“WHAT ARE YOU BURNING TO PROTEST?” “WHAT DO YOU GOT?”: Burning books like ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is the honest next step for the anti-Kavanaugh left.

ANY STAGE SOCIALISM: U.S. says Venezuela involved in opposition politician’s death.

“The United States condemns the Maduro regime’s involvement in the death of Venezuelan opposition councilman Fernando Alban,” it said in a statement.

The statement also called for the release of all Venezuelan political prisoners and for Maduro’s government to “to re-establish democracy in Venezuela and to prevent further suffering and bloodshed,” adding that President Donald Trump’s administration would continue to increase pressure over the issue.

Authorities in Caracas have said the municipal politician killed himself by jumping out a window, while his Opposition First Justice party has said he was murdered.

Alban, 56, was jailed on Friday for alleged involvement in the explosion of two drones during an August military parade led by Maduro, according to Interior Minister Nestor Reverol. Venezuelan officials have given differing accounts of where he jumped, and on Tuesday the U.N. human rights office called for an independent investigation.

The White House on Wednesday noted that Alban died “while in the custody of Venezuela’s intelligence service.”

What’s the Spanish for “chekist?”

PUTIN’S THUGS: A Trio of Wealthy Russians Made an Enemy of Putin. Now They’re All Dead. “Nikolai Glushkov, a close associate of the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky, was preparing to testify that Aeroflot was a corrupt instrument of Russian intelligence.”

The one-time finance director of Russia’s flagship airline, he was preparing for a trial in a London court. He told friends it would prove his innocence of longstanding financial charges by Russian authorities and expose Aeroflot Russian Airlines as a front for Russian security services. The case could also prove embarrassing for President Vladimir Putin, by illuminating a piece of post-Soviet history the Russian government has tried to erase.

After running out of funds to pay his own lawyers, Mr. Glushkov, 68 years old, planned to represent himself, and had amassed tomes on British law and forensic accounting. “This case was his purpose in life,” said Georgy Shuppe, a friend and former business partner. “He was not going to give up.”

On the eve of a preliminary court hearing, Mr. Glushkov stopped answering his phone. When his daughter drove to his house to investigate, she found him inside, strangled to death with a dog leash.

Good lord.

PLUS ÇA CHANGE, PLUS C’EST LA MÊME CHOSE: Argh! Despite the change in administrations, the EEOC continues to follow the policies developed during the Obama Administration, which declared it to be “race discrimination” to decline to hire job applicants with criminal records.

I wrote about that very wrongheaded policy back during the Obama Administration.   And yesterday I linked to new research that indicates that making it difficult for employers to ask job applicants about their criminal records ends up hurting low-skilled, young African American males (since it encourages risk-averse employers to avoid hiring from pools they perceive to be high-risk).

So far it would be difficult to tell the Trump Era EEOC from the Obama Era EEOC.

Here’s one idea for how to start moving in a new direction.

HMM: Terror in Paradise: Trinidad and Tobago Is Now a Jihad Hotspot. “At least 130 people joined ISIS from the Caribbean nation.”

I CAN THINK OF NOTHING LESS LIKELY TO STRIKE FEAR INTO REPUBLICAN HEARTS THAN a 3-day “strike” by lefty law students. “The strike aims to push politicians and political candidates to support Kavanaugh’s impeachment on the grounds of alleged perjury, and to defend reproductive rights as members of the U.S. Congress.”

Good luck with that, kids.

HEH: UN Warns Climate Change Will Destroy Earth By 2005.

IN THE 16TH CENTURY HE WAS SHIPWRECKED IN FLORIDA, and walked to Mexico.

UNEXPECTEDLY: The Mainstream Media Doesn’t Want You to Watch Gosnell.

As Jim Treacher has said:

NEW CIVILITY WATCH. OR, QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

● What Changes Will We Make After the Giffords Shooting?

—Alec Baldwin, the Huffington Post, January 15, 2011.

● HuffPost Editor Reveals New Year’s Resolution: ‘Kill All Men.’

—The Daily Caller, December 29, 2017.

● “We will not sit down and shut up. We will keep screaming. We will continue to confront our elected officials wherever we encounter them… We have a brave, bold vision for the world we want to live in and of what justice means to us.”

—The Huffington Post’s twitter feed, today.

Found via Iowahawk, who tweets, “I guess the strategy is to give the Republicans so much campaign ad B-roll they’ll collapse from the monumental job of editing it all,” along with a photo of Scotty in the engine room shouting, “The video clips are comin’ in so fast I cannah fit ’em into a single 30 second spot Captain! It’s meltin’ down the Avid machine cores!”

Heh, indeed.™

IN COLLUSION WITH DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS, THE PRESS IS MAINSTREAMING LEFTIST TERRORISM LIKE THIS: Truck set on fire because of pro-Trump stickers, owner says.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Major Hollywood Studio In Upheaval After Putting Out Leftist Bomb After Leftist Bomb.

OPEN THREAD: Comment away.

HOT SCOOP BY THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: White House Policy Adviser Stephen Miller — the man at eight years old: 

Old and busted: Judging adults from their high-school yearbooks. New hotness: Judging adults by their elementary-school craft projects. Trump adviser Stephen Miller gets remembered by his third-grade teacher, Nikki Fiske, in a Hollywood Reporter article that might prove just how desperate some editors are for content these days.

* * * * * * *

Ms. Fiske should be ashamed of herself, and the parents of her students past and present should be demanding to know the policies of the school and whether Ms. Fiske will be publicly humiliating their children, too. Shame on the Hollywood Reporter most of all for giving Fiske a platform for this pointless and heartless drivel. Maybe Fiske doesn’t know any better, but they certainly do. When journalists wonder why their readers don’t trust them, they can look to this as one of many, many examples.

As Beckett Adams writes at the Washington Examiner, “The real takeaway from this story is that Fiske sounds like a real piece of trash. What kind of teacher goes to an entertainment newspaper with gossip about an 8-year-old boy? Hell, forget that she’s a teacher. What kind of human being does that?”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: In Defense Of Viewpoint Diversity.

THE BABYLON BEE: ‘Let The Hate Flow Through You!’ Cackles Cloaked Hillary Clinton At Campaign Rally.

Yes, it’s satire, but based on that Vox witchcraft article, is it really?

OLD AND BUSTED: Christine O’Donnell assuring voters “I’m not a witch” before cratering at the ballet box in 2010.

The new hotness? “We ‘refuse to be silent any longer’: magic as self-care after Kavanaugh — Modern-day witches are creating rituals to foster solidarity, activism, and healing,” an actual headline today at young adult Website Vox.com.

Found via Ace of Spades, who jokes, “Trust all content from Vox. Magic is an effective therapy.”

HOT TAKE FROM JOE SCARBOROUGH: Trump Won’t Seek Reelection.

GOOD: Researchers develop injectable implant to prevent, detect HIV.

AT AMAZON, browse cool deals in Industrial and Scientific.

Plus, shop the Kindle Store.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Confirmation bias: Brett Kavanaugh and the major media’s worst moment.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Take a Sleeping Pill Every Night.

BUT TOP EMPLOYEES OF THE WEYLAND-YUTANI CORPORATION HAVE TOLD ME IT’S THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE SURE. Nuking Hurricanes: The Surprising History of a Really Bad Idea.

FACEBOOK HACK ANOTHER WARNING SIGN AGAINST ONLINE CENTRALIZATION.

Abandoning the decentralized Blogosphere for the walled gardens of Facebook and Twitter was a huge mistake, particularly for conservatives.