STANDARDS: Cal State system ditches SAT/ACT, citing ‘equity and fairness,’ ‘high-stress’.

EVIDENCE OF FOOD INFLATION: This economy bites: NYC slice costs more than a subway swipe for first time. “A slice now costs more than a swipe. That breaks the “pizza principle,” a New York City economic precept that holds that the price of a piece of cheese pizza and a single ride on the subway rise together, staying the same price.”

Related: Don’t pretend that high prices and American suffering are a ‘bug’ for the establishment — it’s a historic feature.

HOW DOES SHE KNOW HOW MANY WERE WOMEN? SHE’S NOT A BIOLOGIST. KBJ: “I would note that I am pleased to be the sixth woman nominated to serve on the Supreme Court.”

Also, she apparently forgot Harriet Miers.

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THE PEOPLE WHO FOISTED THIS OBVIOUSLY-INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT ON US SHOULD BE HELD STRICTLY ACCOUNTABLE: Joe Biden Managed to Fall Asleep Standing Up, Mix Himself Up with Michelle Obama All at One Event.

Related: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

ANOTHER EFFORT TO INTIMIDATE CONSERVATIVES: Report: Joe Biden Openly Pushing for the DOJ to Prosecute Donald Trump. As with the whole trumped-up Jan. 6 investigation, the point is to make people afraid to oppose the establishment using the same tactics routinely employed by the establishment and its allies/tools.

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON CAN’T DECIDE WHETHER INDIVIDUALS POSSESS NATURAL RIGHTS OR NOT.

When Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said that they would be willing to vote for Ketanji Brown Jackson after her questioning during congressional hearings, it practically guaranteed that she would be confirmed.

But they may not have seen the answer that she gave in response to a written question from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). It’s common practice to send the nominee written questions, in addition to grilling her during hearings. But her response is getting a lot of attention — and it’s not hard to see why.

Cruz asked, “Do you hold a position on whether individuals possess natural rights, yes or no?”

A simple question, one would think. At least if you believe in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But if you thought Jackson’s answer about not being able to define a “woman” was a bad answer, this response was even worse.

Her response was not good, to say the least. “I do not hold a position on whether individuals possess natural rights.”

John Locke weeps.

Related: Ketanji Brown Jackson chose leniency even in baby sex torture cases.

TO BE HONEST, THAT’S CHARITABLE: White House Report Card: Biden running in place. “This week’s White House Report Card finds President Joe Biden stuck where he’s been for months, underwater in the polls, his agenda stalled, the economy showing mixed signals and his staff at the ready to correct misstatements.”

FEAR OF A STRONG BLACK MAN: What the Ginni Thomas Brouhaha is Really About.

They pulled out all the stops to keep Clarence Thomas off the Supreme Court three decades ago and failed. They went back to the well when Brett Kavanaugh was nominated and failed. So the Left tried to pack the court—and again, they failed.

With a conservative majority ensconced on the bench for a generation (inshallah!), a smear campaign tarnishing the institution—and one of its most admired members—is their next best option. Enter Ginni Thomas, wife of Clarence, whose strategically leaked text messages to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows have Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin eyeing an investigation. Others are calling for the justice’s recusal from all Jan. 6-related cases. And still others are demanding his impeachment. Again.

Democrats can’t change the Court’s composition, but they can try to moderate the conservative majority through relentless demagoguery, endless investigations, and by dragging their spouses through the gutter. . . . That brings us to the recent brouhaha over Mrs. Thomas’s text messages, which are much ado about nothing.

I hope it backfires on them.

GLENN GREENWALD: Your Top Priority is The Emotional Comfort of the Most Powerful Elites, Which You Fulfill by Never Criticizing Them.

It cannot be overstated how often and casually corporate media employees like this destroy people’s lives. They confront old women on their Florida front lawn for having promoted a pro-Trump event on Facebook that was supposedly organized by Russians. They threaten to expose their critics unless they promise to cease voicing critiques. They dox workers or the crime of producing videos that mock the richest and most powerful politicians in the country such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

And Lorenz has left behind a long list of victims — from teenagers whose old tweets and family history she dug up and published to a businesswoman whose life she destroyed to journalists and others about whom she maliciously lied. She was one of the media leaders mocking and shaming a college student for having published an op-ed in The New York Times on how intolerance for dissent from liberal pieties on college campuses has made her afraid to speak out. She’s the vintage mean girl. So malignant and deceitful and destructive are Lorenz’s shoddy journalistic methods that it took more than an hour for this investigative reporter to document in this great YouTube video all the lies and destruction Lorenz has left in her wake.

Yet look at what NBC just did. While flamboyantly displaying his newly minted credential as a Great Male Ally, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd ended the segment with this sermon: “folks who live online know exactly what they’re doing when they target a journalist.” Do Todd and his fellow weeping actors not realize that they just spent five minutes doing exactly that: targeting journalists by blaming us for the trauma and suicidal ideation of the weeping Washington Post columnist? Why is it permissible for employees of NBC and The Washington Post and the rest to constantly use their platform to malign and demonize journalists, but we cannot criticize them without being accused of unleashing misogynistic violence?

And what about all of Lorenz’s victims? Why do their trauma and the wreckage of their lives from her reports not matter? The answer is obvious. What elites have succeeded in training people to believe is that, somehow, what matters most is the emotional comfort of the society’s most powerful and influential political and media figures. They have the unfettered right to demean and denounce and vilify whomever they want, no matter how powerless, but you cannot speak up or object when they do just that.

Read the whole thing. Back in 2010 at the New Criterion, the late Kenneth Minogue warned:

My concern with democracy is highly specific. It begins in observing the remarkable fact that, while democracy means a government accountable to the electorate, our rulers now make us accountable to them. Most Western governments hate me smoking, or eating the wrong kind of food, or hunting foxes, or drinking too much, and these are merely the surface disapprovals, the ones that provoke legislation or public campaigns. We also borrow too much money for our personal pleasures, and many of us are very bad parents. Ministers of state have been known to instruct us in elementary matters, such as the importance of reading stories to our children. Again, many of us have unsound views about people of other races, cultures, or religions, and the distribution of our friends does not always correspond, as governments think that it ought, to the cultural diversity of our society. We must face up to the grim fact that the rulers we elect are losing patience with us.

And their leftist operatives with bylines, as well.

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Joe Biden Forgets He Was Vice President — but He’s Totally Fine, You Guys. Biden: “I’m deeply proud of the work [Jill is] doing as first lady with Joining Forces initiative she started with Michelle Obama when she was vice president.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Dems in Actual Disarray: How Senate Democrats Fumbled Confirmation of a Top Biden Nominee. “The stunning defeat was due to a combination of Democratic work-from-home-policies and incompetent whipping by party leadership, according to numerous Senate sources involved in the vote. The vote was described in Politico as a ‘fiasco’ and a ‘kind of thing [that] just doesn’t happen.’ Typically, the outlet wrote, party leadership pulls nominees in order to save face before a doomed vote.”

REPORT: Ukraine has regained control over the ‘whole Kyiv region’ following the Russian assault, the deputy defense minister says.

JACK DORSEY FEIGNS GUILT PANGS: Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Says He is “Partially to Blame” for the Destruction of Internet Today and Regrets It.

Co-founder Jack Dorsey made the social media app Twitter a household name. He also helped destroy free speech in the United States.

Jack Dorsey banned President Trump from the social media platform allegedly for ‘inciting violence’ but not the Taliban and Iranian leaders.

A whistleblower inside Twitter exposed and recorded CEO Jack Dorsey and sent Project Veritas the recording.

Project Veritas released a video of Jack Dorsey laying out the roadmap for future political censorship — censoring Trump was just the beginning.

“We are focused on one account [@realDonaldTrump] right now, but this is going to be much bigger than just one account, and it’s going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week, and the next few weeks, and go on beyond the inauguration,” Dorsey said in a video recorded January 8, 2021.

Twitter also suspended the Gateway Pundit account indefinitely after we announced more videos of TCF Center fraud would be released in the coming days.

Questioning the fraudulent election will no longer be tolerated by the social media giant.

* * * * * * * *

Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO of Twitter last year.

Now, the former CEO said in his recent tweet that he is “partially to blame” for the current state of our internet today and claimed that he regrets it.

“The days of usenet, irc, the web…even email (w PGP)…were amazing. centralizing discovery and identity into corporations really damaged the internet. I realize I’m partially to blame, and regret it,” Dorsey said on his tweet.

Abandoning the decentralized Blogosphere for the walled gardens of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube was a huge mistake, particularly for conservatives. Somebody should write a book about the reasons why.

Related: Dorsey and Facebook COO stepping down from Walt Disney’s board.

AMERICA’S FUTURE LEADERS? DON’T BET ON IT. John Hinderaker on today’s Yale Law School. “Now, more than 400 Yale Law students, representing over 60 percent of the student body, have signed a pathetically weak letter to the law school’s administration protesting the fact that law enforcement was called to keep the peace. The letter would be dumb if it came from a group of 7th graders. The fact that it comes from law students reflects the catastrophic decline of education in America.”

VLAD CHOSE POORLY: Russia-Ukraine war latest: Ukrainian troops retake entire Kyiv region as evidence emerges of execution of civilians.

OPEN THREAD: Check this.

THINGS SEEM KIND OF ACTIVE LATELY: The sun let out another flare and the photos are stunning.

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Goldman Sachs warns the dollar is at risk of losing its dominance, and could end up a lesser player like the UK pound.

SPOILER: IT’S EXERCISE. There’s an Activity That Improves Mood With Lasting Effect in People With Depression.

HOW’S THAT “ZERO COVID” STRATEGY WORKING OUT FOR YOU? Hong Kong urges testing, Shanghai struggles under lockdown.

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WELL, YES, BUT SET AGAINST THE GENERAL CORRUPTION OF THE BIDEN REGIME IT DOESN’T EVEN REGISTER: It’s unethical for Psaki to talk to MSNBC about a job while fielding questions from them as press secretary.

I mean, compared to taking money from China and Russia . . .

A MARS-SHATTERING KABOOM: Object crashed into Mars and created this new impact crater.

HMM: Study: Childhood surroundings determine adults’ navigation abilities. “Researchers in Britain and France have discovered that people raised in the country or suburbs are better navigators than those who grew up in cities, particularly those with grid-pattern streets.”