MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Gaining power hasn’t made the left any less insane. “One promise of the Biden campaign was that after the craziness of the Trump years, electing the ex-veep would return the country to normal. Instead, Democrats are doubling down on crazy.”

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Political Ideology And The U.S. News Law School Rankings: Measuring The Conservative Penalty And Liberal Bonus. “This study produced strong evidence for the existence of a conservative penalty and liberal bonus in law school peer rankings. Because these rankings are the leading factor in the overall rankings, this results in a similar conservative penalty and liberal bonus there as well. This finding is consistent with other research on ideological bias in legal academia. Fortunately, there is a simple solution to the problem of ideological bias in law school rankings. Removing the peer score from the overall ranking calculation will better inform prospective law students, reduce inefficiencies in the hiring market, and contribute to greater ideological diversity in law schools and legal scholarship.”

Given that the peer score is also subject to a lot of “strategic voting” by schools against their competitors, that’s a good idea for other reasons, too.

YOU DON’T SAY: After Investigation, Pentagon Finds ‘No Plot Against Biden’ Among National Guard Troops.

COMEY WANTS TO ‘BURN DOWN’ THE GOP: Well, that sounds like incitement to insurrection, does it not? And now he thinks maybe the Pee Tape was for real? As His Fraudulency might say, “c’mon man, that was just for the rubes.” The former FBI Director is not wearing irrelevance well.

GOOD: Biden faces opposition to killing Keystone XL from labor, Democrats.

THE NEXT ADMINISTRATION WILL WORK HARD TO MAKE PEOPLE MISS HIM: President Trump’s Farewell Address: ‘I Go From This Majestic Place With A Loyal And Joyful Heart.’

BLOWBACK: Reports: More Than Half Of House Republicans Sign Petition To Replace Liz Cheney As Conference Chair.

THEY CAN’T GIVE HIM UP: Trump Derangement Syndrome in a Post-Trump World.

YES: Democracy dies in emergencies.

State constitutions grant their chief executives the power to declare states of emergency, and to assume special powers to meet that emergency. Many of those state constitutions limit the scope or duration of those powers; Colorado’s constitution does not. If the governor chooses not to end the state of emergency, the legislature must pass a joint resolution ending it.

Governor Polis, who has a detailed set of criteria for moving between Covid color levels with their attendant restrictions, has issued no objective criteria for ending the state of emergency and relinquishing his extraordinary powers. A supine press, bogged down in details it barely pretends to understand, has not pressed him on this.

All of this so far has been defended as an attempt to save lives, and indeed there is a direct relationship between a viral pandemic and public health. But what if a governor were to unilaterally declare a pet political program a “public health emergency?”

Unfortunately, this isn’t as far-fetched as it might sound. The Denver City Council, Jefferson County’s Board of Heath, and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) have all declared racism to be a public health crisis. Not that racism might exacerbate a public health crisis, mind you, but that racism itself is a public health crisis.

I’m reminded of the explanation Clarice Starling gave for her conclusion that the serial killer she was investigating would never stop: “He’s got a real taste for it.”

AND BY “DOMESTIC TERROR” THEY MEAN “REPUBLICANS, AND ANYONE ELSE IN OPPOSITION TO DEMOCRATS.” Goodbye, Trump. Hello, War on Domestic Terror.

FLASHBACK: When people, even Democrats, could say what they thought about Joe Biden. Wife of Boston Marathon Hero Claims Biden Groped Her.

Flashback: It’s time to talk about former Vice President Joe Biden, the open sexual predator.

Biden Swims Naked, Upsetting Female Secret Service Agents:

“Agents say that, whether at the vice president’s residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude,” Kessler writes in the book – due for release Aug. 5.

“Female Secret Service agents find that offensive,” he writes.

“Biden likes to be revered as everyday Joe,” an unnamed agent told Kessler. “But the reality is no agents want to go on his detail because Biden makes agents’ lives so tough.”

Plus: Washington Post: What Are We Going To Do About Creepy Uncle Joe Biden?

And: ‘Creepy Veep’ Joe Biden ‘nuzzles’ wife of colleague and claims he is friends with lots of Somali cab drivers.

Also: Joe Biden’s Woman-Touching Habit.

Related: Talking Points Memo: Why Does Creepy Uncle Joe Biden Get A Pass From Liberals?

Plus:

NARRATIVES DON’T ESTABLISH THEMSELVES, BUDDY: New York Times Says Deadly BLM Riots Were ‘Isolated Instances Of Property Destruction’ That GOP ‘Exaggerated.’

HOWIE CARR ROUNDS UP PRESIDENT TRUMP’S ACHIEVEMENTS:

In no particular order:

Thank you for restoring the U.S. as the world’s leading producer of energy – after your predecessor sternly lectured us that we “couldn’t drill our way” out of our dependence on unstable Middle Eastern oil providers.

Thank you for the tax cuts for the middle class.

Thank you for destroying genocidal ISIS, which your predecessor called “the junior varsity.”

Thanks for shutting off the endless flow of illegal immigrants at the southern border, and the unending supply of MS-13 gangbangers, among other criminals, as well as the welfare-dependent illiterate indigents who were so destabilizing American society before you became president.

Thank you for calling out the endless hypocrisy of the media — what you so aptly described as “Very Fake News.”

Thank you for promoting economic policies that led to the lowest unemployment rates ever for blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans and women, among others.

Thank you for doing more to promote peace in the Middle East than all of your predecessors combined. . . .

Thank you for eliminating Obamacare’s “individual mandate,” which fined individuals for not buying health insurance they didn’t want or couldn’t afford.

Thank you for taking more questions from (almost always hostile) reporters than all of the last three or four presidents combined.

Thanks for getting the U.S. out of such foreign policy disasters as the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris Climate Accords and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as well as ending the fiasco for American workers that was NAFTA.

Thanks for such a booming economy that seven million people got off the food-stamp rolls.

Thanks for all those tweets that drove the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) crazy.

Much more at the link.

The standard Democrat/NeverTrump line is that the GOP will pretend Trump never existed. But why? He’s much more popular than George W. Bush was when he left office, and within a point of Joe Biden even as Biden is being sworn in. He has a solid record of accomplishments. And the Democrats are showing every sign of having learned nothing over the last four years, doubling down on policies that are likely to make Biden’s first term an unpopular debacle.

The idea that Trump’s presidency has been a debacle is just a propaganda point they hope the GOP will be dumb enough to buy. And hey, it’s the GOP, so they could be right.

HOW’S THAT UNITY THING WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? Scott Adams Notes What Joe Biden Has Accomplished Before Even Getting Inaugurated – It’s Not Good.

HOW’S THAT HONEYMOON GOING? Americans Pessimistic About U.S. Race Relations on Eve of Biden Inauguration.

Related: Right Direction or Wrong Track: 21% Say U.S. Heading in Right Direction. “Twenty-one percent (21%) of Likely U.S. Voters think the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey for the week ending January 14, 2021. This week’s finding is down two points from a week ago. It is the lowest number since President Trump was elected. This week’s number is the lowest since the week of July 10-14, 2016, when just 21% said the country was heading in the right direction.”

I’m not sensing deep faith in Biden’s leadership. Say, wasn’t he in office in July, 2016?

BEFORE CANDLES, SOCIALISTS USED ELECTRICITY:  Germany Weighs Electricity Rationing Scheme To Stabilize Its Now Shaky Green Power Grid.

As my friend John Ringo argues — convincingly — what we found during lockdown is that humans DO have an effect on climate. To wit, we make the Earth cooler.
But you know, the green idiocy isn’t science. It’s religion.

MAIL FOR INSTAPUNDIT GOES TO PROTONMAIL, WHICH I’VE BEEN HAPPY WITH: Getting off big-tech email.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: The Biden Hell Arrives—Will America Survive? “Barring an intergalactic alien invasion or a much prayed-for appearance by the Sweet Meteor O’ Death today, Joe Biden should be the President of the United States when we go to sleep tonight. He may not know that, but the rest of us will.”

I HOPE HE LEFT SOME OTHER, MORE SUBTLE LANDMINES:  Trump nukes the bridge behind him.

Stupidity and malice should hurt. If they want to take America out, they should go first.

RUBS FOREHEAD:  Today’s blacklisted conservative: Lawyer who represented Trump fired by university.

Dear leftists, contemplate this:

I DON’T CARE WHAT SHE IDENTIFIES AS: Biden Taps Pennsylvania’s Transgendered Health Secretary.

I care that she’s an incompetent horror and a collection of mental issues, the same as all the other Biden appointees.

OH, DEAR:  Did Biden voters knowingly vote for the radical leftist agenda?

Probably not. But then again, let me tell you that as a fiction writer, it’s always hard to tell what’s in the head of imaginary people.

THEY MIGHT AS WELL CONFESS THEY CHEATED:  The Barbed-Wire Curtain Descends.

NO. CHINA NEEDS US AT WAR WITH RUSSIA:  Hillary Clinton, still in wild-eyed obsession about Trump and Putin.

CHINA MITCH:  Mitch McConnell Blames President Trump, Says Mob “Was Provoked By The President”.