservatives, Libertarians Are ‘on the Autistic Spectrum,’ Says Duke Professor.

Maybe she meant the awesome spectrum.

Either way, attending Duke in the fall semester of 2018 will set you or your parents back $39,284 — plus interest, if you don’t pay cash.

STEPHANIE GUTMANN IS NOT HAPPY: #METOO IS KILLING SEDUCTION: Male assertiveness is not necessarily a bad thing. “Feminist writing can be extremely dense – in the academic manner – but it boiled down to ‘We’ve been distracted by this consent/no consent question. This hang up over consent, emerging from legal codes which were of course written by men, is obsolete. Sex itself… er, the kind with men.. is the problem.’”

I see no reason why social mores should be determined by the preferences of women’s studies majors with mental health issues.

FIRST OXFAM. NOW THIS: Doctors Without Borders fires 19 over sexual misconduct.

I’M SORRY, but Louise Linton is hilarious and I love her.

And this makes it even better: Cattily titled WaPo article about the wife of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is deflated by an embarrassing correction.

She drives all the female-journo social climbers crazy, for all the right reasons, just by existing. From the comments: “Look at Emily Heil. Then look at Louise Linton. Now you know why Emily Heil hates Louise Linton.”

They’re so obvious, and so easily triggered, and that’s what makes it so hilarious.

HA! SHE’S ONE OF MY FORMER STUDENTS: With a shared hate of pedal taverns, this couple fell in love.

OVER AT REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS, an excerpt from my latest, The Judiciary’s Class War, from Encounter Books. Buy it today!

UNEXPECTEDLY: Dems Politicize Florida School Shooting.

Ongoing updates on the situation can be found at PJM’s Hot Mic section.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Five Classic Rock Songs that Get Down to Business for Valentine’s Night.

OPEN THREAD: Make the most of it!

SCIENCE: “The experiment shifted to see what it would look like when this thing burned.”

Plus: “Totally worth it.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Top 10 Movies to Watch on Valentine’s Day if You Still Believe in Love.

HMM: Common Household Chemicals May Affect Weight Gain.

21ST CENTURY GENDER: Transgender high school wrestler, 18, on testosterone and waiting for reassignment surgery is set to win the girl’s state title for the second time -before he joins a MENS college team.