HEH:

If Northam runs for re-election, there should be people in Klan outfits carrying “Re-Elect Northam” signs.

OUT ON A LIMB: Hey, Kids: Communism Isn’t Cool.

IT’S ALMOST AS IF HE HAS SOMETHING TO HIDE: Michael Mann Refuses to Produce Data, Loses Case.

HMM: Feds fear EMP ‘meltdown’ of nuclear power plants. “Tucked into the back of a new report from the Electromagnetic Defense Task Force compiled to highlight the EMP threat to U.S. infrastructure and military installations, the nation’s nuclear regulators admitted that the electric generating plants are not prepared for an attack.”

ALL APOLOGIES: I Apologize For This Article — the Role of Apology In Recent Politics and American Culture.

FLASHBACK: When Liberals Got Mad and Protested David Koch for Giving $100 Million to a Hospital.

FASTER, PLEASE: Another Court Invalidates 2015 WOTUS Rule. “On Wednesday, a federal district court in Georgia concluded held that the Obama Administration’s attempt to define ‘waters of the United States’ under the Clean Water Act (CWA), through the so-called ‘WOTUS’ rule, was substantively and procedurally invalid.  This is the second court to reach this conclusion about one of the Obama Administration’s more significant environmental initiatives.”

SUPREME COURT: Here’s Why Democrats Should Be Scared of a Supreme Court Vacancy in 2020.

Related: RBG scare: David Axelrod warns Supreme Court vacancy fight could ‘tear this country apart.

Translation: Democrats are willing to tear this country apart over the Supreme Court.

ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO SLANT: Matthew Continetti takes one for the team, reads Merchants of Truth by former New York Times editor Jill Abramson so you don’t have to.

Indeed, Merchants of Truth exemplifies the very problems it describes. Abramson needs an editor, too. Her narrative is repetitive, contains factual errors, and loses momentum near the end. She acknowledges the Times’s liberal bias but is much more circumspect when it comes to her own. She says the Times “generally eschewed celebrity news,” which is laughable to anyone who has had to endure its endless profiles of Frank Ocean, Lena Dunham, and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter.

Abramson refers to the “respected” former Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse—respected by whom? Her main criticism of the Times is that it did not do enough to prevent the Iraq war. She calls The Baffler “an intelligent magazine for political and cultural analysis,” which might be true, but it’s also left-wing. Perhaps Jane Mayer of the New Yorker is “one of journalism’s most intrepid investigative reporters.” She is definitely one of its most ideological and partisan.

It got worse for Abramson. On February 6, Vice correspondent Michael Moynihan said on Twitter that the chapters of the book on his company

were clotted with mistakes. Lots of them. The truth promised in Merchants of Truth was often not true. While trying to corroborate certain claims, I noticed that it also contained…plagiarized passages.

Moynihan found that Abramson had without attribution used work from the Columbia Journalism Review, Time Out Chicago, the New Yorker, and a master’s thesis.

She reacted clumsily, saying she had been “sloppy.” Later, in a statement, she admitted,

The notes don’t match up with the right pages in a few cases and this was unintentional and will be promptly corrected. The language is too close in some cases and should have been cited as quotations in the text. This, too, will be fixed.

An admission of guilt.

Clumsy, sloppy, scandal-prone, reflexively liberal, and unable to live up to her own standards, Jill Abramson is the perfect representative of an industry in terminal decline.

Read the whole thing.

HEH: De Blasio ‘missing’ posters mock NYC mayor’s absence while running for president.

BELIEVABLE: Hell Introduces 13 New Varieties Of Pineapple Pizza.

YES. Trump is playing a long game on China.

Once supply chains move out of China, it will be difficult to get them back. Moving production out of a country can be expensive and time consuming — as can moving it back.

This flight out of China presents a severe long-term challenge for its totalitarian government, which relies on rapid economic growth and rising living standards to provide some legitimacy for its dictatorial rule. But, as the Chinese Communist Party has increasingly scaled back the free market reforms that got its economy going in the first place, it has been forced to prop up its economy with its escalating “techno-nationalism” and outright theft of technology from American companies.

Now, the party is scrambling just to keep the economy from further contracting in the face of tariffs in their largest export market, the United States — and the longer-term impact of companies moving their supply chains outside of China. Beijing has already been forced to unleash a new round of subsidies in hopes of propping up their deteriorating economy until after the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Unfortunately for China, that plan is not working.

And this, as I’ve suggested before, is why Trump tweeted. My take is that Trump tweeted, rather than making the required declaration and order to have legal effect under IEEPA, because his goal is to spread FUD among the Chinese and the companies doing business with them, encouraging companies to shift their supply chains away from China without doing anything drastic or subject to legal challenge. That’s consistent with his approach to date. An actual declaration and order would have drastic effects and spur a drastic Chinese response. Here, well, as they say, the value of the Sword of Damocles is that it hangs, not that it falls.

AT AMAZON, save on Men’s Jackets & Coats.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO PRODUCE CHILD PORNOGRAPHY! Ex-cheer coach admits producing child porn of 8-month-old boy, records say.

DAVID BARON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Hikers beware: Peninsula’s most popular open space preserve closed due to mountain lions.

JULIETTE OCHIENG: The Real Purpose of the 1619 Project.

DO NOT STAND UNDER TREES: Authorities: 6 injured after lightning strike during PGA TOUR Championship in Atlanta.

OPEN THREAD: Go.

SARAH HOYT: Looking Forward.

NUKE IT IN ORBIT — IT’S THE ONLY WAY TO BE SURE. Russian Soyuz Spacecraft Carrying Humanoid Robot Aborts Docking at Space Station.

“MAY BE.” Tulsi Gabbard’s Campaign Hints DNC May Be Purposely Trying to Exclude Her From the Next Debate.

BULLY, PUT IN HIS PLACE: Michael Mann, creator of the infamous global warming ‘hockey stick,’ loses lawsuit against climate skeptic, ordered to pay defendant’s costs.

HEH: Trump takes another bite out of Dahlia Lithwick’s brain: “The demoralizing reality of life….Every day is the same, but still awful.” “Mmm, I can’t wait to read Dahlia Lithwick next year.” People who are mentally deranged when their party is out of power are mentally deranged.

EVERYBODY SLIPS UP SOMETIME, BUT BIDEN SEEMS TO BE DOING THIS ALL THE TIME: Biden mixes up New Hampshire and Vermont while campaigning in the former.

Of course, he’s not the only one. Seen on Facebook, Snopes to debunk in 3, 2, 1 . . . .

UPDATE: “I did not meet one Biden voter who was in any way, shape or form excited about voting for Biden.”