REP. MAXINE WATERS SAYS ‘ONLY A FEW OF US’ WANTED TO IMPEACH TRUMP.

And Bush and Cheney as well. She was content to merely call Papa Bush “a racist” who has “polarized the races in this country,” but, as Larry Elder notes, Waters “falsely accused President Ronald Reagan’s CIA of all but causing urban cocaine dealing in the ’80s. She claimed that Reagan, by working with Nicaraguan drug dealers to defeat the communists running that country, colluded with them to created the urban drug epidemic. Never mind that The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times all debunked Waters’ claim.”

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: The best thing that could happen to the American economy just happened.

What’s really exciting is this: Economists have been waiting and wondering when all the tech advances of the past decade — smartphones, AI, big data, drones — would start showing up in the productivity stats. It’s been reminiscent of how economists wondered the same thing about the computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s — right before the 1990s tech boom. But sometimes it take a while for businesses to figure things out. It took more than a half century for steam power to overtake water as the largest power source in Great Britain. It also took about as long for even half of U.S. factories to become electrified after the introduction of the alternating-current electric motor.

One American economist familiar with this history is former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. Although frequently cited as one of the key people responsible for the financial crisis, Greenspan in the 1990s was one of the first experts to notice something was up with productivity, much to the skepticism of many of his colleagues and staffers. “In the end, the chairman turned out to be right,” writes economist and former Fed Governor Laurence Meyer in his book A Term at the Fed. “His call on the productivity acceleration was a truly great one.”

So maybe Silicon Valley and the rest of Corporate America are finally resolving the current productivity paradox. (Fingers crossed, though, given the volatility of these stats, especially when you factor in the possible lingering effects of the Great Recession.) If so, it’s of much greater economic importance than anything happening in Washington these days. An innovation boom will make it a lot easier for the economy to grow closer to 3 percent rather than 2 percent.

Fingers crossed.

SHARYL ATTKISSON: The Many Unanswered Questions About the Trump Investigation.

DROPPING CHARGES AGAINST SMOLLETT IS LIKE SPITTING IN THE FACE OF CHICAGO POLICE: My gentlemen friend is more pessimistic about the world than I am (and that’s saying something). He predicted that the police would be prevented from investigating the possibility that Jussie Smollett’s case was a hoax (wrong), that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel would cheerlead for Smollett no matter how obvious his guilt (wrong), and that Smollett would never be charged with a crime (wrong).   My reasoning in predicting the opposite was this: Why would Chicago’s leaders want people to believe that you can’t go out for a sandwich in one of Chicago’s toniest neighborhoods without being violently attacked by Trump supporting nut cases carrying nooses?

We never dreamed that charges would be suddenly dropped against Smollett, so we never discussed that possibility. Still, score one for my friend’s pessimism.

I take consolation in the fact that Emmanuel is spitting mad, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson is spitting mad, the editors of the Chicago Tribune are spitting mad … and even Piers Morgan is unhappy.

KENTUCKY BANS CAMPUS FREE SPEECH ZONES, DISCRIMINATORY SECURITY FEES: Campus censors hardest hit! The University of Kentucky, Morehead State, and Murray State will all need to rewrite their policies.

JOHN KASS: Kim Foxx cleans Jussie Smollett up, the Chicago Way.

WORST. NAZI. EVER. Five Ways Trump Is the Most Pro-Israel President.

POLL: 37.5% of Republican Students Feel ‘Unsafe’ on Campus; 55% Hide Their Political Views from Friends. “President Trump’s executive order to deny funding to colleges that suppress free speech is clearly needed.”

IF THEY REALLY HURRY, WE CAN GET BACK THERE IN TIME FOR THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LAST MOONWALK: American Astronauts to Return to Moon Within 5 Years, Pence Pledges.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Professor who challenges women-only programs threatens to sue student government for defaming him.

A professor at the University of Michigan-Flint has threatened legal action against the student government after it publicly accused him of “hate and bigotry.”

Mark Perry is also deploying the university’s Bias Response Team against members of the student government, which may be faster than the courts in bringing them to heel.

The dispute concerns Perry’s Title IX complaint against Wayne State University, a public institution in Detroit, for serving as “venue sponsor” of a tech bootcamp limited to black girls last summer.

I don’t think this will work out for them. Mark Perry is a formidable guy.

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE METHODS CHAMPIONED BY THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AREN’T WHAT THEY’RE CRACKED UP TO BE: And that actually understates it. Now that they are no longer required, I expect more and more schools to back away from them.

WHY IS TRUMP’S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ‘PROTECTING OBAMA AND CLINTON?’ Judicial Watch chief Tom Fitton tells The Epoch Times about the latest illustration of how Department of Justice attorneys are pulling out all the stops to block the non-profit government watchdog’s efforts to dig out the truth about the Clinton email scandal and the Benghazi coverup.

“Everything is a fight,” Fitton said. “We even have to sue to get the time of day. It’s unbelievable.”

COMMUNIST FRONT CORPORATION: How Microsoft found a Huawei driver that opened systems to attack.

Huawei MateBook systems that are running the company’s PCManager software included a driver that would let unprivileged users create processes with superuser privileges. The insecure driver was discovered by Microsoft using some of the new monitoring features added to Windows version 1809 that are monitored by the company’s Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) service.

First things first: Huawei fixed the driver and published the safe version in early January, so if you’re using a Huawei system and have either updated everything or removed the built-in applications entirely, you should be good to go.

The interesting part of the story is how Microsoft found the bad driver in the first place.

Given Huawei’s track record, the really interesting part of the story might be what Microsoft didn’t find, and what Huawei didn’t then “fix.”

REP. MAX ROSE IS A DEMOCRAT WITH NO PATIENCE FOR AOC: David Marcus of The Federalist asks if Rose “can save the Democrats from Ocasio-Cortez” and offers some convincing evidence for a positive answer. Keep an eye on Rose, a former Marine who is only 32 years old and could become a genuine force in Congress.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Lehigh University is getting sued by a professor who claims the school ignored years of another professor’s sexual harassment in an effort not to appear racist.

The lawsuit claims that the university did not take immediate action when it was made privy to Peterson’s alleged harassment due to Peterson’s race. It says that Lehigh was “highly sensitive” to the appearance of racial bias because of its “racially biased history,” including an investigation of potential racial bias at the school by the Office of Civil Rights.

Due to this sensitivity, the university “deliberately delayed” in taking action against Peterson following its awareness of sexual harassment allegations because “Peterson had every incentive to smear the inquiry as racially motivated” and the university wished to avoid being “accused of racial bias.”

Sad.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: #LiberalPrivilege, #DossierTruthers and Much, Much More. “I happened to have Martha MacCallum’s show on last night and one of her guests was barking moonbat Eric Swalwell (D-CA). My jaw dropped when Swalwell asserted that nothing in the salacious and unverified dossier had been proven ‘not factual.’ Actually, not much in the dossier has been proven factual. There’s a difference but the left is using a new legal standard. ‘Can you prove you are not guilty?’ Can we prove Trump didn’t collude with RUSSIA? I don’t know, has it been proven ‘not factual’ that Eric Swalwell isn’t buggering little boys?”

Make them play by their rules.

AND YET I CONFIDENTLY PREDICT THERE WILL BE SADDER ONES TO COME: Glenn Greenwald vs. David Cay Johnston: Trump Mueller Probe “Saddest Media Spectacle I’ve Ever Seen.”

MADE SOME DNS CHANGES, so you may or may not experience a glitch or two in accessing the site. If you have a problem, try clearing your browser.

HARDBALL: ‘Now We’re In Charge’: Democrats Lock Out Republicans On Bipartisan Bills.

Democrats like Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) express no interest in anything but pushing ahead with Democratic legislation – and after 25 years of being mostly in the House minority, Doyle thinks it is high time.

“I don’t have thin skin about this, but when they were in charge, they had the rules,” Doyle told Politico.

“Now we’re in charge, and maybe some of them don’t understand that yet.”
Republican Richard Hudson expressed frustration with Democrat Bobby Rush for altering a bill the two had co-authored to introduce new workforce training programs. Rush has effectively removed Hudson from planning this bill.

“He reintroduced it, and he’s added all this money to it, and didn’t consult me,” Hudson told Politico.

Just like Harry Reid’s Senate, the new Democratic House majority acts as though they’ll never be the minority again.

SPACE: India shoots down own satellite; PM hails India’s arrival as ‘space power.’

GOOD: Trump orders historic plan to thwart EMP, warns attack would be ‘debilitating.’

In the first step of its kind, President Trump has signed an executive order calling for a government wide war on EMP, the types of electromagnetic pulses that can wipe out every computer, electric grid, and jet.

In joining the voices of those warning of EMP attacks, Trump called on his government to quickly generate a plan to detect EMP, protect critical infrastructure like water and electric sources, and also to recover if a hit lands.

“It is the policy of the United States to prepare for the effects of EMPs through targeted approaches that coordinate whole-of-government activities and encourage private-sector engagement,” said the executive order released by the White House.

“The federal government must provide warning of an impending EMP; protect against, respond to, and recover from the effects of an EMP through public and private engagement, planning, and investment; and prevent adversarial events through deterrence, defense, and nuclear nonproliferation efforts. To achieve these goals, the federal government shall engage in risk-informed planning, prioritize research and development (R&D) to address the needs of critical infrastructure stakeholders, and, for adversarial threats, consult Intelligence Community assessments,” it added.

Well, good. I don’t want to live in a William Forstchen novel. Or even one by Bill Quick.

WHO, INDEED? Who is Tina Tchen, the attorney linked to Jussie Smollett messages? She’s now in charge of “investigating” the SPLC’s mess. I expect they brought her in to do for them what she did for Jussie Smollett. . . .

SURE, RUN WITH THAT, JOE: Biden criticizes ‘white man’s culture,’ role in Hill hearing. His big appeal is supposed to be that he can connect with the white working class where other Democrats can’t, but the Democratic party’s wokesters have enough power to make him say stuff like this, sabotaging his biggest strong point.

Related: The Mainstreaming Of Political Fanaticism.