IT’S ALWAYS NICE to make Twitchy.

RECOVERY FROM MAJOR EARTHQUAKES using large airships.

I TOLD YOU SO: The day after the election, I told a bunch of media lawyers (many of whom had been literally crying all night) to cheer up, that Trump’s election was a godsend to a dying industry. A few damned near took my head off, but well, here’s the proof.

“A “60 Minutes” interview with President Donald Trump’s alleged mistress Stormy Daniels was viewed by 22 million people. It was the show’s highest ratings in 10 years.”

I still insist Jeff Zucker gave Trump the nomination.

REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN: Facebook’s 20,000 Content Reviewers Bring ‘Bias to Work.’

Yes, but they’ll make it look like Facebook is “doing something” to fix the problem while in fact further institutionalizing the problem.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON ON HOW THEY DO ‘JOURNALISM’ AT NEW YORK MAGAZINE:

Imagine an election in which the majority votes to disenfranchise some despised minority group and then defends the results as “democracy.” In a similar way, social media is purportedly an instrument for the enabling of discourse that is in fact used to prevent actual exchange—and, unhappily, the same desire to preempt genuine dialogue can be found throughout the ordinary news media. That is even true at prestigious publications such as New York magazine, which either is or is not interested in what I think about abortion and capital punishment, depending on which is more politically useful at the moment.

Read the whole thing.

I’M NOT SAYING THAT IT’S ALIENS, BUT IT’S ALIENS: Even NASA Isn’t Sure What’s Making These Bizarre Circles in The Arctic. Or maybe the BLUE HADES, who technically aren’t extraterrestrial. “If the phenomenon isn’t caused by seals or other animals – and discounting any tantalising conjecture of extra-terrestrials dabbling in the ice – deduction suggests it’s some kind of naturally occurring weather phenomenon we just haven’t had a chance to study up close yet.”

NEWS FROM AIRSTRIP ONE: Driver jailed for EIGHT MONTHS after giving three speed cameras the finger.

(Classical reference in the headline, as Ed likes to say.)

IT’S COME TO THIS: NY Times Corrects Piece Calling Palestinian Terror Payments a ‘Far-Right Conspiracy.’

CLAIM: 71 percent of FBI’s foreign counterintelligence budget diverted to Russia probe.

Flashback (all the way back to Sunday): Devin Nunes On Russia Probe Origin: “Major Irregularities” At State Dept, Sidney Blumenthal Involved.

“It took a long time to actually get this… the original intelligence, the original reasons that the counterintelligence investigation was started.

“This is really important to us because a counterintelligence investigation uses the tools of our intelligence services, that are not supposed to be used on American citizens. So we’ve wanted to know what intelligence they had that actually led to this investigation.

“So what we found now, after investigators have reviewed it is that, in fact, there was no intelligence.”

Meanwhile, the “most uncovered scandal of the year”: The Deepening House IT Scandal.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Veteran Who Survived Blast Receives Unusual Penis Transplant. “Three other successful penis transplants have been reported, two in South Africa and one in 2016 at Massachusetts General Hospital. Those transplants involved only the penis, not extensive surrounding tissue that made this transplant much more complex. The loss of a penis, whether from cancer, accident or war injury, is emotionally traumatic, affecting urination, sexual intimacy and the ability to conceive a child.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Revolution And Worse To Come: When legal bloodhounds and baying critics fail to take out Trump, what’s next? The Resistance wants Trump’s head — on the chopping block. “Indeed, the aim of the so-called Resistance to Donald J. Trump is ending Trump’s presidency by any means necessary before the 2020 election. Or, barring that, it seeks to so delegitimize him that he becomes presidentially impotent. It has been only 16 months since Trump took office and, in the spirit of revolutionary fervor, almost everything has been tried to derail him. Now we are entering uncharted territory — at a time when otherwise the country is improving and the legal exposure of Trump’s opponents increases daily.”

Related: Politically Motivated Violence Is on the Rise.

There’s no evidence that the NRA’s Chris Cox actually is profiting off of murders and suicides; if he was, law enforcement would be pressing charges. What the protesters mean is that they are really angry about gun violence and they are angry that Cox disagrees with their desire to see private ownership of firearms banned. There is no real denial that throwing fake blood on the house of Cox and his family doesn’t constitute a crime of vandalism; the defense is “the tactic is warranted under the circumstances” — that Cox deserves to be the victim of a crime because he disagrees with the protesters.

Some people gave my friend Kurt Schlichter some grief about his speculative fiction novels that imagined the United States splitting into two countries, a traditional United States and a breakaway “People’s Republic of North America” that attempts to enact the progressive idealist dream and encounters quite a few problems along the way. Some contend that Kurt is rooting for this scenario or attempting to encourage some sort of secessionist fantasy. I don’t think that’s a fair reading of a man who says his military service in the Balkans shaped his view of this issue, but I suppose some might think that depicting a formally divided America might inadvertently encourage people to think more about a formally divided America.

But to those who feel so horrified at the thought of the United States no longer being so united, it feels fair to ask . . . just what road do you think we’re on? Did we see a lot of soul-searching after the attempted mass shooting on the Republican baseball team, or the attempt to run Representative David Kustoff off the road, or the assault on Congressman Rand Paul? Was there anything like the aftermath of the Gabby Giffords shooting, when President Obama spoke of the need to debate our differences “in a way that heals, not a way that wounds”?

If we no longer even go through the motions of calling for a debate that doesn’t demonize and dehumanize our opponents — “Deplorables!” “Soulless!” — just how wild and unthinkable does more political violence seem?

Maybe some people like the idea.

AMERICAN HERO: Man who wrestled gun from Waffle House shooter raises more than $45K for victims’ families.

ANN ALTHOUSE ON TRUMP AND THE MEDIA: “I would have written not surprising for a president who knows they hate him.”

Plus: “The Daily Mail has lots of juicy photographs of the tablescapes with the gold-encrusted dishes that could have been mocked as evidence of Trump’s horribly narcissistic taste if they weren’t the Clintons’.”

And, from the comments: “Well, we have new traditions now. Like calling for impeachment before a new president is even sworn in. Or federal officers raiding the president’s lawyer.” Yes, I love the way the press alternates between treating Trump as something so unprecedented that all traditions must — must! — go out the window, and engaging in breathless pearl-clutching that Trump isn’t respecting the traditions.

PURE VERMONT:  A reference to Vermont’s famous maple syrup?  Or a call for genocide?  Evidently the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights agrees with its newly-reappointed Chair of the Vermont State Advisory Committee that it’s fair to construe it as the latter.

OUCH: Colorado High Court Rules Veteran Congressman Can’t Appear On Ballot. “Ruling says Doug Lamborn used nonstate resident to gather some signatures needed to get on ballot, which isn’t permitted under state law.”

In its decision, the state’s high court ruled that Mr. Lamborn used a non-Colorado resident to gather some of 1,000 signatures needed to get on the ballot, which isn’t permitted under state statute. That left Mr. Lamborn short of the required threshold to get on the Colorado ballot, the court ruled.

Mr. Lamborn’s campaign vowed to appeal the ruling.

“We are disappointed by the outcome and believe it was wrongly decided,” said Dan Bayens, a spokesman for the Lamborn campaign. “We are immediately bringing an action in federal court to overturn the part of Colorado law that deprives voters who have petitioned to have Congressman Lamborn on the ballot of their constitutional rights.”

I’m reminded of former Republican Congressman Thaddeus McCotter, who lost his safe seat from Michigan after “grossly incompetent staff work” left him without enough signatures to get on the primary ballot in 2012.

MY FAVORITE COMMENT ON THE LATEST ROYAL BIRTH: Raccoon Crushed To Death By Garbage Truck Hits Jackpot With Reincarnation.

VIDEO: Roger Simon interviewed by C-Span2 at the LA Festival of Books.

(Bumped.)

THE TOP THREE RECIPIENTS WERE ALL DEMOCRATS: Members of Congress Who Questioned Mark Zuckerberg Had Received $641,685 From Facebook.

WHEN THE NEW YORK TIMES CAN’T TELL “FAKE NEWS” FROM REAL:

It’s not “far-right,” either. The NYT, and Facebook, seem to think that the two are synonymous.

THAT’S NOT FUNNY: Humorless Left Turns Fun Prom Photo Into National Outrage. “They’ll hijack anything to advance a cause.”

OPERATION CHOKE POINT, NEW YORK STYLE: New York’s Governor Cuomo and the NY Department of Financial services are asking New York based banks and financial institutions to examine the “reputational risk” posed by business relationships with an “extremist organization,” the National Rifle Association. If that sounds like Operation Choke Point to you, Bingo. Brian Knight has more on this attempt to suppress free speech and association here.