OUT ON A LIMB: Ex-CDC Director Robert Redfield believes COVID-19 came from Wuhan lab.

Not surprisingly: Fauci rejects ex-CDC director’s claim that COVID-19 came from Wuhan lab.

Of course, Fauci has some background here he’d rather not see disseminated: Flashback: Fauci’s NIH funded controversial gain-of-function viral research at Wuhan lab to get around US ban on dangerous research.

COMMUNIST QUALITY CONTROL: Former CDC Director Believes COVID-19 Escaped from Wuhan Lab.

BOB ZUBRIN: President Biden Should Push for the Human Exploration of Mars: Robotic rovers like Perseverance are great, but they can’t answer the most fundamental questions about the Red Planet.

He’s right, but will Biden be around long enough to matter? They seem to be laying the groundwork for easing him out already.

WHERE’S HUNTER, FAT? Sources: Secret Service inserted itself into case of Hunter Biden’s gun.

Federal Bureau of Investigation also responded to the scene, according to people familiar with the situation. At the time, the FBI was monitoring Hunter Biden as part of an investigation that remains ongoing and that currently focuses on his taxes. The FBI declined to comment.

In addition to questioning Hallie, police called Hunter to the scene, where he was questioned outside the store’s loading dock area and explained he used the gun for target practice, according to the report.

At one point, two of Janssen’s employees, described by the police report as “Mexican males,” walked past the loading dock area, and Hunter told a police officer that the store had some suspicious people working for it. Asked if he was referring to those two staffers, Hunter responded, “Yea, prolly illegal,” according to the report.

When a police officer asked Hunter whether the gun had been used in a crime, the officer reported that Hunter “became very agitated with me and asked me if I was intentionally trying to make him mad,” according to the report.

When the officer asked Hunter whether he had been doing drugs or drinking heavily, he responded, “Listen, it isn’t like that. I think she believes I was gonna kill myself,” according to the report.

An officer asked Hunter whether he had called his father about the incident before he arrived. Hunter responded, “I have never called my dad for anything,” according to the police report.

After being questioned, Hunter retrieved the case for the gun — which included the gun’s serial number — from Hallie’s house and returned to the grocery store to hand it over to police, according to the report.

While police questioned Hunter and Hallie, two Secret Service agents arrived at the store where Hunter had purchased the gun, StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply in Wilmington, according to the two people familiar with the incident. The agents showed their badges and identification cards to Palmieri, the store’s owner, and asked to take possession of the Firearms Transaction Record that Hunter had filled out to buy the gun earlier that month, according to the people familiar with the incident.

Palmieri refused to hand over the transaction record to the Secret Service agents because such records fall under the purview of the ATF. The Secret Service agents left without the records, according to the people familiar with the case. Later that day, the ATF arrived at the store to inspect the records.

Palmieri declined to comment on the episode.

ATF spokesman Andre Miller referred questions to the Delaware State Police. Jason Hatchell, a spokesman for the Delaware State Police, said any questions about the incident would have to be filed through a Freedom of Information Act Request. The Delaware State Police previously rejected POLITICO’s FOIA request for records related to the incident last November.

The incident has received scant attention, save for a report on the conservative website The Blaze that focused on the state police decision not to file charges against either Hunter or Hallie.

Imagine the non-stop coverage this story would get if it involved a Trump family member. Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines to understand the crickets it’s receiving.

Evergreen:

UPDATE: The Hunter Biden Gun Story: This One Should Be Hard to Make Go Away – Part 1.

More: It’s ‘Common Sense’ to Prosecute Hunter Biden for His Gun Crimes. “I do not envy the position that Joe Biden is in with his son. But he is the president of the United States now, and he is using his position to call for much stricter laws to regulate the exercise of an explicit constitutional right. If he wants to show that he is serious — and, more important, if he wants to show that he’s not trying to create a confusing thicket of rules that will end up being enforced capriciously — he should be in favor of investigating and, if necessary, prosecuting his son and his friends. It is a federal felony to lie on Form 4473. Joe Biden supports this. It is a federal felony to possess a gun while one is a drug addict. Joe Biden supports this. It is a federal felony to bring a firearm within one thousand feet of a school. Joe Biden not only supports this, he wrote the law.”

(Updated and bumped.)

HE CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH: Rep Ted Lieu Goes Ballistic When Witness Brings Up Harvard’s Anti-Asian Discrimination.

IF YOU CAN WAIT UNTIL 2030, JUST PLAN TO ORDER ONE FROM SPACEX IN 2029. South Korea aims for moon landing vehicle by 2030.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Communist Tool Paid Big Bucks to Impoverish Your Kids.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: Is there anything more profitable on the college lecture circuit than preaching Marxism to leftists using their own money?

Answer: Sadly, no.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

• Pete Buttigieg has a plan to raise taxes on people making way less than $400,000
• Joe Biden’s cheat sheet, revealed
• Legislator in favor of cheap bail shocked to learn that his attacker could get out on cheap bail

Bonus Sanity: Lying leftist race hustler actually called out for lying race hustling.

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

MAYBE DEMOCRACY REALLY DOES DIE IN DARKNESS: Media Fact-Checkers Silent as Nancy Pelosi Falsely Claims She Can Unseat ‘Any Member of Congress’ She Wants.

PEOPLE SEEM TO BE GETTING TIRED OF IT NOW: Masks, social distancing may be part of ‘new normal’ for a while, experts say. I think people are going to reject the ‘new normal.’

Related: Kurt Schlichter: Understand That Some People Love The Pandemic. “That’s what the pandemic is for these people. It’s their war. It’s something that lets them transcend their boring lives. . . . And now you can see them not wanting to give it up. They talk about nothing but the vaccines, but they also want to disregard their effect and make believe the plague is still sweeping the country. They chatter about herd immunity, but they also fear reaching it because that would mean going back to their old, boring lives.”

BUT FEELING SUPERIOR TO “JOE CITIZEN” IS WHAT THEY AND THEIR VIEWERS NEED MOST: TV Pundits: Stop Beating Up Joe Citizen. “Every time a researcher or physician appears on television or is quoted in the newspaper about COVID-19, there is an opportunity to throw a punch. By that I mean, the speaker has the chance to direct attention where it might make a positive impact. They may use the forum to point out how we, as a society, can improve our collective response, which might make some in power uncomfortable. Too often, experts take this opportunity to punch down. They scold the public against meeting in person, and remind them, if they go out, wear a mask. On Twitter, the rhetoric gets heated, and slogans include: wear a damn mask and stay the f*** home. How we throw our punches matters.”

Like I said, talking down to people is their source of joy and self-importance.

GOOD QUESTION: If Deficits Don’t Matter, Why Bother with Taxes?

Hey, if the government didn’t make you pay taxes, you might start thinking you own yourself.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Does founder Matt Drudge even work at The Drudge Report anymore?

—Headline, the New York Post, November 28^th, 2020.

The Drudge Report today:

He gazed up at the enormous face. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

BUT THE NARRATIVE! Parler Just Flipped Big Tech’s Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theory on Its Head.

ON THE WARPATH: Aspiring authoritarian Elizabeth Warren threatens to ‘fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets.’

Exit quote: “There may well be reasons to break up Amazon, but a sitting US Senator saying they should be broken up for heckling a Senator is authoritarian, censorial nonsense. This is a very bad look.”

BIG OF WAPO TO FINALLY ADMIT THIS: CNN’s Chris Cuomo got special treatment from New York, confirming worst suspicions about media elites.

WOKE: Home Depot Co-Sponsored ‘Systemic Racism’ Resource Hub That Smears Christians as ‘Haters.’

CRISIS BY DESIGN: The Biden Border Crisis Is Real, And It’s About To Get Much Worse.

In every way, though, this is a crisis of the Biden administration’s own making. Immediately upon taking office, President Biden signed a raft of immigration-related executive orders that ended a number of Trump-era policies and programs designed to deter illegal immigration. Those orders, combined with strong messaging and rhetoric from Biden and other Democrats, that migrants claiming asylum should be allowed into the country, created powerful incentives for migrants, most of them from Central America, to get across the border.

As the crisis has worsened, Biden administration officials—and Biden himself—have been consistently dishonest about what they’re doing and why. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who recently said the United States was on pace to see the largest number of border apprehensions “in the last 20 years,” went on all the Sunday shows to insist, falsely, that “the border is closed.”

In fact, the border is mostly open. How do we know? Because the administration is scrambling to house a record number of migrant families and minors that are coming across.

The administration wants this.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Ohio State employs 150 diversity officials. Now it will hire 50 professors focused on social and racial justice.

WTH HAS HAPPENED TO CLEMSON? (CONT’D): Clemson University students fight to ban ‘racist’ Tomi Lahren from campus.

XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: WHO Investigator Peter Daszak Authored Over 20 CCP-Funded, Linked Studies.

DUE TO CHANGES IN THE “DIVERSITY RANKING.” U.S. News Makes Last-Minute Changes to Law School Rankings, Fueling Criticism And Concern. “Changing the rankings multiple times prior to their official publication is unprecedented, according to Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Those changes are bringing to the fore the longstanding uneasiness legal educators have over how U.S. News weighs law schools, as well as fresher concerns over its handling of data and the accuracy of its rankings.”

Plus, an indication of how little the rankings mean due to compression: “The library open hours metric accounts for just .25% of a law school’s overall ranking, yet correcting that mistake changed the ranking of more than 30 schools, according to multiple law school faculty, some by as much as six spots. That illustrates just how compressed the law school rankings are and that small methodology tweaks can cause major shifts.”

Deans live and die by a 6-place shift, and yet it means basically nothing.

EVEN THE IDEA OF “CANCELING” PEOPLE IS A TOTALITARIAN MONSTROSITY: No, Oral Roberts University basketball doesn’t deserve to be canceled from NCAA Sweet 16.

QUESTION ASKED: San Francisco has nearly 16 million square feet of vacant office space. Why can’t it become housing?

The injection of new residents could help revitalize deserted commercial districts and boost foot traffic as restaurants and shops reopen, particularly during evening hours. More downtown housing would build on previous city efforts, particularly in the Transbay neighborhood, to create vibrant, mixed-use neighborhoods with both workers and residents.

But no San Francisco office-to-housing proposals have been submitted during the pandemic, according to the city’s Planning Department.

While the idea is being actively discussed by developers, there are major obstacles, said Manan Shah, an co-managing director at architecture firm Gensler’s Oakland office.

Office buildings can’t be too large or dwellings won’t have enough access to light and air. If they’re too small, there won’t be room for new bathrooms and bedrooms, or elevators and exits. Aging office buildings can also require major seismic upgrades to comply with modern residential codes, and historic exteriors may have to be preserved. Residences also must provide open space — a potential hurdle in cramped downtown — unless they receive a city variance.

“There are some just inherent challenges with doing it. Not impossible — it’s certainly been done,” Shah said. “I think you just have to look at each and every building and opportunity individually.”

In some cases, converting old buildings can be more expensive than building a new project from the ground up, and they’re almost always more complex, developers say. And San Francisco’s construction costs, ranked as the world’s highest in 2019, haven’t budged much during the pandemic.

Earlier: Joel Kotkin: The American City’s Long Road to Recovery. As Glenn noted, “First, you have to want to recover. So far we’re not there.”

“NOT POWERFUL ENOUGH TO HECKLE SENATORS?” That sounds kind of ominous, since anyone who’s alive can heckle a Senator; it’s an American’s right to do so. At least, as long as this is still America. And doesn’t this response to a rather vanilla tweet seem a bit . . . hysterical?

Her followers on Twitter are eating it up, though.

And the tech world seems to have maneuvered itself into a position where it’s hated — genuinely hated — by a lot of people on the left and the right, both of whom want to see the companies broken up. That’s a big change from just a few years ago, and for what? I guess they hope they can bribe enough people in the center to stave off disaster. Maybe they can.

UPDATE: From the comments: “So she’s admitting that Congress lets corporate lawyers and lobbyists write laws? And she’s a member of Congress? So what’s she done to stop this, besides nothing?”