JAMES LILEKS: “It’s cool that William Shatner is flying into space. He’ll be the second of the Enterprise crew to do so, and, if all goes well, the first to return:”

What if he doesn’t come back?

Oh perish the thought, you say, but it’s possible. First of all, there’s the dark comic angle: a warning light goes off, the ship bucks, and you know everyone will instinctively look at him for guidance. I would. Then there’s the inescapably fitting-end aspect: it would be like James Arness dying in a gunfight, or Jackie Gleason participating in some TV reunion show where he drives a bus, and he crashes it. They pull him out in his Kramden costume. But Shatner dying in space would be an utterly unique end to a career that no one could’ve predicted back in the late 60s.

No, actually, they could have. When the show went off the air we were still on track to keep exploring, right? A space station soon, a moon base by the late 80s. Why, of course it would have been plausible for Shatner to die in a moon-shuttle accident in 2021.

If I were Shatner, and I was toting up the odds, I’d think: what if? Could happen. Will there by time to say something? If so, what?

There are several things he could say on the last transmission.

Read the whole thing.

BLOOD ON BIDEN’S HANDS: Suicide Bomber Who Murdered 13 Americans Had Just Been Released From Bagram Prison. “More of the wonderful effects of having Joe Biden pretend to be president of the United States were revealed Wednesday, when it came to light that the Islamic State jihadi who murdered 13 American service members and numerous Afghans as well in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport in August had just been released from prison at Bagram Air Base, the center of American operations in Afghanistan until the U.S. precipitously and irresponsibly abandoned it in July.”

I REMEMBER WHEN HIGHER EDUCATION WAS PROMOTED AS A BULWARK AGAINST AUTHORITARIANISM: Surveillance on campus: Universities give students tools to report on each other’s COVID violations or ‘bias incidents.’

It’s worth noting that none of the various flavors of authoritarianism existed before the creation of an academic class.

COLORADO: Monopoly utilities, PUC team up against captive ratepayers.

The Public Utilities Commission’s job was (key word there) to fight for the least cost energy while protecting our environment. That mission has been turned on its head. Least cost is the PUC’s very last priority. This suits the greenies and the corporate cronies just fine.

Energy companies, like Xcel, are guaranteed a “rate of return.” That’s guaranteed profit on whatever they do. Anything they do! Thus, their business model is not providing power. It’s building stuff. Any stuff!

Consequently, they love “environmental” mandates.

For every windmill they put up, they get to charge you for building it. And then they get to charge you for the backup generator for when the wind doesn’t blow. And then they get to charge you for the transmission lines from both windmill and the backup generators.

All this while they keep charging you to pay off the mortgage on the coal-fired plant they just turned off.

It’s not a double dip. It’s a triple dip. And the PUC enables it.

We let the Democrats take charge, so we’ll keep getting it gooder and harder.

SCHOOL BOARDS ARE GETTING OVER-THE-TOP ARROGANT: MOMS UNDER ATTACK BY VIRGINIA SCHOOL DISTRICT.

The Goldwater Institute filed a motion with a Virginia judge today to defend the rights of two moms in Fairfax County, Virginia, who are under attack by their local school district for exercising their freedom of speech. It’s just the latest example of a growing trend of school districts nationwide aggressively persecuting parents who are trying to promote the best interests of their children.

Fairfax County mother Debra Tisler took an interest in how her school district was spending its money, especially given that the county has been in national news about its legal troubles recently. So she filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out how much the district was paying for its legal bills. The district turned over more than 1,000 pages of receipts from its law firm, and another Fairfax-area mother, Callie Oettinger, published some of them on her website, specialeducationaction.com, redacting and sharing select documents related to the superintendent, the school board, and investigations into Fairfax County Public Schools’ cyber hacking and its virtual learning launch debacles.

That’s when trouble started. When the school district realized it had handed over potentially embarrassing material, it demanded that Callie take the material down from her website, and when she refused, district officials sued her—notwithstanding the fact that the Constitution clearly protects her right to publish the information online.

“As a parent, I have a right to know what’s happening in my children’s school, and as a taxpayer, I have a right to know how money is being spent,” Callie said. “I created my site to help advocate for children with special education needs. This includes sharing and holding Fairfax County Public Schools accountable for its noncompliance. I will not let them silence my voice.”

Last week, a state judge issued an order barring Debra and Callie from sharing the documents, and as a result Callie took the documents down from her website. But today, the Goldwater Institute—with the assistance of attorney Ketan Bhirud, a member of Goldwater’s pro-bono American Freedom Network and counsel at the Virginia law firm Troutman Pepper—filed papers asking the judge to withdraw that order and dismiss the case immediately.

“I was shocked to be sued by my children’s school district—all for caring about their education and for speaking out. Fairfax County Public Schools’ school board is readily spending millions on legal fees instead of allocating those funds for direct services to children. The hypocrisy surrounding the actions of the school board is excessive,” Debra said. “FCPS literacy and math proficiency rates are abysmal, and the continuous watering down of the standards and depletion of needed services is egregious.” . . .

The state and federal Supreme Courts have made clear in numerous cases that people have the right to publish this type of information. In the famous 1971 “Pentagon Papers” case, the Supreme Court held that the nation’s leading newspapers had a legal right to publish a report on the Vietnam War that had been stolen from the Pentagon and handed over to reporters. As the Goldwater Institute points out in its brief, if the Constitution protects the right to publish stolen military documents in a time of war, it certainly protects the right of mothers and concerned citizens to publish documents the government legally gave to them. For the school board to sue these parents for defending their children’s best interests and speaking out about their government is a shameful abuse of power.

That disgraceful behavior, however, is just one of a number of recent incidents in which school boards have tried to silence criticism or even questions from parents who want to be more involved in their children’s education. When Rhode Island mom Nicole Solas asked school officials in Rhode Island for information under that state’s Freedom of Information Act, the National Education Association (NEA) sued her, seeking to bar the release of the information. Fortunately, once the Goldwater Institute stepped in to defend her, the NEA backed down—although that case is still pending.

Make them pay.

#RESIST: DeSantis Orders Biden to Keep His Federal School Board Cops Out of Florida.

WE KNEW ALL THE “CONCERN” ABOUT THE JAN. 6 “INSURRECTION” WAS BULLSHIT: Bernie refused to sign statement condemning Sinema restroom confrontation.

AMAZON LEAVING SEATTLE: “This is not white flight. Seattle has become coyote ugly crazy and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wants to leave before he has to gnaw off his leg to get out of the trap.”

A smarter company would have been sufficiently involved in the politics of its hometown to prevent this.

ONE EXPECTS A COMBINATION OF AUTHORITARIANISM AND CORRUPTION FROM THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, AND ONE IS SELDOM DISAPPOINTED: Parents group: AG Garland has conflict of interest with Facebook, critical race theory.

VIDEO: Mark Levin Rips Garland.

SHE GOT WOKE: Liz Cheney is running scared in Wyoming. “Meanwhile, back in Wyoming, pro-Trump challenger Harriet Hageman is hot on Cheney’s heels in the GOP primary race for Wyoming’s sole congressional seat. Could it be that Cheney is scheming to win the Democratic vote in the Cowboy State? Or even that she is considering switching from the Elephants to the Donkey party?”

NOT AS EMBARRASSING AS A PRESIDENT WHO DOESN’T KNOW WHAT DAY IT IS, FOISTED ON AMERICA BY A CORRUPT ESTABLISHMENT THAT KNEW WHAT IT WAS DOING: ‘F*** Biden’ signs outside Michigan presidential visit were embarrassing, says congresswoman.

Besides, everyone knows Democrats and members of Congress are incapable of embarrassment.

MARK JUDGE: Fun Triggers the Stasi.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Oof: Desperate McAuliffe admits Biden ‘is unpopular.’ Let’s go, Brandon!

Related: WaPo Gives McAuliffe ‘Four Pinocchios’ for False Ad Linking Youngkin to Predatory Dentists. When the WaPo calls out a Virginia Democrat you know it’s bad.

Flashback: “A group tied to prominent Democratic strategists is posing as a conservative outfit to try to drive a wedge between the Republican candidate for Virginia governor and his core voters, Axios has learned.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Will Next Year’s Midterms Be 2010 On Steroids for the GOP? “Many of us still have vivid memories of the joy of 2010. After the election of The Lightbringer in 2008, it felt as if the Republicans might never win again. James Carville infamously said that the GOP would be wandering in the political desert for 40 years.”

UN RELIEF AGENCY SHOT THROUGH WITH ANTISEMITISM: It required hours of laborious digging but The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz unearthed an internal report that found dozens of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) members and staff promoting hatred for Israel and the Jewish people on social media.

“Entitled ‘Beyond the Textbooks,’ the UN Watch document identified 100 UNRWA educators and staff who have publicly promoted violence and Antisemitism on social media. It highlights explicitly ’22 recent cases of UNRWA staff incitement which clearly violates the agency’s own rules, as well as its proclaimed values of zero tolerance for racism, discrimination or antisemitism,’” Dunetz reports.

And that’s just for starters. The UNRWA comes under the UN’s Human Rights Council, which Dunetz describes as “the most anti-Semitic/anti-Israel organization in the United Nations.” There should be a photo of council in the definition of “Hypocrisy” in Webster’s Dictionary.

Is it too much for the U.S. to ask that, if the UN wishes to remain on our soil and accept our funding, the world body must live by its own charter and expel nations and groups that fund, practice and defend terrorism, anti-Semitism and incessant, vicious lying about Israel and America?

COMMIES LOVE AIRBRUSHING: Biden Banking Nominee Scrubs Karl Marx Paper From Résumé: Saule Omarova attended Moscow State University on a Lenin scholarship.

They also should have no place in our government, or in society.

STICKER OF THE DAY: 2 Pack Nic-ki Min-aj Bumper Sticker Decal for Laptop Car Bumper.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS JUST DON’T GIVE AN F: Minnesota school no longer gives grade of ‘F’ because of ‘systemic racism.’

I PREFER THE CLIMATE ON CAYMAN: How South Dakota Became A Global Tax Haven.

NOW OUT: Victor Davis Hanson’s The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America. (Bumped)

SUBMIT, THEY EXPLAINED: Unvaxxed Medical Prof Put on ‘Investigatory Leave’ in Desperate Bid to Get Him to Quit.

JOEL KOTKIN: The Great Office Refusal: Executives say workers are ‘pining’ to return to in-person work. Migration patterns say otherwise.

Driven partly by fear of infection, and by the liberating rise of remote work, Americans have been increasingly freed from locational constraints. Work continues apace in suburbs and particularly in sprawling exurbs that surround core cities, while the largest downtowns (central business districts, or CBDs) increasingly resemble ghost towns.

This shift has made it more practical for individuals and particularly families to migrate to locations where they can find more affordable rents, and perhaps even buy a house. . . .

This suggests that the downtown cores of U.S. cities will continue to struggle. Since the pandemic began, tenants have given back around 200 million square feet of commercial real estate, according to Marcus & Millichap data, and the current office vacancy rate stands at 16.2%, matching the peak of the 2008 financial crisis. Between September 2019 and September 2020, the biggest job losses, according to the firm American Communities and based on federal data, have been in big cities (nearly a 10% drop in employment), followed by their close-in suburbs, while rural areas suffered only a 6% drop, and exurbs less than 5%. Today our biggest cities—Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago—account for three of the five highest unemployment rates among the 51 largest metropolitan areas.

The rise of remote work drives these trends. Today, perhaps 42% of the 165 million-strong U.S. labor force is working from home full time, up from 5.7% in 2019. When the pandemic ends, that number will probably drop, but one study, based on surveys of more than 30,000 employees, projects that 20% of the U.S. workforce will still work from home post-COVID.

And even when they return to work, things aren’t the same: Always. Be. Casual. As workers return to the financial district, longstanding dress codes have been relaxed. Right now, almost anything goes. Even jeans.

The political changes brought about by the pandemic have centralized authority — at least so far — but the economic changes have gone the other way.

D*MN IT. THE BEE IS PRINTING TOMORROW’S NEWS TODAY AGAIN!  Aides Quickly Drag President Away As He Tries To Join In ‘F*** Joe Biden’ Chant.

SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS:  Update on the treatment of children who identify as transgender.