WAPO: ‘GOP Thrusts Gas Stoves’ Because I Guess They Got Tired of Writing ‘Pounces.’ “Let’s call this next step on the hike up to the top of Peak Stupid what it really is: Brazen rent-seeking, yet another cynical cash-grab by the Left.”

MY HOVERCRAFT IS FULL OF EELS: We Now Know Where Biden Kept the Second Batch of Classified Documents.

DOOCY: “Classified materials, next to your Corvette? What were you thinking?”

BIDEN: “My Corvette’s in a locked garage, okay? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street.”

As always, life in the 21^st century imitates Monty Python.

UPDATE: The London Daily Mail in 2015: Biden home security system failed so often last year the Secret Service switched it off.

LET THE SUN SHINE IN: Rep. Gaetz Says Congress Will Release 14,000 Unseen Hours of Jan 6th Footage.

#JOURNALISM: “Obviously, banning gas stoves is terrible politics. Republicans are opposed in principle and Democrats are the people who have gas stoves and feel deeply emotionally attached to them. This NYT article seems designed to get Biden out of a jam.”

Most of them are, these days, it seems. But then, he’s been getting himself into a lot of jams.

“SLOWED” WILL BE THE TALKING POINT FOR DEMOCRATS AND THE PRESS, “REMAINS SKY-HIGH” WILL BE THE REALITY: Inflation in December slowed but remains sky-high as the economy continues to show signs of weakening.

I’M OVER IT: Attention Please, COVID Is Not Over. We Repeat, COVID Is Not Over. “Well, for most of us it is, but not for the Biden administration. Because, well, reasons. On Wednesday, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra announced that the COVID-19 state of emergency has been extended another 90 days.”

US Big Three Auto Companies Commit to Making Cars That People Don’t Want.

Both my mother and father made a solemn vow that as long as they lived, they would never buy a German or a Japanese car. No matter how well they were made. They were the enemies. They were the ones who killed nearly half a million Americans. Period.

And that value system was transported to me. In honor of my parents’ values, I couldn’t in good conscience buy a Japanese or German car.

I’ve been thinking that after all these years, I may have to change my mind. The American auto companies, which are so often bailed out by U.S. taxpayers, have made a pronouncement that they intend, in the next few years, to stop making and assembling gas-engine cars.

Meanwhile, in Japan: Toyota predicts most of its vehicles will still use gas in 2030.

It’s nice to know that somebody still caters to the vast majority of buyers.

STANDING UP TO STALINIST PSYCHOLOGY: Jordan Peterson refuses social media re-education.

FEDERAL JUDGE CONDEMNS YALE CANCEL CULTURE at Harvard event.

GRATITUDE: You’re Welcome: Illegals in NYC Tossing Free Food.

I REMEMBER WHEN THE ARGUMENT FOR HIGHER EDUCATION WAS THAT IT WOULD PROMOTE NUANCED THINKING: ‘Scalia was basically a Klansman’: Emory law professor. Being unswayed by questionable legal arguments supported by questionable studies was what the Klan was known for, after all.

WHAT THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION AND CORRUPT MEDIA TRY TO IGNORE: Mexican Crime Cartels Wage Narcotic and Demographic War on USA

STRATEGYPAGE PROCUREMENT UPDATE: Exposing Russian Smuggling

Since February, Russian defense production has been crippled by detailed and regularly updated sanctions based on continuing searches for smuggled Western parts. Such was the case with the Russian Orlan-10 UAV, whose production should have been shut down by 2016 sanctions but wasn’t. Oran-10s then required several Western electronic boards and chips that were not manufactured in Russia and had to be imported. By 2017 it was clear that Russia was not simply using existing stockpiles of now banned components to build new Oran-10s. This was a major problem because Orlan-10 was a key observation asset as it could spot targets for Russian artillery or rocket fire.

The update includes information on the Russian investigative media organization iStories and its role in monitoring internal Russian corruption.

ELIZABETH WARREN FINALLLY GETTING THE RESPECT SHE DESERVES:

OK, GROOMER: Penn State professor tells straight students to watch gay porn to discover bisexuality.

I’M INTERVIEWED OVER AT THE COLLEGE FIX: Veteran professor-journalist sees signs of hope for higher ed: ‘Rising out of cluelessness.’

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Defund Leftist Child Predators in Public Education. “My daughter has been out of the public education system for almost seven years now. Drag show story hours weren’t a thing when she was in school. I know that not all public school teachers are perverts. The ones who are, however, need to be perp-walked out of their classrooms and be hit with court orders that keep them away from schools forever.”

MARK JUDGE: My brush with the Hollywood propaganda machine.

JUSTICE: Hawley pressures Garland to appoint special counsel in Biden classified docs probe. “We know from an Inspector General report that the FBI fabricated evidence to justify spying on President Trump’s campaign in 2016. Now the FBI is once again up to the same tricks, putting its thumb on the scales to punish the Democratic Party’s political opponents.”

“SMART DIPLOMACY,” CONT’D: Historic Saudi-Israel normalization stalled by rift with Biden, US.

Trump gave them mideast peace. It’s as if they didn’t ever actually want that.

WELL, THEY ARE: Arkansas Bill Aims to Classify Drag Shows as Adult-Oriented Businesses.

I THOUGHT NO-NONSENSE PETE BUTTIGIEG WOULD HAVE REINED THAT IN: Here’s What the FAA Has Been Focused on Instead of Keeping Planes in The Air. Spoiler alert: It’s all woke nonsense.

Wokeness is what our institutions do instead of their jobs.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: How Stanford Failed the Academic Freedom Test: For America’s new clerisy, scientific debate is a danger to be suppressed.

We live in an age when a high public health bureaucrat can, without irony, announce to the world that if you criticize him, you are not simply criticizing a man. You are criticizing “the science” itself. The irony in this idea of “science” as a set of sacred doctrines and beliefs is that the Age of Enlightenment, which gave us our modern definitions of scientific methodology, was a reaction against a religious clerisy that claimed for itself the sole ability to distinguish truth from untruth. The COVID-19 pandemic has apparently brought us full circle, with a public health clerisy having replaced the religious one as the singular source of unassailable truth.

The analogy goes further, unfortunately. The same priests of public health that have the authority to distinguish heresy from orthodoxy also cast out heretics, just like the medieval Catholic Church did. Top universities, like Stanford, where I have been both student and professor since 1986, are supposed to protect against such orthodoxies, creating a safe space for scientists to think and to test their ideas. Sadly, Stanford has failed in this crucial aspect of its mission, as I can attest from personal experience.

Read the whole thing.

ROGER SIMON: Can ‘The Magnificent 20’ Remake the Republican Party for the Better?

Even at those lower levels—down to the selection of textbooks, local candidates for seemingly minor positions, and, it should go without saying, voting methods themselves—political power has become a royal road to riches. At the higher level, it has become a royal road to spectacular riches with Big Tech and Big Pharma, not to mention China, providing virtually limitless wherewithal.

To put an end to this and to honor the courage of “The Magnificent 20,” the Republican Party needs what communists used to call a rectification program. That’s becoming evident from those Republicans who are suddenly rising in resistance to the House Rules package with the bogus excuse that it was negotiated behind closed doors, as if it could have been done otherwise, given the current state of our country.

But there’s good news, optimistic news, with excellent ramifications for the future, including and especially the announcement that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) will chair the select committee on the “Weaponization of Government.” Nothing could possibly be more urgent for the survival of our republic.

So let’s cheer on the work of “The Magnificent 20” and their comrades-in-arms, such as Jordan and the others who supported them in their quiet, let’s hope now-public, ways.

And if you’ll excuse this onetime Hollywood screenwriter (special advice: avoid the acclaimed but über-pretentious and boring “Tár” at all costs), I would like to explain my reference to “Seven Samurai,” which was directed by Kurosawa, possibly the greatest filmmaker of all time.

Douglas Laman describes the film this way at “The 11 Best Akira Kurosawa Movies, Ranked:” “The entire landscape of global cinema has been shaped by this film about seven men who must train a village to fight back against a horde of bandits.”

Can the entire landscape of American politics be changed by 20 men and women? There’s no question that what they’re fighting is a “horde of bandits,” almost in a global sense. But can they “train a village” (i.e., us) “to fight back”?

In the not-too-distant future, we’re going to find out.

In the meantime, expect plenty of kabuki from a very weak GOP House which will have plenty of its bills die in the Senate: Stop Letting Republicans Lie to You.

ROD DREHER ASKS: Respect The Institutions? But Why?

Brooks and Stephens lament that conservatives used to venerate institutions, but now hate them. Does it occur to these men that these institutions may not merit deference anymore? Why can’t they see that these institutions are the ones tearing America apart by attacking classical liberal ideas of race and justice, gutting the natural family, and demonizing anyone who dares to question its dogmas. Why should conservative Americans have any faith in these institutions anymore, when the leadership of these institutions broke faith with them a while back? It’s not a surprise that Brooks and Stephens grieve the populism on the Right, because they have made their peace with the Cultural Revolution.

But the Cultural Revolution has not made peace with them.