GOODWIN: Mueller’s testimony equals end of any Trump impeachment talk.

More likely, the 74-year old former FBI director was something of a figurehead for an investigation that was carried out by the team of zealots he ­assembled.

That is not an incidental issue. As Andy McCarthy at National Review has written, and as Trump has repeatedly charged, the prosecutors were ­primarily people who had donated to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats or who otherwise made known their support for her.

Perhaps Mueller’s detachment explains his failure to remedy these obvious conflicts of interest that undercut his credibility from the moment they became known.

Oddly, Mueller removed FBI agent Peter Strzok because his bias against Trump became public, but apparently had no concerns about public reports showing that chief prosecutor Andrew ­Weissman and others were in Clinton’s camp.

Mueller’s detachment may also explain the bizarre standard his team created, where Trump’s presumption of innocence was shredded because they could not find sufficient evidence to “exonerate” him. Several Republicans pointed out that prosecutors either file charges or don’t, but have never imposed the impossible standard of exoneration.

Those flaws are among many that undercut the report, including the fact that much of it reads as if it were written by Trump-hating reporters from the New York Times.

Birds of a feather.

SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST:

● Shot: BBC Scream: ‘18 Months to Save the Planet’ from Global Warming.

—NewsBusters, today.

● Chaser: President Obama ‘has four years to save Earth.’

—The London Guardian, January 17, 2009.

● Hangover: Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.

—The London Independent, March 20, 2000.

● The DTs: “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”

—The Associated Press, June 29, 1989.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Here’s Why Cancel Culture Is Piling on Leonardo DiCaprio.

Does Leonardo DiCaprio need to start rethinking the way he chooses his film projects? It’s a topic many moviegoers [emphasis added] are discussing in the aftermath of a Hollywood Reporter article naming Leonardo DiCaprio the world’s “last movie star.” DiCaprio is one of few stars left in the industry whose name carries serious box office clout, but he hasn’t necessarily leveraged that star power to lift up women and minority directors. Guy Lodge, film critic for The Guardian and Variety, made a viral note on Twitter that DiCaprio has not worked with a female director since 1995.

Many movie goers? How many? Or is it just the staffers at left-wing movie outlets?

Indiewire is ready to condemn the actor, no doubt. The story cites a couple of film journalists and indie actress Zoe Kazan to back up its case, one the site’s readers mostly mocked.

Once again, an actor’s IMDB page is shot through a woke filter for maximum outrage.

The Montagnards always turn on the Girondists, to coin an Instaphrase. What’s noteworthy here is that DiCaprio is among the Girondists.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Stopped Clock Named CNN’s Most Accurate Reporter.

Note to Snopes: This is a headline from the Babylon Bee, which is satire. Speaking of which: ‘Doing the Lord’s work:’ Snopes can’t debunk Erica Thomas’ hoax, but they’re all over the Babylon Bee’s take on it.

Why, it’s almost as if Snopes is in the tank for the left, or something.

BUT OF COURSE: PJ Media Report on Facebook Ban Is ‘Hate Speech,’ According to Facebook.

REJOICE, REJOICE: James Delingpole correctly notes that Boris Johnson has picked a cabinet of all the talents – and on merit, to boot:

I’m particularly happy to see Priti Patel, Liz Truss and Theresa Villiers given top jobs – and for the right reasons.

Sure it will suit Boris’s spin doctors to note how diverse and gender balanced the new team is. But they didn’t get the jobs because they were women or because Priti is ‘Asian’: they got them because they’re bright, talented and, well there’s really no other word for it, sound.

One of the things Boris has always been exceptionally good at is picking the right team. He has, in British football parlance, played a blinder here.

RECKONING DAY: Oberlin College ordered to post $36 million bond to delay Gibson’s Bakery collection of Judgment.

FTC FINES FACEBOOK $5 BILLION, IMPOSES NEW PRIVACY OVERSIGHT: It’s a lot of cash, but critics call the deal a win for Facebook and its CEO.

Technology expert Ashkan Soltani, who served as the FTC’s chief technologist for a time during the Obama administration, said on Twitter that the settlement “was a terrible outcome for our leading privacy regulator and a very sweet deal for Facebook.” He added that, “If this were a game of chess, Facebook just checkmated FTC, flipped the board so it couldn’t be played again, and covered the whole thing up with a blanket.”

Soltani is not alone in his assessment. Several lawmakers have already heaped scorn on the arrangement. “The FTC not only fell short, it fell on its face,” Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said. “Facebook is getting away with some of the most egregious corporate bad behavior in the age of the Internet,” he added. “This outcome is an insult to consumers.”

The frustration isn’t limited to Democrats, either. “This is very disappointing,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said. “This settlement does nothing to change Facebook’s creepy surveillance of its own users and the misuse of user data. It does nothing to hold executives accountable. It utterly fails to penalize Facebook in any effective way.”

FTC Chairman Simons, for his part, pointed to the law as the major issue. For the second time in a week, he called on Congress to pass privacy legislation and give the FTC authority to enforce it.

“We are a law enforcement agency without the authority to promulgate general privacy regulations,” Simons said. “Our authority in this case comes from a 100-year-old statute that was never intended to deal with privacy issues like the ones that we address today.”

The commission only had two choices, he continued: “One, settle on excellent terms⁠—or two, litigate for years and likely come away, even from a favorable court decision, with far less relief than we announced today. Would it have been nice to get more? To get $10 billion instead of $5 billion, for example? To get greater restrictions on how Facebook collects, uses, and shares data?”

Maybe so, Simons implied, but the agency “cannot impose such things by our own fiat.”

Earlier: What Is To Be Done About Facebook? From Christine Rosen of Commentary, with a mention of Glenn’s new book.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VOKDAPUNDIT: Kirsten Gillibrand Wants Ten Trillion of Your Dollars to Fight Climate Change Or Whatever. “I always love promises like this. ‘Prioritize rural advancement, frontline communities, and marginalized voices’ sounds awfully nice, doesn’t it? What it means in practice is a slush fund for paying off various interest groups, both urban and rural. There’s other people’s money for everyone!”

RAM RELEASED: The USS Theodore Roosevelt launches a rolling airframe missile (RAM) during a live-fire exercise.

KEEPING THE PRESSURE ON IRAN: A report from VOA and the AP:

The Trump administration’s new Pentagon chief says he aims to ensure a U.S. naval presence in the Persian Gulf that would deter Iran from threatening to stop or seize any American commercial ship.

Mark Esper, who was sworn in as defense secretary on Tuesday, tells reporters that this arrangement wouldn’t mean having an American warship escorting every U.S. commercial ship.

As Esper puts it, “to the degree that the risk demands it,” the U.S. military will do what it can – by air and by sea – to ensure secure navigation in the Gulf and through the Strait of Hormuz.

According to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, allied navies will be involved in the effort to counter Iranian threats to close the Strait of Hormuz:

The United States believes a proposed European initiative to bolster maritime security in the Gulf would complement ongoing U.S. efforts there instead of being a “stand-alone” operation, the top U.S. general said on Wednesday.

Washington in June first proposed some sort of multinational effort open to all allies and partners to bolster maritime security in the Gulf after accusing Iran of attacking oil tankers around the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime chokepoint between Iran and Oman.

But fracking has fractured the ayatollahs’ oil weapon. “Fracking hasn’t quite fractured the ayatollah regime, but combined with economic sanctions imposed by the U.S., American fracking has helped sap and impoverish the dictatorship.”

As a result, Hormuz isn’t as critical an economic chokepoint; “secure navigation” for tankers and other commercial shipping matters, but closing it isn’t the economic threat it was even a decade ago. Recall geo-strategic community organizer Barack Obama’s statement in 2012: “We can’t just drill our way out of a problem.” The faculty club fool also wanted to let the ayatollahs build nuclear weapons.

CONSTITUTIONAL ORIGINALISTS HAPPILY COMMUNING TOGETHER: The Federalist Society is going back to basics this year by holding its annual lawyers’ convention on the theme of originalism, which is a tiny bit easier to do now that Mike Rappaport and John McGinnis have written Unifying Original Intent and Original Public Meaning. If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend it. Mike and John do a great job at reconciling these two approaches to originalism. And they do it in an approachable style.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Some related thoughts on originalism, from me, can be found here.

HEALTH: Apple Watch ECG vs. hospital EKG: Not the results I was expecting.

The notification on the Apple Watch also said I should contact my doctor if I didn’t feel well or if I continued to get the same result. Users can share these results as a PDF with their doctors, but luckily my doctor happened to be standing next to me.

The EKG on the Apple Watch directly coincided with the results of the printed-out hospital EKG. There were intermittent early beats coming from the lower chamber of my heart.

“This would be really useful [as a way] to screen for this or to have the first understanding that you have these early heart beats,” Marcus said. “What’s missing in the single lead Apple Watch is the information that tells us more specifically where exactly this is coming from.”

Dr. Marcus says I probably won’t die from the irregularity he discovered in my EKG that day, but he did ask me to schedule a follow-up to discuss my early heartbeat, something I likely wouldn’t have caught without this kind of test.

I always get pushback for promoting these stories, but I’m a firm believer in getting as much information to the consumer — and in this case, patient — as possible. The Apple Watch Series 4’s one-lead EKG monitor isn’t nearly as good as what you’ll find in your doctor’s office, but it’s only a first-generation product… and it is getting people to the doctor who never knew they had a heart condition.

So more devices like this, please.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, KANGAROO COURT KAFKAS EDITION: Penn State retroactively redefined ‘consent’ after accused student won a new hearing: lawsuit.

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I’M GLAD THAT TRUMP CARES ABOUT SICK PEOPLE: Exclusive: White House preparing order that would cut drug prices for Medicare.

GUY BENSON: As America Yawned, Mueller’s Testimony Damaged Him, Made Impeachment Less Likely.

The problem for the Democrats is that the supposedly big ‘gotcha’ moments were simply Mueller affirming damaging-looking facts and allegations listed in the document that has been in the public realm — picked apart and argued over ad nauseam — for months. We discussed some of them here (my stance against impeachment was only reinforced today). The shareable moment of Mueller stating that his report was not a total exoneration of the president, as the president has claimed, wasn’t terribly powerful because that conclusion was literally in the document itself, and has been highlighted repeatedly. Polling shows that the public already disagreed with Trump’s over-broad boast about the extent of his exculpation. As for collusion, Mueller tripped all over himself very early in the proceedings, initially stating that “conspiracy” and “collusion” were not colloquial synonyms. But his — or “his” — report stated precisely the opposite. When pressed on that inconsistency, he meekly deferred to the written report, which bolsters the president’s “no collusion” bottom line.

The bottom line is that Mueller didn’t reveal anything we didn’t already know, and nothing we already knew was actionable.

The usual media outlets are trying to spin that as a win on substance for the Democrats, but there was nothing new of substance. And the optics, most everyone agrees, were just awful.

WHEN YOU POINT OUT THAT THE EMPEROR IS NAKED, THE EMPEROR IS NOT AMUSED: PSU punishes prof who duped academic journal with hoax ‘dog rape’ article.

This will, of course, harm rather than help academia’s already suffering reputation. They’re not only shown to be ignorant, gullible, and faddish, they’re revealed as vicious and vindictive, too.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: ‘The Robert Mueller Story’ Was Box Office Poison. “I could not have imagined what a dumpster fire the Mueller testimony would turn out to be. The Democrats dragged a geriatric memory-care patient before the American public to try to get the Orange Man and it backfired. Mueller appeared confused, unclear on important information, mumbled phrases like a trained parrot and did not give the Democrats much help with their impeachment passion play. It’s clear Mueller had virtually nothing to do with the report, staff hiring or major decisions. So who was running the show for 2 years? We need to find out.”

TODAY’S DEMOCRATS: Profiling is evil and awful, except when it’s done to white men.

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: “Despite a host of furious insults, Una Mullaly’s diatribe is not really so much directed against the new British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, as it is directed against Brexit and the British societal ‘structures’ which she believes made it all possible. But she is wrong.”

OH: It’s Ilhan Omar And Rashida Tlaib Of “The Squad” Telling People They Should Be Deported.