IT’S THE ONLY CARD THEY HAVE: Playing the race card on immigration.

KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: The Dossier Rehab Campaign: Congress should work quickly to declassify documents and let the public decide.

There’s no such thing as a coincidence in Washington, so why the sudden, furious effort by Democrats and the media to give cover to the Steele dossier? As in, the sudden, furious effort that happens to coincide with congressional investigators’ finally being given access to FBI records about the Trump-Russia probe.

This scandal’s pivotal day was Jan. 3. That’s the deadline House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes gave the Federal Bureau of Investigation to turn over documents it had been holding for months. Speaker Paul Ryan backed Mr. Nunes’s threat to cite officials for contempt of Congress. Everyone who played a part in encouraging the FBI’s colonoscopy of the Trump campaign—congressional Democrats, FBI and Justice Department senior career staff, the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama political mobs, dossier commissioner Fusion GPS, the press corps—knew about the deadline and clearly had been tipped to the likelihood that the FBI would have to comply. Thus the dossier rehabilitation campaign.

Weeks before, the same crew had taken a desperate shot at running away from the dossier, with a New York Times special that attempted to play down its significance in the FBI probe. You can see why. In the year since BuzzFeed published the salacious dossier, we’ve discovered it was a work product of the Clinton campaign, commissioned by an oppo-research firm (Fusion), compiled by a British ex-spook on the basis of anonymous sources, and rolled out to the media in the runup to the election. Oh, and it appears to continue to be almost entirely false. When the best you’ve got is that a campaign orbiter made a public trip to Russia, you haven’t got much.

But with Congress about to obtain documents that show the dossier did matter, it was time for a new line. And so the day before the Nunes deadline, Fusion co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch broke their public silence to explain in a New York Times op-ed that what really matters was their noble intention—to highlight Donald Trump’s misdeeds. The duo took credit for alerting the “national security community” to a Russian “attack.”

How brave of them.

THE HILL: Dems fear ‘Stephen Miller ambush’ on immigration.

President Trump’s inflammatory remarks against immigrants from a host of developing-world nations have sparked outrage amid talks on the fate of Dreamers just as lawmakers from both parties were claiming progress on a hard-fought deal.

But supporters of the immigration package say the deeper threat to an agreement is not the president, but the conservatives in both the White House and Congress fighting to kill the deal before it can pick up steam –– an effort they’re calling “the Stephen Miller ambush,” referencing a top White House aide.

Hmm.

CHANGE: Economic Growth Under Trump Has Been The Strongest In 13 Years.

Related: Fiat Chrysler will move Ram production to Michigan from Mexico.

SHELBY STEELE: Black Protest Has Lost Its Power: Have whites finally found the courage to judge African-Americans fairly by universal standards?

The recent protests by black players in the National Football League were rather sad for their fruitlessness. They may point to the end of an era for black America, and for the country generally—an era in which protest has been the primary means of black advancement in American life.

There was a forced and unconvincing solemnity on the faces of these players as they refused to stand for the national anthem. They seemed more dutiful than passionate, as if they were mimicking the courage of earlier black athletes who had protested: Tommie Smith and John Carlos, fists in the air at the 1968 Olympics; Muhammad Ali, fearlessly raging against the Vietnam War; Jackie Robinson, defiantly running the bases in the face of racist taunts. The NFL protesters seemed to hope for a little ennoblement by association.

And protest has long been an ennobling tradition in black American life. From the Montgomery bus boycott to the march on Selma, from lunch-counter sit-ins and Freedom Rides to the 1963 March on Washington, only protest could open the way to freedom and the acknowledgment of full humanity. So it was a high calling in black life. It required great sacrifice and entailed great risk. Martin Luther King Jr. , the archetypal black protester, made his sacrifices, ennobled all of America, and was then shot dead.

For the NFL players there was no real sacrifice, no risk and no achievement. Still, in black America there remains a great reverence for protest. Through protest—especially in the 1950s and ’60s—we, as a people, touched greatness. Protest, not immigration, was our way into the American Dream. Freedom in this country had always been relative to race, and it was black protest that made freedom an absolute.

It is not surprising, then, that these black football players would don the mantle of protest. The surprise was that it didn’t work. They had misread the historic moment. They were not speaking truth to power. Rather, they were figures of pathos, mindlessly loyal to a black identity that had run its course.

What they missed is a simple truth that is both obvious and unutterable: The oppression of black people is over with. This is politically incorrect news, but it is true nonetheless. We blacks are, today, a free people. It is as if freedom sneaked up and caught us by surprise.

It threatens too many people’s rice bowls.

MEDIA COMPANIES ARE THE WORST: Media: Companies Won’t Increase Wages for Workers Because of Tax Reform. Oh, wait. . . .

SCOTT ADAMS: President Trump Earns the Highest Presidential Approval Level of All Time.

The Small Business Optimism Index hit an all-time high. That’s the new Presidential Approval Poll.

In olden days (pre-2016), candidates for president were not so different from each other. I can remember pundits complaining endlessly about how similar the Democrats and Republicans had become. In that environment, you can easily imagine someone who voted for Candidate A warming up to Candidate B. In those simpler times, a presidential approval poll meant something.

Today, a “presidential approval poll” is little more than taking attendance. If you’re a Democrat, you disapprove of President Trump as a lifestyle choice. If you voted for Trump, you probably still approve of him because you knew exactly what you were getting. And if you are an anti-Trump conservative, you allow cognitive dissonance to rule your brain and you say he’s doing a good job but you disapprove of him anyway. David Brooks accidentally described this phenomenon in this article.

I contend that business optimism — and small business optimism in particular — are the new standard for presidential approval because “economics” captures most of what a president influences.

But does it predict elections?

THIS IS SO TERRIBLE: Trump Slashes Federal Bureaucracy, ‘Morale Has Never Been Lower.’

THE CHICAGO WAY: Candidate for Illinois attorney general robbed at gunpoint. “A candidate running for Illinois attorney general was robbed at gunpoint while he was taking promotional photos for his campaign Thursday afternoon in the Northwest Side ward where he’s also the Democratic committeeman, according to his campaign manager and authorities. Aaron Goldstein, 42, and several members of his campaign team were in the middle of taking publicity shots when the robbery happened, according to Goldstein’s campaign manager.”

ROGER KIMBALL: Of Home Truths and Shitholes.

TONIGHT’S OPEN THREAD: Talk about what interests you.

NOW ON AMAZON PRIME, A FRIEND’S MOVIE: Magnum Opus, a spy thriller.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The ‘January blues’ is a real condition — here’s why it happens and how you can combat it.

THIS IS WHO’S LECTURING US ABOUT MORALITY AND PROPRIETY: Exclusive: Watch Chris Matthews Joke About His ‘Bill Cosby Pill’ Before Interviewing Hillary Clinton.

THIS IS CNN: Jake Tapper Provides Another Textbook Example of What’s Wrong With American ‘Journalism.’

SHOCKER: Trump is ‘in excellent health,’ White House doctor says.

NUTRITION: Too little iodine could harm a woman’s fertility. “The Western diet has changed in the last few decades and the adoption of vegetarian and vegan diets have led to a reduction in dietary iodine consumption.”

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Grocery and Gourmet Food.

Plus, deals in Vacuums and Floor Care.

SO TRUE: “Perhaps someday the Democrats will learn not to have candidates who seem to hate a substantial part of the voter pool, but probably not. The Democrat platform is totally based on hating a substantial part of the voter pool – the part you’re floating in.”

NBC’S RACHEL MADDOW SHOW SPARKED FBI INVESTIGATION INTO DEATH THREATS AGAINST MCCONNELL, PRUITT:

Drinking while watching MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show led to death threats against Republicans Mitch McConnell and Scott Pruitt that sparked an FBI investigation.

An individual admitted to sending threatening tweets against the Senate majority leader and Environmental Protection Agency administrator, according to the EPA’s inspector general investigation document, first reported by E&E News.

Earlier:

● Rand Paul: Recovery after attack ‘was a living hell.’

● Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History.

● FCC Chairman Ajit Pai canceled his appearance at CES because of death threats.

● Terry McAuliffe says he’d punch Trump: ‘You’d have to pick him up off the floor.’

As Steve just said in response to that last item, come and see the violence inherent in the leftism. (Bumped, by Glenn, because they keep trying to bury this stuff.)

PROGRESS: Trump Administration Says States May Impose Work Requirements for Medicaid.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Top 10 Shi*holes I Never Want to Visit.

ACTUALLY, IT’S REALLY QUITE SIMPLE: “Why Mark Wahlberg Got ‘All the Money in the World’ for Reshoots and Michelle Williams Didn’t — It may look like obvious sexism, but it’s complicated,” The Wrap claims:

Wahlberg received more than 1000 times as much money as she did because reshoots were not in his contract, according to an individual with knowledge of the deal. It’s no surprise that Wahlberg’s agent, Ari Emanuel, demanded top dollar: Their dynamic inspired Wahlberg’s series ‘Entourage,’ in which an Emanuel-inspired agent’s ruthlessness is a running gag.

“Oh look, Michelle William’s contract required her to do reshoots, and Mark Wahlberg’s didn’t,” Alex Griswold of the Washington Free Beacon tweets. It’s almost as if some actors and their agents remember the importance of the second word in the phrase “show business.”

“Oh, you hired a pederast and you need me to come reshoot scenes because he finally got blown up in the media? F*** you, pay me,” Sonny Bunch adds, paraphrasing the mobster in Goodfellas played by Paul Sorvino.

As Glenn asks, where was Lee’s agent when her contract was negotiated?

WELL, GOOD: Mira Sorvino, Allegedly Blacklisted from Hollywood by Weinstein, Is ‘Getting Offers’ Again.