PROGRESS: Gene Therapy Partially Restores Vision in Blind Patient in First Case of Its Kind.

YUK: The Most Common Bacterial Cause of Food Poisoning Could Also Be an STI.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Nearly 200 Minneapolis Police Officers Have Retired Since George Floyd Killing.

HOW’S THAT MODIFIED LIMITED HANGOUT GOING? Fauci defends cooperation with Chinese lab to study coronavirus origins.

Related: Timeline of What Dr. Fauci Has Said About the Wuhan Lab and COVID’s Origins. “Having once dismissed the possibility that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the novel coronavirus as a ‘circular argument,’ his admission this month that the lab could be the starting point prompted criticism.”

Plus: “When Republicans first raised questions about the WIV’s role in the COVID-19 outbreak back in early 2020, the experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, were quick to dismiss them as baseless, unscientific allegations.”

The Covid “conspiracy theorists” were just ahead of the curve, as it turns out.

GOOD: America’s Largest Concealed Carry Association Launches New Political Operation.

ENDORSED: Time for a National Freedom from Fauci Day.

STOLEN VALOR: Trump Explains Why COVID-19 Is on the Way Out, Little Thanks to Biden.

IS THE NEW YORK TIMES A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER? Of course it is: Attacks on Jews Over Israel Are a Gift to the Right.

Screenshot in case the Times changes the headline:

Republicans pounce! Over — checks notes — leftist anti-Semitism. Or as Jim Treacher likes to say, “When Republicans screw up, that’s the story. When Democrats screw up, the Republicans’ reaction is the story.”

UPDATE: Called it:

(Updated and bumped; classical reference in headline.)

THE ENEMY WITHIN: American killed fighting alongside Hamas during recent war.

An American citizen was reportedly killed fighting for Hamas in the recent conflict with Israel. Joe Truzman, a contributor to Foundation for Defense of Democracies Long War Journal (FDD), wrote on Saturday that “an American citizen known as Osama al-Zebda was fighting with the Hamas’ Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades during the recent conflict.

The report notes that al-Zebda was on a US terrorist watch list. His son was featured in videos with Hamas commander Yahya Sinwar on Monday, in which the Hamas commander puts a rifle in the toddler’s hand. His death and the death of his father, a well-known Hamas engineer, have been featured on Palestinian media.

The FDD article by Truzman notes that it is unclear if Osama was born in the US or was a naturalized citizen. Jamal al-Zebda, the man’s father, was also killed in the May 12 airstrike. Nasser Atta, a journalist and expert notes that “professor Jamal Al Zebda, 64 years old, was the head of the Rockets development department within Hamas… he graduated from US universities and his eldest son Osama, 33 years old, is a US citizen who was an engineer at the rockets department; both were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza 10 days ago.”

The West has got to get out of the business of educating its destroyers, but that seems unlikely given the leanings of so many of our educators.

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: “Nothing says vaccinations like a stripper pole”…Famous Vegas Strip Club Offers Lap Dance and $5K in Freebies After COVID Vaccination.

WHY DID IT TAKE A GLOBAL PANDEMIC to trigger the work-from-home revolution? “The magnitude of the change that many people made over the last year cannot be overemphasized. Within hours of the planet effectively shutting down in mid-March 2020, many information-based businesses resumed operations, more or less unaffected. An entire population of office workers continued to carry out their daily tasks without skipping a beat. That is nothing less than miraculous. How could so many manage so painlessly to achieve this transformation?”

EVERYBODY’S TRANSITIONING THESE DAYS: Mitt Romney Decides to Cosplay as Liz Cheney.

MOSTLY PEACEFUL MEMORIAL: Suspect Opens Fire at Memorial on Anniversary of George Floyd’s Death.

You can’t make this stuff up. And in America’s Democrat-run cities, you don’t have to.

HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): Ellen Page Shows Off Her Mutilated Body, and the Media Celebrates.

FASTER, PLEASE: Research study finds way to revive potent immune cells for cancer therapy.

ONLY THOSE WHO DIDN’T WANT TO: Who Didn’t See This Coming?

Crime is up, especially violent crime, in Democrat-run cities where the “defund police” movement found a receptive audience in government. Now, the Times reports, “The surge is prompting cities whose leaders embraced the values of the movement last year to reassess how far they are willing to go to reimagine public safety and divert money away from the police and toward social services.”

It’s hard to care, honestly. I grew up in Detroit, once the economic hub of the country destroyed through generational control by Democrats. John Conyers represented the city in Congress for 52 years, over which time his district deteriorated to the point that sections of it resemble a third world country. That didn’t happen overnight.

The thing about Detroit is the shell of what once was is still there. You can see the building, empty, architecture today’s craftsmen could not replicate at a price anyone could afford, towering over once beautiful neighborhoods that now resemble abandoned farmland. It’s depressing to see.

So why did the residents of Detroit give the party that orchestrated their demise unbroken power since 1962? Same reasons Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis, etc., etc., have done it – they’ve been conditioned to think the alternative is somehow worse.

It isn’t.

STREET VIOLENCE AS A POLITICAL TOOL:

Why would Asian American voters support the bias against Asian American students that have been institutionalized by the Democratic Party and its allies in teachers unions and universities? The many years a Korean American mother, say, might spend tutoring her children to ensure they win a place in an accelerated math or science program are now meaningless in districts that have eliminated these programs in the name of “equity.”

Why would the bulk of American Jews continue to vote for a presidential administration like Joe Biden’s that funds Palestinian terror, or whose up-and-coming leadership, like Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, promote organizations that celebrate the murder of Jews? Given a choice, no rational person would defend any of these policies.

Thus the need for street violence, to take decision-making out of the realm of the rational. It’s about fear: Mouth off and you won’t like what happens to your business, your home, your wife, your children.

Just think of the Democratic Party as “what it really is: a criminal organization masquerading as a political party,” and it all makes sense, to merge the favorite sayings of Glenn and Michael Walsh.

HMM: Biden to double federal funding for hurricane preparedness in U.S.

Related: Tax the Blue Zones.

DISPATCHES FROM STOPPED CLOCKS:

● Chinese State Media Dubs Greta Thunberg an “Environmental Princess.”

● North Korea bans mullet haircuts, nose piercings, and skinny jeans in Kim Jong Un’s latest crackdown on ‘anti-socialist behavior.’

● Pelosi tried to stop Green New Deal reveal over AOC anxiety, book claims.

Regarding that last one, Pelosi was basically trying to save AOC from herself, which in retrospect, was — and is — a Herculean task.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Son of Hamas Founder Urges Israel to Take Down Hamas Leaders… Even During Ceasefire. “Next time, before you get civilians on both sides involved in a bloodbath, you need to think 1,000 times. This is my personal suggestion.”

LOCKDOWN CONSEQUENCES: Mammography rates plummeted during pandemic.

The rich and powerful thrived as America suffered in the year of lockdowns.

MAYBE BECAUSE POLITICIANS ARE IN BED WITH THE GANGS?

A COOL AND LOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE BICYCLE MENACE: Rhetorical Wheelies.

Via Instapundit, news from the frontier of woke sports, where “the power of whiteness within cycling” is, we’re assured, a thing that exists:

It’s time for cycling to think beyond white fragility, white privilege, implicit bias, and microaggressions, and begin to think about its root cause. Cycling must reject interventions that continue to individualise anti-Black racism, and work to break down the structures that allow whiteness to retain power in the sport.

As is the custom, assertions soon pile high, albeit unsteadily, and questions are begged at a rate of knots. The “system of privileges and advantages afforded to white people” is denounced more than once, along with “the whiteness of cycling,” though, as so often, the particulars remain unobvious. Apparently, “white privilege” is a phenomenon to be taken as a given, always and everywhere, and in which we must believe.

A Fisking by David Thompson occurs; read the whole thing.

(Classical reference in headline.)

SERIOUSLY, DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS: Constitutional Carry Passes. “The good news is the extension of protection for our constitutional rights, and may create a whole new cohort of legal gun owners in Texas. The bad news is that this might make it even harder to find ammo.”

THE FIVE FINGER DISCOUNT: Here’s Why San Francisco is Experiencing a Shoplifting Surge That’s Putting Some Stores Out of Business.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on here. Many different factors impact crime rates, but when the government fails to protect property rights and enforce the law, theft becomes more common and innocent business owners are victimized. The resulting economic uncertainty discourages growth and, in extreme cases like San Francisco, literally leads stores to close.

Protecting property and enforcing the rule of law is one of the core, legitimate functions of government. That the Golden State has chosen to focus its government’s robust spending and involvement in social life elsewhere speaks to a grave misalignment in priorities.

Gooder and harder.