WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW:

SpaceX had four rockets on four pads and two Dragons on orbit today—as CRS-26 Dragon departed the @space_station with Crew-5 Dragon still attached to the orbiting lab, Falcon Heavy rolled out of the hangar, two Falcon 9’s readied for launch, and Ship 24 was stacked onto Booster 7 pic.twitter.com/hJOcOVjRf7

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 10, 2023

DR. PHIL SHOULD KNOW BETTER: Over at the Daily Gouge, today’s edition opens with a look at Dr. Phil’s pathetic response to a liberal guest’s claim that we wouldn’t need police if we just spent more money people’s basic needs, including food, housing, transportation, etc.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Republican House Majority Has to Fire Up the Bully Pulpit. “Republicans — especially conservative Republicans — are desperate to see some fight in our elected officials, particularly the ones in Washington. Even if it’s just a show at the moment, it’s a show we need to see.”

SORRY, NEW YORKERS: Welcome to New Yorkifornia.

INCENTIVES, HOW DO THEY WORK? Biden to tackle illegal immigration by making more ‘migrants’ qualify as legal.

REPUBLICANS POUNCE! Biden’s priceless legal and political gift to Trump.

President Joe Biden has thrown former President Donald Trump legal and political lifelines with his own classified documents scandal. Trump is facing charges of obstruction of justice and mishandling of classified documents after his possible repeated resistance to requests from the National Archives to return classified documents in his possession.

According to CBS News, we’ve now learned that Biden’s attorneys found around 10 classified U.S. government documents in a Biden-linked think tank on Nov. 2. CNN reports that some of these documents were classified as top secret and bore “sensitive compartmented information” control caveats. Documents in Trump’s possession also had SCI control caveats.

Naturally, nobody mentioned this until the midterms were solidly over. Plus:

This decision will significantly weaken the perceived apolitical credibility of any future decision by the Justice Department to charge Trump. The Justice Department must always decide whether proceeding with charges is in the public interest. Biden has greatly undermined that argument via his own classified document problems and associated hiding of that scandal from the public.

This feeds credibility to the prospective narrative that Trump is being unfairly targeted by political enemies.

It’s credible because it’s obviously true. And the Justice Department’s “apolitical credibility” is weak because it doesn’t exist.

HE IS LEGENDARY, BUT NOT AS LEGENDARY AS HE WILL BE: Legendary Prof. Mark J. Perry Explains How He Fights Politically-Correct Campus Bigotry.

WELL, YES:

My hypothesis is that those childish people aren’t being produced, and empowered, by accident.

THERE ARE SOME PARTS OF GEORGIA THAT I WOULD NOT ADVISE YOU TO ROB: Armed citizens foil robbery attempt.. “When a customer saw 39-year-old Shawn Sutton pull a gun on the clerk at the Ideal Mart in Ellijay, he pulled his own weapon. A second customer then retrieved his gun from his vehicle to assist, and both were able to disarm Sutton. When he tried to escape, a third customer pumping gas came inside with his gun and all three were able to hold him until police arrived.”

Emphasis added. The Police Chief: “Six minutes can be forever, and these citizens that we have here are self-reliant and decided they’re not going to be victims. And fortunately, they were able to assist us and help us in a way that didn’t put anybody in danger.”

And reader John Steakley writes: “At this point my only question is whether anyone in Gilmer County is NOT armed.” Maybe a couple of folks who’ve recently moved from California.

THOSE AREN’T WOMEN: The Number of Female Pedophiles Is Up in the UK. Or Is It?

STANDING UP TO ANTISEMITISM AT HARVARD:

Congratulations to Harvard University and the dean of its school of government, Douglas Elmendorf, for not awarding a proposed fellowship to the ex-head of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth. To have made Mr. Roth a fellow would have aligned the school with those hostile to the Jewish state and thus Jews more generally. Too, it would have been an affront to the memory of the president for whom the school is named, John F. Kennedy.

Mr. Elmendorf has taken criticism for his practice of running a tight ship on personnel. A former governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, withdrew from a fellowship amid student complaints about how he handled the drinking water crisis at Flint. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik was removed from an advisory committee for what Mr. Elmendorf considered inaccurate statements. Even JFK’s own daughter, Caroline, quit in a quarrel with Mr. Elmendorf.

We could argue those cases round or we could argue them flat, but they are context for understanding the Kennedy School’s apparent decision in the case of Mr. Roth. It turns out that instead of a kind of leftist or Democratic partisan, Mr. Elmendorf is starting to come into focus as a dean prepared to enforce the principles for which he wants the school he leads to stand. Mr. Roth certainly isn’t the first person who failed to meet Harvard’s standards.

To the extent those standards still exist. On the other hand, FIRE says this is an assault on free speech. “HKS, one of the top public policy institutions in the world, has violated Harvard’s clear commitments to free expression by denying former Human Rights Watch executive Kenneth Roth a fellowship because of his purported ‘anti-Israel bias.'”

NEW YEAR SALE is here. #CommissionEarned

UGH: FAA Grounds All Domestic Flights Over Outage.

The Federal Aviation Administration early Wednesday ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 9 a.m. ET, to allow the agency to restore a critical system that alerts pilots and crew to safety advisories and other information for flights.

The agency, which oversees and manages the aviation network in the U.S., said it is working to restore its so-called Notice to Air Missions System. “Operations across the National Airspace System are affected,” the FAA press office said. It said it was performing final checks to get the system back up and running.

Passengers on social media were reporting delays early Wednesday, citing the outage, but the scale of the impact wasn’t immediately clear. Some U.S.-bound flights from international destinations such as London and Tokyo were still taking off.

The FAA said in an advisory to operators that a Notam outage hotline had been activated while the problem was being addressed by technicians.

What a mess.

SHAKEOUT: Even before Monday’s launch failure, Virgin Orbit’s finances were dismal. “With such high development costs and a low cadence for a rocket that sells for $12 million per launch, how can Virgin Orbit be financially sustainable?”

Eric Berger, maybe the best space reporter right now, estimates the company might run out of cash as soon as March.

Sad if true, but the launch industry has seen such explosive growth that there are going to be a few losers as things shake out.

YES, AND AS PAST INSTAPUNDIT COVERAGE HAS NOTED, THEY’VE BEEN WORKING UP TO THIS FOR A WHILE: Really? They want to ban gas stoves now?

Related: Biden’s War on Cooks: President Moves To Ban Gas Stoves.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Promise Kept: Schiff, Swalwell, and Omar Lose Powerful Committee Assignments.

GOOD: Muslim Public Affairs Council Statement of Support for Hamline Professor Who Showed Muhammad Paintings.

As a Muslim organization, we recognize the validity and ubiquity of an Islamic viewpoint that discourages or forbids any depictions of the Prophet, especially if done in a distasteful or disrespectful manner. However, we also recognize the historical reality that other viewpoints have existed and that there have been some Muslims, including and especially Shīʿī Muslims, who have felt no qualms in pictorially representing the Prophet (although often veiling his face out of respect). All this is a testament to the great internal diversity within the Islamic tradition, which should be celebrated.

This, it seems, was the exact point that Dr. Prater was trying to convey to her students. She empathetically prepared them in advance for the image, which was part of an optional exercise and prefaced with a content warning. “I am showing you this image for a reason,” stressed the professor.

The reason isn’t important. The opportunity for woke performance art by administrators here is what counts. That it comes from a place of ignorance about the underlying subject matter is typical.

THOUGHTS ON rereading Orwell.

OPEN THREAD: Please enjoy it.

AND TO THINK I KNEW HER WHEN: Film Forum Director Karen Cooper to Step Down After 50 Years.

When Karen Cooper took over Film Forum in 1972, the theater was a projector and 50 folding chairs in a loft on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, showing what were then known as underground films. The annual budget was $19,000. Cooper projected the films — sometimes herself — on a single 16-millimeter machine no larger than a microwave.

“I’d say to someone, ‘I show independent films,’ and they’d say, ‘You mean pornography?’” Cooper, 74, recalled with a laugh in a recent conversation at the nonprofit art house cinema’s offices, now located across the street from the theater in Greenwich Village.

But now, Cooper, who has become synonymous with Film Forum — which has grown into a four-screen space with a $6 million-a-year budget and an influence that reaches far beyond New York City — is stepping down from the director role she’s filled for half a century, the organization announced on Monday.

“I’ve thought about this for years,” said Cooper, whose last day will be June 30, though she will remain on staff as an adviser. “I wanted to have a smooth transition.”

The Film Forum is a brilliant venue, combining experimental programming and revivals of old classics; my cousin-in-law knows how to run a movie theater.

SO I SOMEHOW WOUND UP WATCHING NICOLETTE LARSON’S Rhumba Girl video earlier today and wow — so adorably ’70s cute. Long gone now, but happily preserved here.

FORGET THE HATERS: Mayor Lori Lightfoot won’t quit until Chicago is the safest big city in America.

Good luck accomplishing that. On the other hand, since the Chicago mayor isn’t term-limited, is Lightfoot declaring herself mayor for life? Richard Daly was mayor of Chicago for 21 years. Will she be attempting to top that record?

(Chicago’s last Republican mayor left office in 1931.)

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Airbus joins Starlab commercial space station project.

OVERLORD: Unconventional WWII Film Slip-Cuts Between Fact, Fiction, 1944 and 1975.

My latest, on a once-forgotten gem of a war movie, over at Ed Driscoll.com.

UPDATE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY, COMRADES! In bid to oppose racism, USC School of Social Work nixes use of the word ‘field.’

The University of Southern California’s School of Social Work is dropping use of the word “field” in an effort to oppose racism.

“As we enter 2023, we would like to share a change we are making at the Suzanne-Dworak-Peck School of Social Work to ensure our use of inclusive language and practice. Specifically, we have decided to remove the term ‘field’ from our curriculum and practice and replace it with ‘practicum.’ This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that could be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant in favor of inclusive language,” a notice about the change states.

“Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign,” the notice claims. The notice indicates that it is from the “Practicum Education Department” and to the “USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck Practicum Education Community, Faculty, Staff, and Students.

I can’t wait to turn on ESPN this fall to watch the Saturday USC game played on their football practicum.