CHANGE: Maduro isolated as Latin American nations back Venezuela opposition leader.

BECAUSE THEY NEED THERAPY: Conor Friedersdorf: This is How the Left Destroys Itself. Conor asks why so many on the left get caught up in politically counter-productive overreaction to the Covington kid. A lot of it is revenge fantasy against some obnoxious jerk from middle or high school. The “smirking” Covington kid (or Brett Kavanaugh before him) becomes a stand-in for the hated adolescent alpha, who probably was as bad as they remember. They couldn’t retaliate properly then, so they publicly join a twitter mob that fantasizes about committing violence, while engaging in doxxing designed to effectuate it. Of course, Nick Sandmann was not actually one’s high school tormentor, and getting caught up in this sort of psychological drama is a good way to alienate those who notice the gap between the vitriol and the evidence purportedly justifying it.

GULFSTREAM OWNERS AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING: 1,500 Private Jets Descend on Davos Carrying Globalist Elite for Climate Talks.

IN A TIMELINE OF THE COVINGTON BOYS’ EXPERIENCE, Megan McArdle makes clear that Nathan Phillips is a big fat liar. “So first, obvious thing: Any piece of information that comes from Phillips should be utterly discounted. Journalists do not rely on sources who tell two different versions of major events in quick succession, after video has disproven the first account. For obvious reasons.”

Plus: “I started as a blogger. And the lesson of all internet-speed communication is: the quicker you react, the more likely you are to find out you jumped the gun and made an ass of yourself. . . . But while I don’t think we can avoid bad fast takes, I do think we can avoid the absolutely vicious way these kids were treated.”

ACCOUNTABILITY: Kentucky Prosecutor Vows to Hold Culprits Accountable for Threatening Covington Catholic Kids.

FIGHT THE POWER: L.A. Teacher Sues Union Over Forced Dues.

JOURNALISM:

Think of them as wannabe Commissars and you won’t go far wrong.

WELL, THAT WENT SWIMMINGLY: Requirement That Women Constitute 40% Of Faculty Search Committees Resulted In 38% Reduction In Female Hires. The article blames “male backlash” but it’s water-cooler wisdom that female committee members are harder on female candidates than male committee members are.

GOOSE, MEET GANDER: Should women be required to register for the draft? Commission likely to recommend big changes.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE ABOUT RAPE (CONT’D): Man walks free from Hong Kong court after daughter admits making up rape allegations against him.. “The 15-year-old told the High Court she had lied out of anger over the father’s favouritism towards her brother, going as far as faking medical evidence. The man had spent 15 months in jail.”

She sounds like a right little sociopath. I can’t imagine why the father preferred her brother.

AND RUBIO SHOULD KNOW:  Rubio warns Venezuela’s Maduro he’d be a fool to underestimate Trump.

PLEASE LET IT END IN FREEDOM:  Venezuelans set fire to Hugo Chavez statue: It has started.

SEXUAL IMPROPRIETY? IN HOLLYWOOD? WHY, MY SHOCKED FACE WAS JUST HERE MOMENTS AGO!  Bryan Singer and the Hollywood Sgt Schultz Effect .

THEY’LL JUST KEEP ACTING LIKE TODDLERS, I’M SURE. WITH THE PRESS ON THEIR SIDE, WHY TRY TO BE REASONABLE?  What will Pelosi do now?

YEAH, MOSTLY SHARING THIS BECAUSE SOME INTERESTING BITS THERE, BUT ALSO BECAUSE I TOO HAVE BEEN HELD BY THE SAME BUG. I THINK THIS VIRUS IS SOCIALIST.  STAY STRONG, LINDA:  Getting Back on the Saddle.

INTERESTING:  Self Defense Reading: De Becker, Miller, and Others.

ST. MOSES BROWNING. IF YOU DIDN’T GET TO THE RANGE TO HONOR HIM, GO TOMORROW:  On This Day: My Favorite Mormon is Born.

IT’S THE SMALL THINGS:  An evening with Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin.

MUCH, MUCH, MUCH FASTER, PLEASE:  It may be possible to reverse memory loss caused by Alzheimer’s.

WHY, SAINT AL BORE PRESERVE US! UNLESS THOSE ARE SOLAR-POWERED:  Nearly 1,500 private jets to land at climate change-focused Davos summit.

In other words: listen aristos, we don’t believe you!

AT AMAZON, save in Sports and Outdoors.

Plus, deals on Office Supplies.

THEY ARE DESTROYING THEMSELVES WITH TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, AND EVEN THE ATLANTIC HAS NOTICED: The Media Botched the Covington Catholic Story. And the damage to their credibility will be lasting. “The full video reveals that these kids had wandered into a Tom Wolfe novel and had no idea how to get out of it.”

As have we all. Well, I have some idea.

UPDATE: Okay here’s more:

How could the elite media—The New York Times, let’s say—have protected themselves from this event, which has served to reinforce millions of Americans’ belief that traditional journalistic outlets are purveyors of “fake news”? They might have hewed to a concept that once went by the quaint term “journalistic ethics.” Among other things, journalistic ethics held that if you didn’t have the reporting to support a story, and if that story had the potential to hurt its subjects, and if those subjects were private citizens, and if they were moreover minors, you didn’t run the story. You kept reporting it; you let yourself get scooped; and you accepted that speed is not the highest value. Otherwise, you were the trash press.

At 8:30 yesterday morning, as I was typing this essay, The New York Times emailed me. The subject line was “Ethics Reminders for Freelance Journalists.” (I have occasionally published essays and reviews in the Times). It informed me, inter alia, that the Times expected all of its journalists, both freelance and staff, “to protect the integrity and credibility of Times journalism.” This meant, in part, safeguarding the Times’ “reputation for fairness and impartiality.”

I am prompted to issue my own ethics reminders for The New York Times. Here they are: You were partly responsible for the election of Trump because you are the most influential newspaper in the country, and you are not fair or impartial. Millions of Americans believe you hate them and that you will causally harm them. Two years ago, they fought back against you, and they won. If Trump wins again, you will once again have played a small but important role in that victory.

All they have to do is not be crazy. And they just can’t do that.

AN ONGOING THREAD OF HATE: Covington Catholic Is the Terrible Sequel to the Kavanaugh Case. “But this is America in 2019, and it’s full of rage and hate. And parents of young men know that hostile people would instead want to destroy your child’s life. They would want to destroy your own livelihood. They would wish violence on him and you. They would try to destroy your school, and they would mock your faith. And then, even when their rage is proven to be unfounded, they would spend days hunting through your background and your school’s history to try to find some reason to hate you anyway.”

UPDATE: The High-School Deplorables: MAGA hats, the March for Life, Covington Catholic—and the mob.

Of the most culturally deplorable boxes one can check in progressive America in 2019, the boys of Covington Catholic High School have most of them: white, male, Christian, attendees at the annual March for Life in Washington, and wearers of MAGA hats. What’s not to dislike? So when four minutes of video footage emerged online this weekend showing the students appearing to harass a Native American Vietnam veteran named Nathan Phillips, America’s media and cultural elite leapt to judgment.

A short video clip of student Nick Sandmann supposedly “smirking” as Mr. Phillips banged his drum in the student’s face went viral, and instantly the boys of Covington Catholic in Kentucky were branded racists.

Best-selling author Reza Aslan tweeted that the high school junior had a “punchable face.” Former Democratic Party chief Howard Dean opined that Covington Catholic is “a hate factory.” GQ’s Nathaniel Friedman urged people to “Doxx ‘em all,” i.e., make their personal information public.

Meanwhile, mainstream news outlets published misleading accounts of what happened based on incomplete information. And pundits on the right and left rushed to demonstrate their own virtue by trashing high school students as somehow symptomatic of America’s cultural rot in the Age of Trump.

Only it turns out there was a much longer video, nearly two hours, showing that almost everything first reported about the confrontation was false, or at least much more complicated. The boys had been taunted by a group of Black Hebrew Israelites, who shouted racist and homophobic slurs. Far from the boys confronting Mr. Phillips, he confronted them as they were waiting near the Lincoln Memorial for their bus.

It also turns out that Mr. Phillips is not the Vietnam veteran he was reported to be in most stories. On Tuesday the Washington Post offered a correction, noting that while Mr. Phillips served in the Marines from 1972 to 1976, he was “never deployed to Vietnam.”

Our political-media class is mostly trash, and their “have you no decency” talk is a sham.

Related: “The urge to believe in something can be so great that people can sincerely see things that aren’t there. The social media obsession with racism and toxic masculinity eventually turned the Covington boys’ ‘smirking faces’ into the new Evil Clown sighting of 2019.”

BREAKING: L.A. teacher sues union, saying dues were illegally taken out of her paycheck.