I’M SO OLD I CAN REMEMBER WHEN DEMOCRATS CARED ABOUT MINORITY RIGHTS: Colorado Governor ‘Can Count on One Hand’ Teachers Who’ve Wanted to be Armed.

HE’S NOT WRONG: Billy Corgan compares ‘social justice warriors’ to the KKK.

STEPHEN L. CARTER: The Easy Way to Avoid Copyright Infringement: Pay.

It pains me to disagree with my friends who fight for free speech online, but I think the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit was correct in holding that a part of TVEyes Inc.’s business model violates copyright law. TVEyes has developed a text-searchable database of all television programming. Its clients can quickly and easily find out when and how often particular words or phrases have been used in broadcasts, and then watch short clips to show the context. This week, in Fox News Network v. TVEyes Inc., the 2nd Circuit banned the part of the service that involves the clips.

Back when I taught copyright law, I would tell my students that every accused infringer claims fair use — and as long as the infringement doesn’t cost the owner significant potential profits, the defendant has a good chance to prevail. Attending to that bit of wisdom, common to intellectual property teachers everywhere, would have helped TVEyes with avoiding copyright liability for its innovative project.

If you haven’t heard of TVEyes, you’re probably not in the news, entertainment or public relations businesses. The service isn’t available to individual consumers, and those who don’t need it are unlikely to know of its existence. But if you’ve ever read a sentence like “MSNBC discussed the issue 116 times last week while Fox News didn’t mention it at all,” the chances are somebody’s been browsing TVEyes.

He’s right. But it’s also true that copyright law protects too much, and for too long. The entire statute needs a reboot. Here’s a related piece that Rob Merges and I wrote a while back.

PEAK OIL: U.S. Will Be the World’s Largest Oil Producer by 2023, Says IEA.

U.S. crude production is expected to reach a record of 12.1 million barrels a day in 2023, up about 2 million barrels a day from this year, said the International Energy Agency, which advises governments and corporations on industry trends. American oil output will surge past Russia, currently the world’s largest crude producer at about 11 million barrels a day.

The IEA’s closely watched five-year forecast showed the U.S. hitting new strides in its oil and gas boom, helped by technological advances, improved efficiency and a fragile recovery in oil prices that is encouraging shale companies to ramp up their drilling. Once heavily dependent on imports from the Middle East, the U.S. is getting closer to achieving its goal of producing enough crude to meet domestic demand for refined products like gasoline.

Of the 6.4 million new barrels of oil that will be pumped every day between now and 2023, almost 60% will come from the U.S., the IEA said.

American influence on global oil markets is also expected to rise, with U.S. oil exports more than doubling to 4.9 million barrels a day by 2023, according to the IEA. Until 2015, the U.S. didn’t export any crude oil by law, but in five years it is expected to be among the world’s biggest exporters.

Have you hugged a fracker today?

HEY, BIG SPENDER: Cash-Strapped DNC, DCCC Pay Hillary Clinton’s ‘Resistance’ Group Nearly $900,000 Combined for List Acquisitions. “DNC’s $300,000 payment was made as state Democratic parties were waiting on promised funding.”

The DNC, which is in the midst of facing financial hardships, conjured up $300,000 on Jan. 8 to pay Onward Together, Clinton’s group, for “list acquisition,” according to the FEC filings. The payment was made to Clinton’s organization as state Democratic parties were waiting on $10 million in funding for rebuilding efforts that was initially promised last July.

As of early January of this year, the money had never made its way to the parties, and the DNC did not even have $10 million on hand. In late January, after reports surfaced of its inaction in relation to the state parties, the DNC finally announced it would begin disbursing $1 million to 11 different state parties, with grants going to Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, and West Virginia.

The DCCC also paid hundreds of thousands to Clinton’s “resistance” group for “generic committee list rental” between mid-December and late January.

It says something about today’s Democratic Party that it is still in thrall to its losing presidential candidate — who is no longer an elected official holding any office.

I don’t recall Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Al Gore, or John Kerry having much or anything to do with the party’s day-to-day affairs after their losses.

POMONA COLLEGE HAS REALLY GONE TO HELL: College physics course requires ‘Decolonization’ project.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN LOOKS AT STATE SECESSION: Rural California wants a divorce from rich California.

VIDEO: The Constitutional Canon, by Randy Barnett & Josh Blackman.

And here’s their treatment of NFIB v. Sebelius.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Another Award Show, Guns, RUSSIA and Much, Much More. “I’m very hopeful. President Trump has said background checks [are] needed. This bill of ours, the Manchin-Toomey bill, should be the base bill they work off of.”

SOCIAL MEDIA FILTER FAIL (PART DEUX): Twitter, like Facebook, seem hellbent on destroying themselves by one dumb move after another. This time, they put a “sensitive material” roadblock in front of porn star Jenna Jameson’s tweet about Hollywood Hypocrisy.™ Here’s the image that they were concerned might “offend” you.

PRESIDENT HILLARY? The Woman In The High Castle. I still wake up every day glad she’s not President, and Roger Kimball’s alt-history of the past year doesn’t make me feel any different.

CHUCK TODD: THAT TARIFF THING IS JUST TRUMP LASHING OUT OVER MUELLER, RIGHT? COMMERCE SECRETARY: WELL, ACTUALLY . . .

“Well, first of all, it wasn’t sudden,” Ross said. “The president, ever since the campaign, has said he’s going to do something to fix steel and aluminum.

“Almost a year ago, he commissioned the Commerce Department to do the studies on steel and aluminum. They’ve been through any number of interagency reviews before they were released to the public.

“So, with a whole year of preparation, I don’t know why anybody should’ve been so shocked.”

They’re shocked because they’ve been chasing shiny objects instead of covering actual events. Because journalism!

CHUCK TODD: Mueller Indictment Contradicts McDonough’s Claim That Obama’s Warning to Putin Was ‘Impactful.’

Todd asked McDonough about Sen. Mark Warner’s (D., Va.) comment last July, acknowledging the Obama administration “choked” in its handling of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

“It became very clear to us what the Russians’ intentions were, so we took a series of pain-staking steps, including the president directly confronting President Putin, us going to Congress to press them to work with us to make sure that the states were doing everything they could to protect the sanctity of every American’s vote,” McDonough said.

He said he believes the discussion between Obama and Putin was “very impactful,” adding that some of the things they feared Russia would do, it didn’t do.

Todd then played a clip of Obama from December 2016, recalling his direct conversation with Putin in September 2016 at the Group of 20 meeting in Hangzhou, China.

“I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didn’t happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out… and in fact we did not see further tampering of the election process,” Obama said.

Todd pushed back against this claim and said that based on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s recent indictment of the Internet Research Agency, Obama’s claim is “not true.”

If Putin took Obama seriously after his promise of “more flexibility,” it would be shocking. If Putin had taken Obama seriously prior to that it would be more shocking still.

THE OUTRAGE MACHINES DON’T WANT IT DONE “BEST,” THEY WANT IT DONE THEIR WAY: Washington Examiner: Government is not best done in a state of outrage.

Some of the worst policy changes in modern history have happened when lawmakers have let emotions and anecdotes dominate debate rather than facts and figures — actual evidence. Consider the short-lived “assault weapons” ban of 1994, nearly any law named after a deceased child, or President Trump enacting steel and aluminum tariffs. . . .

The murder of school children is a terrible calamity, but schools overall are incredibly safe, both in terms of mass shootings and of everyday crime. The experiences of students traumatized at a mass shooting need to be heard, but neither their ordeal nor their fear and anger turn them into policy experts. Passion should not be allowed to trump reason. Anecdotes should not displace facts. The perspectives of victims are important and should be heard, but students deserve sympathy, not carte blanche to dictate the trampling on fellow citizens’ rights.

There’s an instructive parallel in the judicial system. We entrust decisions on sentencing criminals to neutral judges, not to victims, their families, or their outraged neighbors. It’s the difference between a court and a lynch mob. . . .

James Madison, who drafted the Constitution, said the six-year term of senators was intended to ensure that the Senate proceeded “with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch [the House of Representatives].” While the news cycle changes daily, the issues addressed by our Congress should not.

The outrage machines don’t mind lynch mobs, either, so long as the right people are being lynched.

HEH: Putin tells U.S. to send evidence of vote meddling.

“I have to see first what they’ve done. Give us materials, give us information,” Putin said in an interview with NBC TV aired late on Friday, according to an English voice-over of his words.

“We can not respond to that if they do not violate Russian laws,” Putin told NBC’s Megyn Kelly, when asked whether Moscow would take action against the named individuals.

Kelly listed some of the accusations of Russian interference made by Mueller’s office and other U.S. officials, including the spreading of false information online.

“With all due respect for you personally, with all due respect for Congress, you must have people with legal degrees, 100 percent you do,” Putin said smiling.

He said U.S. authorities should send Russia’s general prosecutor an official request.

“This has to go through official channels, not through the press or yelling and hollering in the United States Congress,” Putin said.

The DNC is gonna get right on that.

WHAT HATH MERKEL WROUGHT? Right-Wing Victory In Italy Was Even Larger Than Predicted.

SO MUCH WINNING: The United States will dominate the oil industry for the next 5 years, International Energy Agency forecasts. “Oil demand will keep expanding over the next five years, and the United States will fulfill most of the world’s growing appetite, the International Energy Agency said on Monday. . . . The IEA projects the United States will pump 17 million barrels a day of crude oil, condensates and natural gas liquids, easily defending its title as the world’s top producer of petroleum products.”

I remember when Barack Obama mocked Sarah Palin for suggesting that we could “drill our way out” of our energy problems.

You know, kinda like he mocked Trump for suggesting he could bring back manufacturing, or when he mocked Romney for suggesting that the Russians were a threat.

ACTUALLY, EVERYONE BELIEVES IN THE “GOOD GUY WITH A GUN” THEORY, THE ONLY QUESTION IS WHO COUNTS AS A “GOOD GUY.” Broward County Sheriff’s Office Oversaw Concealed-Carry Training for Mosque-Goers.

WOW: Former slave and two-time Olympian becomes an airman.

Airman 1st Class Guor Maker fled war and slavery in South Sudan almost 20 years ago, came to the United States, and has become a college graduate, an Olympian, and, now, an airman.

As an 8-year-old, Maker, now 33, lost eight of his nine siblings in the Sudanese Civil War and was captured and enslaved twice, once by Sudanese soldiers and once by herdsman, according to a Joint Base San Antonio press release.

He escaped both times, and in 2001, he and his uncle’s family were granted permission to come to the U.S. He settled in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned English by watching cartoons, and later received a running scholarship to Iowa State University.

Full story — and it’s an impressive one — at the link.

FINALLY, A SENSIBLE GUN LAW PROPOSAL: Rand Paul wants to repeal federal gun-free school zones.

SOFT TARGET: 2016 School Shooter Chose Target For Lack Of Armed Security.

[Jesse] Osborn killed one 6-year-old at the school and his own father at home before going on the rampage. Two other students and a teacher were injured in the shooting.

Osborn wrote prior to the Sept. 28, 2016 shooting a reference to Sandy Hook killer, Adam Lanza, and noted that he wanted to kill “Atleast 40.” The information was revealed during a five-day hearing that began Feb. 12.

“My plan,” Osborn wrote through misspellings, “is shooting my dad getting his keys getting in his truck, driving to the elementary school 4 mins away, once there gear up, shoot out the bottom school class room windows, enter the building, shoot the first class which will be the 2d grade, grab teachers keys so I don’t have to hasle to get through any doors.”

Two days thereafter,Osborn told his chat group on Instagram he was unsure if he should shoot up his middle school, which he had already been expelled from. Additionally, he said that the elementary school would “be like shooting fish in a barrel” because there would be no armed security there.

Allowing concealed carry everywhere makes anywhere look like a potentially hard target.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Enrollment Data, Public Opinion Suggest The College Bubble Is Popping.

KAITLYN BUSS: The Condoning Of Cowardice. “Qualities traditionally considered ‘good’ — bravery, sacrifice, even just fulfillment of basic job duties — are apparently no longer necessary in the face of evil. Instead, some thought leaders tell us that we’re not to go too hard on those who display cowardice and fear. They justify this moral relativism by arguing that ‘guns are too scary’ to confront in traditional ways.”

Illustrated with a photo of the newly appointed leader, Teen Chapter, Men Without Chests.

But seriously, you get more of what you praise, and less of what you condemn.