AT THIS POINT WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE? We aren’t supposed to care anymore about how the FBI ginned up the conspiracy theory about Donald Trump and “Russian collusion.” The damage is done, and there are thousands of people who unthinkingly take as a given that Trump was a Putin puppet. They’re impossible to talk to. I’m reminded of the old saying about never trying to teach a pig to sing. (It wastes your time and annoys the pig).

That said, exclusive reporting by John Solomon shows more than a few troubling dynamics that Congress, the mainstream media, and the FBI have yet to fix. (I suppose it’s not in their interest to do so).

The report by JustTheNews is a well-reported story of how the FBI tried to play reporters, how reporters tried to play the FBI, and how the result was inaccurate stories that helped create an incorrect narrative:

“The bureau had recently terminated its primary informant in the Russia probe Christopher Steele for leaking, and several of its leads about Russia-Trump collusion were falling apart. And inaccurate stories about the two biggest scandals in Washington were cropping up everywhere, even when FBI officials tried to work with reporters.

“Yes, the headline is REALLY misleading,” then-FBI deputy counsel Lisa Page wrote a colleague in a text message concerning a New York Times article that day. The text message didn’t further identify the article but made clear the article was the result of a bureau overture to reporters that backfired.”

Why does any of this matter now? For several reasons: erroneous reporting is now branded “disinformation” and has become a newsroom commodity, with some papers even assigning reporters to a “disinformation” beat. And “disinformation” has become a buzzword that Big Tech uses to squash speech they don’t like.

Moreover and most importantly, is that the current administration (as do most prospective “nanny states”) seems to be using whatever crisis, event, accident or political incident to increase its power. Glenn Greenwald has written recently about how government uses incorrect or just false intelligence (dare I say “disinformation”?) to expand its grip:

Twice in the last six weeks, warnings were issued about imminent, grave threats to public safety posed by the same type of right-wing extremists who rioted at the Capitol on January 6. And both times, these warnings ushered in severe security measures only to prove utterly baseless.

So what difference does it make at this point? Because it’s about the unethical dynamics of a leak-happy FBI choosing to spill information not in the public interest (I’m all for genuine whistleblowers) but instead leaking in the interest of their own political agenda. I’m not particularly offended by reporters “cozying up” to sources: it’s what they do. Where it goes wrong is when those reporters help propel a narrative based on false statements provided by the self-interested leakers.

So at this point it matters because the word “disinformation” is a tool used to suppress civil liberties. IMHO, they violated Carter Page‘s rights, and probably Roger Stone’s and others as well. Even the far-left Brennan Center for Justice has issued papers about how problematic the use (or abuse) of the FISA Court can be. The result?

“Under today’s foreign intelligence surveillance system, the government’s ability to collect information about ordinary Americans’ lives has increased exponentially while judicial oversight has been reduced to near-nothingness. Nothing less than a fundamental overhaul of the type proposed here is needed to restore the system to its constitutional moorings.”

So, at this point, what difference does it make? The difference is you’re next.

FASTER, PLEASE: Rapid 3D printing method moves toward 3D-printed organs.

DRIVE ON: Mars rover Perseverance makes first drive on Red Planet.

THROUGHOUT HISTORY, BOOK BURNERS WERE NEVER THE GOOD GUYS: Do Liberals* Care if Books Disappear?

* “Progressives.”

AD ASTRA: SCIENTISTS SHOCKED AT WATER AND ORGANIC MATERIAL FOUND ON ASTEROID FOR THE FIRST TIME. “The organic matter that has been heated indicates that the asteroid had been heated to over 600 degrees celcius in the past. The presence of unheated organic matter very close to it, means that the in fall of primitive organics arrived on the surface of Itokawa after the asteroid had cooled down.”

All the necessities of life can be found in space. Some assembly required.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW: The Voyager Station Space Hotel Plans to Open for Business in 2026. It looks like Space Station V from 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Chesley Bonestell’s classic 1952 rendering of a space station, but early reservations won’t come cheap: “A three-a-half-day trip to the hotel is expected to cost whopping $5 million. Of course, as the Post points out, that’s still dramatically cheaper than the $55 million it costs a private citizen to journey to the International Space Station.”

HOWIE CARR ON COVID DERANGEMENT SYNDROME: Coronavirus has the Karens and Biden voters cowering.

Covid Derangement Syndrome — it’s real, and there was a massive outbreak of it this week.

Three states announced they were ending the absurd yearlong “mask mandates,” and the left’s collective head exploded in outrage.

The reason is because this isn’t about public health anymore, or even politics, if it ever was. COVID is now the state religion, and the decisions by these GOP governors aren’t seen as a policy dispute, they’re considered heresy.

Only an infidel or an apostate denies that there is a … mild seasonal virus out there. Half the population cowers in abject terror — afflicted with CDS.

In New England, the leading prophet of the new faith is Gov. Charlie Baker. On Wednesday, in his daily sermon to the faithful, Tall Deval outlined the significance of the Mask in his strange cult:

“I think the mask mandate has been an important element in both encouraging behavior but also in sending a message about the importance of recognizing and understanding that COVID is still very much with us.”

He sounds like earlier generations of clergymen railing against the devil’s unending temptations, doesn’t he? But his real “message” is — we’re in charge, and you will do what you’re told.

It used to be said, if you want to send a message, call Western Union. Now you just tell people they’re going to be afflicted with prolonged suffering and a gooey death if they don’t obey your orders, no matter how preposterous.

And half the population — the feeble-minded, the Biden voters, the Karens — will instantly comply.

QED, someone who bills herself as a “Syndicated op-ed columnist @washingtonpost, commentator @cnn, special correspondent @newshour” admitting that she’s incapable of doing her job as a fact and opinion gathering journalist:

She better get used to mask burning parties eventually ­going nationwide in the coming year as more and more people are vaccinated.

FREDO FUMBLES: CNN host Chris Cuomo gets ripped for joking he is ‘black on the inside.’

PASS THE JUCHE ON THE LEFTHAND SIDE. Here’s the Washington Post coming through with some North-Korea-state-media-level Biden worship:

ROGER KIMBALL: Peak Cancel Culture? Don’t Bet on It:

Elsewhere last week, I offered a few thoughts about how to cancel cancel culture, with specific reference to President Trump’s vigorous CPAC speech, which took place under the banner “America Uncanceled.” My basic idea was that to challenge cancel culture effectively, one had to have the temerity to stand up to it (“Just Say No,” as Nancy Reagan put it when faced with a different pathology).

Since then, YouTube, a Google (“We Do Evil”) subsidiary upped the stakes a notch by refusing to carry President Trump’s speech because he called into question the fairness of the 2020 presidential election. I guess YouTube won’t be featuring me either, because I continue to believe that the election (as President Trump put it) was “rigged” (here’s how) and therefore illegitimate. Perhaps that belief, or at least my stating it outright, qualifies me as a potential Domestic Terrorist™ or Biden-My-Time Domestic Extremist™. We’ll see. I’ll let you know if Christopher Wray calls to chat about it.

Just a few days ago, in what may seem to be a sillier expression of cancel culture, the world learned that Dr. Seuss Enterprises had decided to stop selling six beloved books by the author of The Cat In the Hat because they contain portrayals of various ethnic groups that are “hurtful and wrong.” This really is, as the Princeton linguist Joshua Katz put it, “beyond madness.”

But the seeming arbitrariness of the interdiction is part of the point. It is, as they say, a feature, not a bug, for the aspiring totalitarians seeking to police what we can read and say and publish. Lenin once said that Communism meant “keeping track of everything.” We don’t call it “totalitarianism” for nothing. What they seek is total control of every aspect of our lives. Last week it was a book by Ryan Anderson and a speech by Donald Trump. This week it is some books by Dr. Seuss.

But the week wasn’t over yet — we’re at an interesting inflection point in the culture when a columnist employed by the New York Times wakes up and decides log into Twitter with the goal of cancelling Warner Brothers cartoon characters:

FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: UCF hit with free speech lawsuit over its bias response team, speech code.

BEN RHODES’ BUDDIES SURE ARE NICE PEOPLE: Iran jails Jewish-Iranian for 10 years for living in Israel.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: STUDY: Academics systemically hostile toward conservatives.

JOE BIDEN, FRIEND OF THE WORKING CLASS: Nothing says ‘America is back’ like taking someone’s job away.

Related: America’s elites are waging class war on workers and small biz.

DON SURBER: Sidney Poitier: Enemy of the People. “The problem with Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? is it stars Sidney Poitier. He’s too white.”

Back in the early ’90s, ABC did a — really good — docudrama on the Brown case called Separate But Equal. It closely tracks Richard Kluger’s Simple Justice, an oral history of the case done while the major figures were still alive. My old lawprof and mentor Charles Black (who wrote the brief with Thurgood Marshall in the case) was still alive then, and we talked about it on the phone after we’d watched it. Charlie’s comment: “They got Sidney Poitier to play Thurgood, and then they got some S.O.B. that looked just like me.” I show the film in class sometimes, as its treatment of the legal issues is shockingly good for a movie, much less a TV movie.

The DVD is $59.99 on Amazon, which is a lot more than I remember. I wonder if that’s in anticipation of Poitier being cancelled as insufficiently black. It would be hilarious, except that mass hysteria on the part of people running all our major institutions isn’t actually funny. “Liberals now make the same argument the Ku Klux Klan did in denying the civil war was about slavery. Demoting Poitier to Stepin Fetchit status should serve as a warning not just to Will Smith and Obama, but to all black people. You may not be next, but you are on the list.”

Related: Study Finds Book Burners Always Stop With Just A Few Fringe Books, So There’s Nothing To Worry About.

UPDATE: And the price keeps rising! I think when I bought it a few years ago it was $14.99. (Bumped).

AFTER PLAYING CARMELA IN THE SOPRANOS, IT’S GREAT TO SEE EDIE FALCO FINALLY PLAYING A HARDENED CRIMINAL: Hillary Clinton Will Be Played By Edie Falco In Impeachment: American Crime Story.

Might as well dust off this 2016 Photoshop:

DAN MARKEL UPDATE: Katherine Magbanua May Be Retried In The Fall For Dan Markel’s Murder.

“DO YOU WANT TO BE FOUND IN CONTEMPT OF THE REGIME?” “WHY NO, I WAS TRYING TO CONCEAL IT.” A Verdict Makes History in Cuba by Rejecting ‘Contempt’ as a Crime. “In its eagerness to cover up a totalitarian system with a veneer of the rule of law, the Cuban regime has flooded the set of laws that govern the country with ones that punish the slightest dissent. The logic is simple: the Government creates laws that shield it against any threat, including a simple phrase such as “Patria y Vida” (Homeland and Life). Contempt, as a crime, violates even the simplest forms of the freedom of expression, such as criticism. The sweeping purview of said law, as with others found in the PC, is only possible thanks to a deliberate ambiguity in its wording.”

Sounds increasingly familiar. Plus: “In Cuba, precedent is not considered a source of law. Therefore, the sentence handed down by the Municipal People’s Court of Santiago de Cuba will not serve for judges to act in the same way in similar cases. Nevertheless, the decision issued in Dairon Duque de Estrada’s case does mark a shift in the interpretation of the law that can be invoked by lawyers in subsequent cases. Moreover, the fact that several judges agreed to reject the crime of contempt as it has been wielded by the regime ruptures the judicial coherence with which dissent is criminalized in Cuba. This, on a symbolic level, represents a great victory for those fighting for the right to freedom of expression on the island.”

MARK JUDGE: I Knew the Name of the Dragon.

With each passing hour, the rope was tightening … not around me, but around the conspirators. They asked for extensions to testify, they made excuses, they launched attacks through the media. They scrubbed [Christine Blasey] Ford’s internet history and tried to use my high school yearbook against me and Brett while memory-holing Ford’s salacious history and own yearbook. They protested, they yelled, they asked for an FBI investigation.

They claimed Ford, a lifelong and enthusiastic traveler to remote locations, was afraid to fly. They couldn’t produce any of the evidence they had cited, not even notes from Ford’s therapist. This had nothing to do with assault or parties or yearbook slang. It was, as Senator Lindsey Graham put it, “a bunch of garbage.” Graham also knew the dragon’s name.

After more than a week, Ford’s Leviathan grew truly malevolent and reckless. On September 24, 2018  – my birthday – I got a very sinister phone message from a California number. A reptilian voice on the other end told me I was about to be messed with (the caller used more colorful language), and then abruptly shifted to a slightly softer tone: “Hey, give me a call. We’ll work something out.” This was flat-out extortion, witness-tampering, Mafia-style strong-arming. The voice, both menacing and solicitous, was just as I imagined the sound of the voice of the dragon Yevaud in A Wizard of Earthsea. I could almost smell the smoke coming from the nostrils.

Call you back? I don’t think so.

I know your true name.

Read the whole thing.

“WE FEEL USED AND BETRAYED.” Yeah, who could have seen that coming, “Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden?” Sheesh. I’ll bet you don’t even get an ambassadorship to Malta out of it, either.

GENTLEMEN, YOU CAN’T VACCINATE OLD PEOPLE HERE, THIS IS A PANDEMIC! Ron DeSantis and Larry Hogan are vaccinating old people; Democrats and the media are angry about it.

I DON’T LIKE BOSTON DYNAMICS’ AESTHETIC: Boston Dynamics Robots Dance to ‘The Humans Are Dead.’

A SWAT TEAM DESTROYED THIS INNOCENT WOMAN’S HOUSE WHILE CHASING A FUGITIVE. THE CITY REFUSES TO PAY FOR DAMAGES:

What’s a home worth?

It’s a tough question, and it’s one that Vicki Baker found herself trying to answer the hard way after a SWAT team mutilated her house in McKinney, Texas, during a standoff with a fugitive who had barricaded himself inside.

“For two days, I couldn’t quit crying,” Baker says. “The tear gas was everywhere. It was on the walls. It was on the floors. It was on the furniture. It was everywhere.”

Prior to the SWAT showdown, Baker’s daughter, Deanna, gave officers a key to the home, as well as a garage doorInstitute for Justice opener and the back gate code. Agents took a different route. They smashed six windows. Instead of using the code, they maneuvered a BearCat armored vehicle through her fencing. Instead of using the clicker, they detonated explosives to blow off the garage entryway. And instead of using the key, they drove right on through her front door.

“It was after the insurance company told me there was no coverage that I really fell apart,” Baker adds. The company furnished a clause that protects them from liability in cases where the government is at fault for the damage. The city demurred: There would be no coverage. She was not a victim, according to the state.

“I’ve lost everything,” Baker says. “I’ve lost my chance to sell my house. I’ve lost my chance to retire without fear of how I’m going to make my regular bills.”

Tar, feathers, and a lawsuit. The latter is coming: Former McKinney resident suing city for damages after her home was ‘destroyed’ in a SWAT raid.

AS I MENTIONED IN THE NEW SCHOOL, EARLY AMERICANS WERE EXTREMELY LITERATE: The Myth that Americans Were Poorly Educated before Mass Government Schooling: Early America had widespread literacy and a vibrant culture of learning.

TWO MORE FORMER AIDES PUBLICLY ACCUSE CUOMO OF SEXUAL MISCONDUCT.

Related: The short answer is chutzpah: “Charlotte Bennett, who has accused Cuomo of sexually harassing her, claims she overheard Cuomo’s office director Stephanie Benton complaining about having to take the training for the governor. If true, I think it’s pretty funny. And telling. Many men who have taken sex harassment training must probably wished they could have delegated that duty. Few would have thought of delegating it to a woman.”