HOLD ON TO THE MEANINGS:  The Meaning of Words.

THEY LIVE IN A WORLD OF MAKE BELIEVE:  Too Many Celebrities Actively Condone or Support Violence.

FACEBOOK CAN’T HELP BUT MAKE ITSELF RIDICULOUS:   FaceBook Jail Changes a Man.

THE MORE THEY PUSH, THE HARDER THE BACKLASH WILL BE:  The Message Is Loud And Clear: Comply Or Be Destroyed.

FROM MARS…. BECAUSE SHE’S CLEARLY AN ALIEN:  Chicago Mayor Lightfoot Reportedly Only Granting Interviews to ‘Black or Brown Journalists’.

PIPELINES ARE OKAY IF THEY’RE IN OTHER COUNTRIES, BECAUSE GREEN NUDE HEEL, REEEE:  Nordstream 2: Biden Admin Set to Waive Sanctions on Russian-German Gas Pipeline.

BECAUSE IT’S THEIR FAULT HE’S LAME:  Biden Calls Coast Guard Cadets a ‘Dull Class’ When They Didn’t Laugh at His Joke.

GOOD:   Legal Insurrection Foundation Files Opposition to Education Dept. Proposal To Inject 1619 Project and Kendiism Into Schools.

IF THEY DIDN’T HAVE DOUBLE STANDARDS, THEY WOULDN’T HAVE STANDARDS AT ALL:  Biden Threatens To Run Over The Sycophants.

THIS WILL END IN TEARS:  Military Begins Purge Of Extremists From Ranks.

THEY’RE TALENTED:  Dogs have gotten good at sniffing out COVID.

OPEN THREAD: ‘Bout time, I got wise.

MY NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW ARTICLE ON STATE SECESSION IS GETTING MORE TIMELY ALL THE TIME.

Oregon Counties Vote to Secede Into Idaho.

Flashback: If Trump is reelected, Oregon could be headed for a crack-up.

NOT QUITE SO NEW: NASA to delay next New Frontiers competition.

OUT ON A LIMB: If Texans can buy alcohol-to-go from restaurants on Sundays, it’s time to lift all blue laws. “Only seven states still have blue laws restricting sales of liquor on Sundays. Blue laws trace their origin back even before Prohibition, and in nearly every other industry but alcohol, they have been long since repealed. Originally based on the desire to limit what items were sold on the Sabbath, these laws no longer make much sense in our complex 21st century marketplace.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND “WE’RE PUTTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER:” Catherine Lhamon, Obama’s Title IX Enforcer, Just Got Her Old Job Back. “Undoing DeVos’ Title IX reforms will not be easy; the former secretary went through the rule-making and notice-and-comment processes, which give the reforms more staying power. But then again, the Obama-era Title IX push was accomplished via unilateral declaration—i.e., a ‘dear colleague’ letter to universities instructing them to adopt certain procedures. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that this strategy would be deployed once again.”

MUCH BETTER: Physician reports experience with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation during acute COVID.

GOODER AND HARDER: Nearly 20% Of Seattle Cops Quit Amid National Protests, Budget Cuts.

ROGER SIMON: Democrats, Not Trump Supporters, Are the True Jan. 6 Insurrectionists.

If you were to stage an insurrection on the Untied States government would you, (a.) simultaneously attack the power grid at multiple points, turning out the lights across the country or (b.) dress up like a horned Star Wars character at a comic book convention and enter the Capitol building, unarmed, as if it were Halloween?

You don’t have to be an experienced insurrectionist like the late Muammar Gaddafi (who was armed to the teeth during his, needless to say) to know the answer.

If you replied (b.) you are either a moron, a liar or a Democrat—or some combination of the three.

What occurred in Washington DC on Jan. 6 of this year was about as far from an insurrection as I am from being a spaceman living on Mars.

Were those people stupid? Sure.

Were they juvenile? Rather.

But were they insurrectionists? You gotta be kidding.

And that’s leaving out the obvious details that the only person who got killed in this so-called insurrection was a Trump supporter shot by a Capitol policeman—we still don’t know who—and that videos show other Capitol police waving the demonstrators through, including that “dangerous” Chewbacca guy, into the building as if it were a national holiday and they were rubbernecking tourists from Kansas.

In fact, these people were the true patriots, trying, in their clumsy way, to get their country back, or what they thought was their country.

The real insurrectionists are the people accusing them of insurrection. They, the accusers, the ones demanding a “commission” to study this non-existent insurrection, are the ones taking over our country and imposing their will on the people.

And they are doing this after an election whose fairness has never been investigated and about which no one can say—other than pronouncing an opinion as fact—who was victorious.

They have, as the courts would say, no standing.

But they do have plenty of Democratic Party operatives with bylines to drive their preferred narratives: US Capitol Police statement on leaked letter ‘from members of the USCP’ instantly makes media reports age horribly.

STANDING UP TO TYRANNY: Pennsylvania Voters Approve Restrictions on Governor’s Emergency Powers.

THANKS FOR SHARING: Paltrow’s Vagina-Scented Candle Explodes, Scaring Texas Man, Impressing Neighbors.

NYC SUSPECTS BUSTED IN MULTI-MILLION-DOLLAR COVID WELFARE SCAM AFTER POSING WITH MONEY STACKS ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

The scammers’ target was the state’s unemployment benefits system. During the pandemic, the government greatly increased benefit payouts and hastily expanded eligibility to new categories of workers. In its rush to get taxpayer money out the door, the government created a target-rich system flush with cash and light on verification.

These scammers in New York only got caught because they were particularly, erm, flagrant in their criminal activity. They made multiple unusually large withdrawals at ATMs, triggering monitors, and openly posted the huge influx of cash on social media.

I wish I could tell you that this story was just a one-off. But countless similar examples of rampant fraud have emerged during the government’s massive “emergency” spending spree. The expansion of unemployment benefits alone has lost a truly astounding amount of money to fraud.

A report shows that the federal government has potentially lost up to $200 billion in taxpayer money to scammers ripping off the system. For context, that’s equivalent to $1,400 lost per federal taxpayer. (There goes your “stimmy” check!).

No word yet if suspects also posted CNN-approved vaccine selfies, in addition to flashing their wads of cash.

STARE DECISIS AND THE WARREN COURT:

Edward v. Vannoy is a fascinating case. It reveals raw fractures on the Court between Justice Kagan and Justice Kavanaugh, and I would add Chief Justice Roberts. However, perhaps the most tiring aspect of the case is the caterwauling about stare decisis. At this point, Justice Kagan needs to prepare a macro. Her copy-and-paste dissents about precedent are repetitive. She has made her point, and can only repeat it over and over again.

Still, I thought Justice Gorsuch had a poignant response. Last year, I joked that stare decisis is an old Latin phrase that means “Let the decisions of the Warren Court stand.” Gorsuch seems to agree.

Heh.

JIM TREACHER: DOCTOR Jill Biden Told Kamala ‘Go F*** Yourself’ for Attacking Her Husband.

Beyond how funny it is to picture DOCTOR Jill Biden saying this, it’s important to note that she made the same assumption everybody else did: Harris was calling Biden a racist. At the time, all the Kamala fans insisted she wasn’t calling him a racist, because she literally said “I don’t think you’re a racist” before she laid out the argument that he was a racist. But DOCTOR Jill Biden saw right through that ruse. You don’t get to be a DOCTOR like Jill Biden by being a dummy.

And other Biden voters don’t like Kamala much either. Her approval ratings are unusually dire for a VP in the first few months of a new administration. As Charles C.W. Cooke at National Review notes:

[T]hat Harris is unpopular should come as no great surprise, given that she somehow manages to combine into a single package a transparent insincerity, an unvarnished authoritarianism, and a tendency toward precisely the sort of self-satisfied progressivism that helped the Republicans to limit their losses at the last general election.

In other words, she really stinks.

Kamala’s nominal boss is also having quite a rough day: Joe Biden Has a ‘Please Clap’ Moment That Would Make Jeb! Bush Blush.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: The New Yorker Union expresses solidarity with Palestinians ‘from the river to the sea.’

It’s since been deleted, but the damage is done. “Thanks for destroying another legacy publication, woke Millennial radicals.”

UPDATE: Meanwhile, on the other side of town: NY Times Loves Pro-Palestinian Social Media, Refreshing Anti-Israel Attacks.