ELECTION DECIDED, NPR’S MODIFIED LIMITED HANGOUT EXPIRES: NPR issues stunning mea culpa after claiming Hunter Biden laptop story was ‘discredited’ by intelligence.

A book review of Hunter Biden’s memoir “Beautiful Things” initially dismissed the documents first reported in October by The Post.

“The laptop story was discredited by U.S. intelligence and independent investigations by news organizations,” the book review by NPR senior editor and correspondent Ron Elving initially claimed.

The correction on the Thursday article now says, “A previous version of this story said U.S. intelligence had discredited the laptop story. U.S. intelligence officials have not made a statement to that effect.”

Although some Democrats claimed that the laptop may have been “Russian disinformation,” President Biden’s campaign, the White House and Hunter Biden have not denied the laptop belonged to Hunter.

In a new interview set to air in full Sunday on CBS, Hunter Biden admits that the laptop “certainly” could be his.

Earlier: It’s Important To Be Honest About What Today’s Media Actually Are. “It’s time to stop acting like these political activists are professionals who do honest journalism. Continuing that pretense is not doing a favor to the public. It’s not true. With very few exceptions, these people are not there to do journalism, and we need to be honest about that with the public. Not everyone is as bad as everyone else, but nearly the entire press corps is somewhere on the Democrat activist scale, from lefty to fringe, from shrewd to clumsy and clownish.”

(Classical reference in headline.)

THE NEW PROGRESSIVISM LOOKS AN AWFUL LOT LIKE THE OLD PATERNALISM: NBC’s Lester Holt Apparently Thinks You’re Too Ignorant to Hear Unfiltered Information and Evaluate It.

MARK PULLIAM: Is Nullification An Option?

TESTING: Satellite image shows renewed activity at North Korean nuclear lab.

CANCEL CULTURE IS ALL IN YOUR MIND: The Latest Canceling at Vanderbilt Shows That Everyone Is Awful and We Are All Doomed.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Don’t be afraid, be angry. And push back twice as hard.

NEXT, THE FEDS REGULATE WEB SITES: That’s what will happen, according to former FEC Commissioner Brad Smith and Free Speech Institute President David Keating, if the Democrats’ HR1/S1 monstrosity makes into law. And that’s just for starters.

SOUTH CAROLINA REPUBLICANS ARE JOINING DEMOCRATS IN BACKING STRATEGY THAT WILL THROW SEVERELY DISABLED WORKERS OUT OF THEIR JOBS: Here’s why it’s a bad idea.

BIDEN WON’T RAISE TAXES ON PEOPLE MAKING LESS THAN $400,000 MAKING LESS THAN $200,000 WHO DON’T EAT FOOD: ‘Fertilizer Taxes’ Will Hurt Farmers and Likely Drive Up Food Prices.

COLLUSION: Georgia Tech professor indicted for visa and wire fraud involving Chinese nationals.

GOOD: Court Throws Out Global Warming Suit by New York City Against Big Oil Companies.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Who Had Russia and Ukraine Start WWIII on Their 2021 Bingo Card?

Insanity Wrap needs to know: What happens when Ukraine is feeling frisky enough to try and take Crimea back while Russia senses weakness in the White House?

Answer: We don’t want to know, either, but we might be about to find out.

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

• Liberal Naomi Wolfe nails it in her anti-vaccination passport video
• Granny Killer Cuomo has it in for minorities, too
• Jen Psaki admits a fact, world to end tomorrow?

Bonus Sanity: Maybe we left it in our other jacket.

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

DON’T BACK DOWN TO TYRANTS: ‘I will not be silenced’: NY student declares victory after university reportedly suspends him for espousing conservative views.

OH: ‘Potential Imminent Crisis’: U.S. Military Warns Of Russian Military Buildup In Eastern Europe.

Richard Fernandez, yesterday: “Outside the NYT and Wapo bubble, which sees Biden as a sign that ‘America’s back,’ hostile powers seem to demonstrate by their actions that they don’t anticipate much resistance.”

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Georgia House Sends Woke Capital a Wake-up Call After False Attacks on Election Integrity Law.

STANDING UP AGAINST COLLUSION: Cornell Professors Overwhelmingly Reject China Partnership.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: The FBI is very good at woke politics, not so good at catching killers.

WALTER OLSON: Why State Election Reform Bills Don’t Signal a New Jim Crow Era: People are bickering over measures that were considered normal just a few years ago.

Well, we’re in the midst of an all-out war against things that were considered normal just a few years ago.

HIGHER EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Many of you have now read about the bizarre mistreatment of conservative law professor Tom Smith by my very own university. If you haven’t, it’s worth reading about.

Here’s the basic story: In response to demands by student activists, Tom is now officially “under investigation” for what the dean has termed “offensive language in reference to people from China.” Some of the students are calling for him to be fired. What Tom actually did is criticize the Chinese government, not the Chinese people.  The dean’s insulting missive to the university community was just a silly misinterpretation.

Weirdly, even the students concede that Tom was referring to the Chinese government. Their argument is that by criticizing the Chinese government, Tom is adding fuel to the supposed Anti-Asian fire and thus putting them at risk.

This morning our local paper—the San Diego Union Tribune—published three op-eds on the Smith Affair. Yes, that’s one, two, three op-eds. If you have the time and the inclination, please feel free to leave a comment after one of the op-eds. I feel certain that woke USD officials do not spend a lot of time reading Instapundit. (That’s their loss.) But I bet they will be reading the comments at the San Diego Union Tribune.

CRISIS BY DESIGN: TEXAS MAYOR SPEAKS OUT ABOUT IMMIGRANT CRISIS:

Del Rio Mayor Bruno “Ralphy” Lozano has been speaking to anyone and everyone who will listen about the rising tide of illegal immigrants flooding through the area.

Lozano has been interviewed by media outlets large and small, from the national to the local, and has been an outspoken critic of the laws and policies that are allowing the current migrant surge.

Lozano told the 830 Times one of the reasons he has been so vocal about the situation is the timing of the first wave of the surge.

“It all started when we were trying to manage the winter weather disaster in the city of Del Rio on and after Feb. 14, and the frustration came when I was trying to manage, along with our emergency management coordinator and response teams, how to provide the appropriate response to our citizens and our community locally,” Lozano said.

He said he received his first notification that groups of migrants would be released into the community Feb. 16, less than two days after the city’s first snowstorm.

“I was trying to deal with personally not having any electricity at my home and much of the community not having electricity, and then we didn’t have running water, and my frustration grew from that moment on, because it was obvious the federal government was not paying attention to how they are affecting municipal governments,” he said.

“We were responding to our community’s needs first. (The migrant release) just placed us between a rock and a hard place. That’s where it emanated from, and that’s where it started, this most recent frustration and my speaking out about it,” Lozano added.

The mayor said he was somewhat frustrated during the 2019 migrant surge under the Trump administration, but said he believed the Trump administration began to enact policies that were effective because those policies did not give immigrants the incentive to cross into the U.S. illegally.

Lozano said he knew when he began speaking out most recently that some media outlets and networks would play up the current immigrant situation more than others, a symptom, he said, “of our split and polarized nation.”

“At the same time, I’m not just going to sit here as a mayor, who is a registered Democrat, and not share my frustrations over the current situation. I feel that it’s my duty to protect my community. That’s who I was elected to represent – Del Rioans. My perspective on this entire matter currently is that there’s no plan, and that’s where the story took off,” Lozano said.

Lozano also made an attempt to reach President Joe Biden personally.

Biden has other priorities.

AMAZON AND THE ROAD TO PERSECUTION: “The Equality Act would make all who disagree with Amazon and other liberal gender ideological constructs liable to charges of discrimination.”

NEWSOM SHOT A BUSINESS TO RENO, JUST TO WATCH THEM THRIVE: Two California tech companies moving to new facilities in Reno. “StemExpress, a Sacramento-based biotech company, and PayCertify, a financial tech services company in the San Jose area, are expected to combine to create more than 200 jobs in Reno over the next few years, the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada said Wednesday…’We wanted to go to a place where they help businesses grow and thrive,’ Hammer said. ‘Reno is now becoming the new Silicon Valley.’”

Well, the old Silicon Valley has transcended to far more important goals, such as censoring conservatives and former presidents on social media, rather than focusing on boring old workaday tasks like creating innovative computers and software.

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Federal Officials Raise Concerns About White House Pressure to Move Migrant Children. “The latest indication of the bleak situation came Wednesday, according to sources familiar with the situation, when the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, told officials that the bureau is grappling with a White House directive to send kids to Fort Bliss, an El Paso, Texas, army base that is under construction, and to an emergency influx center in San Antonio, Texas.”

#STOPASIANHATE: Why won’t Biden target anti-Asian discrimination in the Ivy Leagues?

BUT CONVENIENT FOR THE POWERS THAT BE: Michael Barone: Too much risk aversion is too risky.

#STOPASIANHATE: Media Suddenly Concerned About Anti-Asian Bias After Erasing Andrew Yang from 2020 Primary.