COLLUSION: Former Ohio State researcher sentenced to 37 months in prison after attempting to flee to China.

HOLDING ISLAMIC STATE TERRORISTS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE YAZIDI GENOCIDE IN IRAQ: It appears the perpetrators some of the most hideous crimes against humanity committed in the last decade may be punished. But justice is slow. A new UN report updates the international investigation of the genocide ISIS thugs committed against Iraqi Yazidis in 2014.

Genocide is the correct word. If it describes the 1994 campaign of mass ethnic murder waged by radical ethnic Hutus against ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda, then it definitely describes the mass murder and rape Islamic State monsters committed against the vulnerable Yazidis. ISIS’ mass murder and campaign of rape against the Yazidis had both ethnic and sectarian (religious) dimensions. It is deeply regrettable that political propagandists have used the word to shock and manipulate, labeling speech they dislike as “genocidal.” Real genocide is an unspeakable physical horror.

Read the entire essay.

PREEMPTIVE SURRENDER IS NOT A STRONG LOOK: 35 Republicans Back Pelosi’s Move on the Capitol Riot.

DEFUND HIGHER EDUCATION: Pennsylvania higher ed governing body makes massive ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ move.

A MUCH BIGGER DEAL THAN FORGETTING WHICH PAIR OF JEANS YOU LEFT THAT TWENTY IN: A crypto lender is trying to claw back bitcoin after accidentally depositing hundreds of coins into user accounts.

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: Senate Goes Maskless, Pelosi’s House Keeps the Facehuggers On.

THE NEW CIVIL LIBERTIES ALLIANCE Warns U.S. Dept. of Education that Its Efforts to Change American History Curricula are Unlawful.

HA!

You can’t mock these sleazy grifters enough.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IF I TOLD YOU: Actually, it would be Dr. Steven Sanchez of the Colson Center, not me, explaining why there are thousands more manuscripts of the Bible copied multiple centuries earlier than Homer, Plato, Aristole, Julius Caesar, and indeed every other ancient work of note?

EVERYTHING GETS HACKED: We’re Not Prepared for AI Hackers, Security Expert Warns.

Schneier’s eye-opening talk at the all-virtual RSAC 2021 conference examined the consequences, positive and negative, of artificial intelligence learning to hack all kinds of systems. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic forced him and other RSAC participants to present via video this year, but that comfortable setting didn’t blunt Schneier’s concerns.

“Any good AI system will naturally find hacks,” said Schneier. They find novel solutions because they lack human context, and the consequence is that some of those solutions will break the expectations humans have—hence, a hack.

This is especially true for computers. “We never close off all the avenues for hacking,” he said, positing that once AI systems start looking for hacks, vulnerabilities will be found at a scale humans are simply unprepared to handle.

We’re very close to being a very long way from comparatively simple ransom hacks like Colonial Pipeline.

THE GOAL IS TO TREAT ALL POLITICAL OPPONENTS AS TERRORISTS: Pelosi’s commission a plot to ‘kill MAGA,’ says Marjorie Taylor Greene.

MARK LEVIN’S NEW BOOK: Several readers have mentioned his book American Marxism in the comment section. It is available for pre-order. You can also get it at Books-a-Million here. (Bumped)

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: I Won’t Mind If Nancy Pelosi Wears a Mask Forever. “The Democrats have apparently stopped following the science. Not only that, they’re done worshiping at the altar of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an organization that we’ve been told for over a year speaks nothing but the Gospel truth. It’s not as if I’m surprised by the flip-flopping. People who wander through life unburdened by morals, convictions, or the cognitive ability to process logic aren’t exactly known for their consistency, after all.”

THE POLITICAL CLASS LIVES IN A SMALL, SELF-REGARDING WORLD: POLL: 44 Percent of Americans Have Never Heard of MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. “Most who have don’t like him or don’t care.”

VACCINATIONS SPARK COVID VARIANTS: That’s what French virologist and Pulitzer Prize winner Luc Montaignier contends, as reported by LifeSiteNews’ Celeste McGovern. This report from the same publication also has me wondering.  Now I am really confused. But surely the CDC can clear this up, right? Right???

INFLATION HEDGE: Big institutional investors are dumping bitcoin and going back into gold, JPMorgan says.

CHANGE: Stop & Shop Says It Plans to Drop Mask Rule Later This Month.

Related: Howie Carr: Charlie Baker’s Mask-Querade is Over.

I FEEL LIKE SOMEBODY SHOULD BE LOOKING INTO MANHATTAN D.A. CYRUS VANCE, JR. Here are just a few items from the InstaPundit archives:

TO BE FAIR, CY VANCE DECLINED TO PROSECUTE HARVEY WEINSTEIN, TOO. DA declines to prosecute man arrested in St. Patrick’s Cathedral vandalism.

—
SO WHAT ARE THE ODDS THAT CYRUS VANCE, JR. IS A PERV HIMSELF?

While a grand jury indicted Hadden on multiple felony sex charges, in 2016, the District Attorney’s office reached a plea deal with Hadden, in which he pleaded guilty to only two of the nine charges against him: one count of forcible touching and another count of third-degree sexual abuse. Hadden lost his medical license, but did not go to jail.

(The Manhattan District Attorney’s office, CNN notes, is headed by Cy Vance, the same attorney who has been criticized for failing to prosecute Harvey Weinstein for a misdemeanor sex crime in 2015, and for asking a judge to reduce billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s sex offender status in 2011.)

Just saying.
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INEPT, CORRUPT, WHATEVS. Manhattan DA Cy Vance Looks Inept Again With Reemergence Of Epstein Case.

Then-deputy chief of Cyrus Vance Jr.’s sex-crimes unit, Assistant DA Jennifer Gaffney, requested of a Manhattan judge in January 2011 to change Epstein’s status in the New York sex-offender registry from the most-dangerous Level 3 to least-restrictive Level 1. (RELATED: Lawyers For Jeffrey Epstein Once Said He Helped Conceive The Clinton Global Initiative)

According to The Post, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ruth Pickholz was flummoxed by the appeal.

“I have never seen the prosecutor’s office do anything like this,” Justice Ruth Pickholz told Gaffney. “I have done many [cases] much less troubling than this one where [prosecutors] would never make a downward argument like this.”

Vance has specialized in providing special service for the connected. See, e.g., Harvey Weinstein.
—

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Manhattan D.A. Spent $250K in Asset Forfeiture Funds on Fine Dining and Luxurious Travel: The expenses included five-star Parisian hotels and sumptuous dinners. “Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance spent nearly $250,000 over the past five years from a state asset forfeiture fund on fine dining, first-class airfare, and luxurious hotels, according to public records obtained by The City, a nonprofit news outlet in New York City. While regular state employees, like the line prosecutors under Vance, are bound by strict travel and expense rules, Vance is under no such regulations, and his office controls more than $600 million in funds seized by New York law enforcement in civil and criminal cases.”

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Bryan Preston: It’s Not Your Imagination. Joe Biden Really Is Weakening the United States. “When the going gets tough, because another of his deliberate policy decisions has caused the nation and the world major problems, Biden calls a lid.”

Megan Fox: Is Someone Finally Giving Cancel Culture A Taste of Its Own Medicine? “What we want to do at Unsilenced Majority is to provide a counterbalance. And so these corporations understand that if they go woke there’s gonna be consequences from everyday Americans.” (Silence is violence, the Left keeps telling us…)

Yours Truly: Close Encounters of the Blasé Kind. “There’s another scenario for humanity’s first contact with aliens, only it might not be science fiction: Suppose alien ships were buzzing our aircraft and Navy ships over the oceans, giving us nothing more than tantalizing glimpses of their impossible (to us) flying machines? Suppose, even more fantastically, that humanity’s response was a collective yawn?”

IF YOU OFFER PEOPLE MONEY NOT TO WORK, MANY WILL TAKE IT: Government’s Ill-Timed Sit At Home Money Is Hurting The Economy.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN:  Wolf of the World: The Elect: Story the First.

One searches for oil. The other searches for revenge.

Gregor watches Americans searching for oil in Carpathian Poland. As the Americans grow frustrated by their lack of success, Gregor grows fascinated by Linda, the petrogeologist. His master, Lord Ivan Bethlán, shares that fascination, and demands that Gregor bring Linda to him.

Linda just wants to find oil and get home to Houston. She does not care for being watched – or stalked – and confronts the large black dog haunting the woods near the survey team’s camp. Taken by his politeness and excellent German, Linda starts to wonder. Why is he so well-spoken? And who is the master who Gregor will not name?

A geologist and a Calvinist werewolf must join forces to stop a monster.

A dark fantasy with romance elements.

THE SYMBOLS CONNECT US TO THE PAST:  Symbolism and the Function of Tradition.

(And the painting with it is somehow very cheering.)

I HEARD FROM SOMEONE WHO WORKED FOR HER SHE’S INCOMPETENT, LAZY AND OBSESSED WITH FASHION:  Kamala Harris can’t keep staff.

BAN THE IEA:  Ban All New Gas Boilers By 2025 Say IEA.

AS RELIABLE AS THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE’S PROJECTION OF THE DEATHS BY COVID:  Projecting manmade climate change: scenarios to 2050.