MODERN COMSTOCKERY: Bikini baristas appeal city ordinance issuing dress code, debate definition of ‘anal cleft.’

How much “anal cleft” is one allow to show while at work? That’s the question one Washington court is trying to answer.

A U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is reviewing an ongoing legal saga between bikini baristas and the city of Everett over the anatomical phrase “anal cleft” and whether dress codes imposed on businesses violate their civil rights.

Both sides appeared in court Monday to further argue the city’s ordinance, which was passed August 2017, that restricts what employees of “quick-service” restaurants wear by requiring that the “bottom one-half of the anal cleft” be covered, Herald Net reported.

According to the ordinance, employees who work at fast food restaurants, food trucks and coffee stands are required to wear at least a tank top and shorts while at work.

The drive to force pretty girls to cover up and reduce their employment opportunities is designed to force them into the loving embrace of the white-clad, scowling Handmaids Crew.

FASTER, PLEASE: Appalachia’s Approaching Energy Boom.

MEGAN MCARDLE: In attacking Neomi Rao, Democrats are arguing against progress — in more ways than one.

Neomi Rao is eminently qualified to be a judge; the former law professor has worked in both Congress and the White House, in addition to her academic experience. She has also long leaned right; when she was in college, and for some time after, she wrote right-leaning opinion pieces. Progressive groups have seized on these old writings as evidence of racial insensitivity and hostility to sexual-assault survivors, and in Rao’s confirmation hearing Tuesday, Democratic senators called her to account for them.

I’m tempted to write “Democrats are reduced to pointless obstructionism,” but “obstructionism” implies the ability to obstruct. Senate Democrats lack that ability, having done away with the filibuster for lower-court judicial nominations when they were in control. Thus they are reduced even further, to “pointless mudslinging.”

Yet “pointless” doesn’t mean “harmless.” The Democratic senators’ juvenile tactics will not stop Rao’s confirmation, but they are lowering the already debased national discourse. . . .

Of course, if the latter-day inquisitors get their way, and everyone is liable to future prosecution for views they no longer hold, we might all become somewhat less cognitively supple. Consider the message that progressives are sending to anyone hesitant about some proposed social change: “We want equality and justice. Also, after we win, we want to punish anyone who disagrees with us right now.”

Future punishees could be forgiven for being reluctant to support any such victory. Moreover, at the beginning of any major campaign for social change, those people will definitionally be in the majority; if they weren’t, the campaign would be unnecessary.

There’s a certain irony in watching progressive groups deploy tactics that are anti-progress in every sense of the word.

Well, it would be more ironic if anyone with any sense believed their claims about what they believe and want. If you want to lower your opinion of progressives still more, just read the comments to her piece at the Post.

UGH: NASA ‘still working toward’ 2020 launch of massive SLS rocket. “Multiple concerns remain: cost, schedule, management, delayed upper stage.“

Multiple sources have told Ars that while NASA is still targeting sometime later in 2020 for a test launch of the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, known as Exploration Mission-1, this flight is likely to slip into 2021.

This week, in response to a query about potential delays, a spokeswoman for the agency’s exploration program, Kathryn Hambleton, said the agency is not ready to discuss a new schedule yet. “NASA is still assessing impacts as a result of the shutdown, but we are still working toward a launch in 2020,” she told Ars.

I’m about to turn 50, but I’m not quite old enough to remember when NASA could launch as much weight to LEO as the SLS is supposed to be able to lift, someday, eventually.

POLITICS TODAY: ‘Republicans Are Brainwashed,’ Democrats Dutifully Chant While Clad In Identical White Uniforms.

SOCIALISM MEANS CARING: German journalist detained in Venezuela since November starts new hunger strike in prison.

Billy Six has been in custody since Nov. 17, as BBC News World reported at the time. He was detained by agents of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence in Santa Cruz de Los Taques, a coastal town about 310 miles west of Caracas.

The journalist was taken to the Helicoide prison in the center of the Venezuelan capital, home of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (Sebin, for its initials in Spanish), and remains there today, said Espacio Público, a civil association dedicated to the promotion and defense of freedom of expression and the right to information in Venezuela.

On Dec. 13, Six began a hunger strike to demand that he be allowed to communicate with his family, with the German Embassy in Caracas and with a lawyer he trusted, the organization said.

Six is usually described as a “right-wing” journalist, which is probably why I had to go to a non-MSM website to find an update on his status.

But I suppose if “Democracy dies in darkness,” then socialism thrives in it, conveniently provided by the major outlets.

UPDATE: VA Lt. Fairfax’s “F*** the b****” accuser has released a statement detailing the alleged assault.

JOE BATTENFELD: Liz Warren’s ‘American Indian’ claim cuts to character. As I’ve said, lots of people think they’re part Indian due to family lore that’s often wrong. But she doubled down in the face of all contrary evidence when a simple, “Huh, I guess I was mistaken” would have done.

DAVID HARSANYI: The State Of American ‘Fact-Checking’ Is Completely Useless: With a veneer of impartiality, fact-checkers engage in a uniquely dishonest style of partisanship.

Related: Beware of Fake News Watchdog “NewsGuard.” Hacks gonna hack.

INVENTOR OF THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE PLAINS: On this day in 1804, John Deere was born.

HEH: Elizabeth Warren Admits To Wearing Paleface At College Costume Party.

MICHAEL MOYNIHAN HAS PROBLEMS WITH JILL ABRAMSON’S REPORTING.

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AT LEAST SOMEONE LIKES HIM: Embattled Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam Signs Bill Authorizing $750 Million in Cash Subsidies to Amazon.

I’M NOT SAYING THAT IT’S ALIENS, BUT IT’S ALIENS: Mars Cubesats Fall Silent.

OPEN THREAD: How’s it goin’?

HOW BAD HAS IT GOTTEN? SO BAD THAT CNN’S CHRIS CILIZZA IS WRITING ABOUT The complete and utter collapse of Virginia’s Democratic Party.

But the real question is, will the Republicans take advantage of this opportunity, after blowing it so thoroughly there in recent years? It’s a second chance.

SPACE: A Year After SpaceX’s 1st Falcon Heavy Launch, Starman (and a Tesla) Sail On. “On Feb. 6, 2018, SpaceX’s huge Falcon Heavy rocket aced its maiden flight, launching Musk’s cherry-red Tesla Roadster and its mannequin driver, Starman, into orbit around the sun. The Roadster is journeying on an elliptical path, which takes it out beyond Mars at apogee (the most distant point from the sun) and near Earth’s orbit at perigee (closest solar approach). Car and driver moved beyond Mars’ orbit in early November, and they’re still out there now, more than 226 million miles (364 million kilometers) from Earth, according to the tracking site whereisroadster.com. And the Roadster will stay out in those distant reaches for a while yet — its orbital period is about 557 Earth days.”

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL: Ralph Northam Must Resign. “His shifting and credulity-shredding explanations for the racist photograph on his medical school yearbook page, and the silence into which he then succumbed for days — after initially promising to do ‘the hard work’ of atonement and apology to restore his standing with Virginians — is simply too much.”

Hey, WaPo editorial board — remember how you pushed Northam as some sort of racial healer, while gleefully spreading the bullshit claims that longtime milquetoast GOP pol Ed Gillespie was some sort of Stormfront stalking horse? Maybe you should resign, too, hacks. Don’t try to pretend this is just about the rottenness of Virginia’s Democratic Party. You’re part of the rot yourselves.

WELL: Mueller hauled before secret FISA court to address FBI abuses in 2002, Congress told.

THE NEW RULES WERE ONLY SUPPOSED TO APPLY TO REPUBLICANS: “Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring stepped down from his position at the Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA) on Wednesday, hours after admitting to reporters that he had worn blackface to a party years ago while in college.”

IT’S THE DEMOCRATIC WAY: Georgetown students to vote on whether to tax themselves to pay slave reparations.

FORMER YEARBOOK STAFFER AT NORTHAM’S MEDICAL SCHOOL: STUDENTS SUBMITTED THEIR OWN PICTURES AND WE WERE VERY CAREFUL TO NOT MIX THEM UP AND NO ONE EVER COMPLAINED THAT WE HAD MIXED THEM UP.

Was there no professor supervising the yearbook to tell the students (can’t call them “kids,” as Northam would have been 25 at the time) “you really don’t want to do this?” before someone ran photos in “dark makeup,” as the New York Times would say, and a Klan hood?

SMOKING MARIJUANA ASSOCIATED WITH HIGHER TESTOSTERONE LEVELS? But there’s a catch: “An equally plausible interpretation is that our findings could reflect the fact that men with higher testosterone levels are more likely to engage in risk-seeking behaviors, including smoking marijuana.”

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