DISPATCHES FROM THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY: New York Times Tries to Dehumanize Unborn Babies, Calls Baby’s Heartbeat “Embryonic Pulsing.”

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Illinois House approves fingerprinting gun owners.

THESE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT: High school varsity BBQ teams? Yeah, it’s a thing in Texas.

THESE ARE THEIR PRINCIPLES. AND IF YOU DON’T LIKE THEM… WELL, THEY HAVE OTHERS: Netflix Continues Production In Egypt, Where Abortion Is Illegal, While Considering Georgia Boycott Over ‘Heartbeat’ Bill.

THIS WILL LEAVE A MARK: Breakfast Club radio show host to Elizabeth Warren: ‘You’re Kind of Like the Original Rachel Dolezal.’

Related: Patterico notes that Erick Erickson was “suspended from Twitter for 12 hours for making a ‘wampum’ joke about Elizabeth Warren. (See below.) But his point was not to mock her for being an American Indian, but for *falsely claiming* to be one.”

As Dan McLaughlin writes, “This is insane. If the standard is that you can’t satirize politicians over their dishonesty…that’s gonna be a real problem in 2020.”

Why, it’s like Twitter management openly tilts the scales to the left or something. Somebody should write a book about this sort of thing.

ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM BARR: I’ve received no ‘satisfactory’ answers regarding Trump campaign ‘spying.’

“Like many other people who are familiar with intelligence activities, I had a lot of questions about what was going on. I assumed when I went in, I would get answers, and I got no answers that are satisfactory and, in fact, probably have more questions and some of the facts I’ve learned don’t hang together with the official explanations of what happened,” he said.

When asked to clarify, Mr. Barr said, “That’s all I really will say. Things are just not jiving.”

Oh, there’s plenty of jiving.

ON THE OTHER SIDE: Bernie Sanders campaigned for Marxist party in Reagan era.

Bernie Sanders campaigned for the Socialist Workers Party in the 1980 and 1984 presidential campaigns and was investigated by the FBI for his ties to the Marxist group.

Sanders has always played down the extent of his involvement with the party, which included radicals who praised the Soviet Union and Cuban communists, and has denied ever being a member. Asked in 1988 about his role as an SWP elector in 1980, he said: “I was asked to put my name on the ballot and I did, that’s true.” In fact, his ties to the party are deep and enduring.

The 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate and United States senator from Vermont, now 77, often scoffs at comparisons between his brand of self-described “democratic socialism” and communism. In recent years, he has said he is merely interested in having the United States look more like Sweden, a social democracy with a broad welfare state but a well-functioning private sector.

But his personal files from his time as mayor of Burlington, from 1981 to 1989, archived at the University of Vermont, show that he supported and campaigned for the communist SWP and maintained a close relationship with its senior members.

Pure evil.

MONICA SHOWALTER: Funny how no one wants to look into that report that Omar married her brother…

Well:

TOMORROW’S ARLEN SPECTERS, TODAY: Watch — Former Justin Amash (R-MI) Supporter: ‘You Have No Future in This District’ as a Republican.

KING OF COMEDY UPDATE: Jussie Smollett files: Prosecutors double-crossed police on admission of guilt.

(Classical reference in headline.)

SPENGLER: The Stock Market Is Sending a Message to Trump: This Is the Wrong Kind of Tech War. “As things stand, America is likely to lose the tech war with China. The stock market should be sending a message to President Trump. U.S. semiconductor stocks are down 20% in the past month, and the broad market has been in freefall for a week. This is a war we can win, by mobilizing American ingenuity to produce technology that will crush the competition. No-one ever won a war by trying to stop someone else from doing something. I’m an Always Trumper, and I want the president to win another term. But he’s risking the U.S. economy and his re-election chances on a poorly-conceived offensive.”

Spengler makes some interesting points, but I’m not convinced. Over the long term the stock market hews closely to reality, but over the short term, the almost any new element of uncertainty can create a panicked herd mentality.

SHOULD MITCH MCCONNELL BE TOASTED OR ROASTED? The Senate Majority Leader has often been an object of ridicule among conservatives, but Jonathan S. Tobin argues in The Federalist today that the Right should be thankful the Kentucky Republican is where he is at this moment in history. Hmmm. Not sure what my take is on this issue. What’s yours?

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? House to Hold Statehood Hearings for Democratic Stranglehold Washington, D.C.

WHEN YOU CAN’T TELL THE KKK FROM THE “PROGRESSIVES” PROTESTING IT: Israeli Flag Burned At KKK Rally…By The Counterprotesters.

THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: Emotional support dog bites passenger on Delta flight.

DAVID HARSANYI: Sorry, Alarmists, Climate Chaos Is Not Here. “Despite Democrats’ cataclysmal framing of every weather event, Americans are safer than ever.”

It’s true that 2019 has seen a spike in tornadoes, but mostly because 2018 was the first year recorded without a single violent tornado in the United States. Tornadoes killed 10 Americans in 2018, the fewest since we started keeping track of these things in 1875, only four years after the nefarious combustion engine was invented.

There has also been a long-term decline in the cost of tornado damage. In 2018, we experienced near-lows in this regard. The only better years were 2017, 2016, and 2015.

After a few devastating hurricanes around a decade ago, we were similarly warned that it was a prelude to endless storms and ecological disaster. This was followed by nine years without a single major hurricane in the United States. Or, in other words, six fewer hurricanes than we experienced in 1908 alone.

According to the U.S. Natural Hazard Statistics, in fact, 2018 saw below the 30-year average in deaths not only by tornadoes and hurricanes (way under average) but also from heat, flooding, and lighting. We did experience a slight rise in deaths due to cold.

Pointing out these sort of things usually elicits the same reaction: Why do you knuckle-dragging troglodytes hate science? Well, because science’s predictive abilities on most things, but especially climate, have been atrocious. But mostly because science is being used as a cudgel to push leftist policy prescriptions without considering economic tradeoffs, societal reality, or morality.

It’s always about power, except when it’s about money, unless it’s about both.