IT’S COME TO THIS: School District Consents to Protecting Citizens’ Rights to Read from School Library Books at Board Meetings.

IN SOVIET AMERICA, THE FUTURE IS CERTAIN — IT IS ONLY THE PAST THAT IS UNPREDICTABLE: How Did Biden Admin Retroactively ‘Discover’ Chinese Balloons in the U.S During the Trump Years?

THIS WAPO PR EMAIL CONTAINS A HILARIOUS BIT OF IRONY: “The workforce of the U.S. government is aging and something needs to be done. In today’s Washington Post opinion section, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who spent 54 years in government service as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Biden, and Max Stier, president and CEO of Partnership for Public Service, share some staggering statistics.”

“Dr. Anthony Fauci, who spent 54 years in government service.” I think we may have a clue as to source of the problem.

THESE PINPRICK ATTACKS DON’T AMOUNT TO ANYTHING BUT I SUPPOSE THEY’RE GOOD FOR MORALE: Possible Tu-141 Strike Deep In Russia Shows Repurposed Warhead. “Ukrainian officials have promised not to use weapons supplied by the west to attack inside Russian borders. But they’ve never made any such assertions about their own weapons, one of which apparently exploded Monday near the city of Kaluga some 200 miles northeast of the border and 100 miles southwest of Moscow.”

DEAL OF THE DAY: TRENDOUX Winter Gloves for Men Women. #CommissionEarned

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Now They’ve Gone and Ruined ‘Grease.’ “‘Grease’ is the word that you’ll never want to hear again after you see what Paramount+ is doing to the classic show.”

Plus:

• There’s pride, and then there’s whatever this teacher is doing.
• Congressman Jim Clyburn really knows how to damn Joe Biden with faint praise.
• This is not the civil rights protest you think it is.

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

FALLOUT: U.S. considering 200% tariff on Russian aluminum, official says. “The Russian metal has also been targeted by the United States after being dumped by Moscow on the U.S. market below cost, harming American companies, the report said, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.”

HIGHER ED GOT WOKE. AND NOW: North Dakota bill would make it easier to fire tenured professors.

Once you could argue to conservatives that tenure was an important means of protecting conservative scholars at liberal universities. But now conservative scholars are so scarce — and liberal universities so unwilling to stand up to woke mobs anyway — that the argument has lost much of its force.

SO DARING, BADLY APING OZZY OSBORNE MATERIAL FROM 50 YEARS AGO: Singer Sam Smith Paid Tribute to Satan at the Grammys, and Zzzzzzzzz.

SUBVERTING THE DOMINANT PARADIGM: UNC to offer anti-woke programs, faculty flabbergasted.

There’s a sort of Brezhnev Doctrine, in which it’s okay for institutions to shift left, but never right. That’s changing, though, or at least being pushed back on.

HOW TO MANAGE The Age of Decline.

The Age of Decline will pose a particularly difficult problem for countries like the United States that rely on younger workers to support retirees. The latest Census figures project that within the next seven years, net migration into the United States will exceed the country’s natural population growth, making us, for the first time in almost 150 years, dependent on immigration for our population growth. Even then, the Census projects that the US population growth rate will fall (permanently) below one-half of one-percent within the decade.

For decades we’ve known the implications for Social Security. In 1960, there were more than five workers paying into the system for each Social Security recipient drawing out. Today, it’s fewer than three. And that number is expected to fall to two within ten years. In short, we need today’s average worker to contribute to Social Security two and a half times what the average worker of three generations ago contributed.

Changing demographics are not only placing a greater burden on workers, but also making it less and less possible to institute needed changes.

The late, great Ben Wattenberg was warning about just this scenario 40 years ago or longer, for anyone who cared to listen.

No one in Washington cared — or dared? — to listen.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: We’re Painfully Aware of the State of Joe Biden’s Union. “Biden’s speech will be a real test of his staff’s creative writing skills. They will no doubt be trying to convince us that the United States economy is booming and that we should be grateful to President LOLEightyonemillion for all of the bounty we’re enjoying. That’s going to be a tough sell to citizens who are moving money out of their retirement accounts so that they can buy an egg.”

DEAL OF THE DAY: COOFANDY Men’s Casual Dress Shirt Button Down. #CommissionEarned

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN IS ABOUT THE K-12 IMPLOSION: “Can graft and racial politics save public schools? Just maybe. Let me explain.”

THE DEEP STATE PROTECTS ITS OWN: Pentagon Won’t Name Official Who Divulged Misleading Info About Chinese Spy Balloons During Trump Admin. “The Pentagon won’t address or explain the misleading statements. They won’t identify the person or persons who issued all those statements.”

I’M GLAD HE’S CALLING ATTENTION TO THE BRUTALITY AND ABUSE THAT CHARACTERIZE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES: Tyre Nichols’ Parents To Attend Biden’s State Of The Union Address.

TRUE: Dems, GOP should agree: End credentialism in public sector.

Related: Down with the College-Industrial Complex.

LEARN TO CODE, THEY SAID: I asked ChatGPT to write a WordPress plugin I needed. It did, in less than 5 minutes. “Overall, the code quality was clean. I’m only presenting the original response because otherwise it wouldn’t fit in the article. The program properly generated the WordPress header block and wrote the dashboard user interface for the plugin, as well as the plugin’s processing logic.”

Still irreplaceable: Living, breathing State of the Union Address drunkbloggers.

Accept no substitutes.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): As I’ve noted, plumbers are safe from the AI revolution in a way that coders are not.

LEARN TO CODE — OH, WAIT: Dell To Dismiss 5% Of Workforce As Tech Layoff Bloodbath Continues.

ROBERT SPENCER: Pakistan Bans Hard-Left Wikipedia as ‘Anti-Islam.’

GOOD, THAT WILL MAKE IT HARDER TO CONCEAL RACIAL DISCRIMINATION: ABA House Of Delegates Rejects Proposal To Make The LSAT Optional; ABA Council To Consider Next Steps At Feb. 17 Meeting.

REMEMBERING The Conflagration at Waco.

As the 30th anniversary draws near, I recommend Dave Kopel and Paul Blackman’s No More Wacos: What’s Wrong With Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix It.

Spoiler: We didn’t fix it.

MARTIN GURRI: In Search of a Right Populist Agenda: Merely opposing the Left’s hegemonic power is not enough.

American politics resembles a three-way scrum. An institutional center, dominated by a guardian class of elites, who manage pretty much everything in modern society, faces persistent assaults from the populist Left and Right.

On close inspection, the three contending parties can be reduced to two ideological streams: the politics of control and the politics of incoherence. Terrified by the rise of populism, the elites have hardened into what the French would call an “extreme center,” claiming a right to rule in perpetuity by reason of its superior virtue and moderation. Democracy has been redefined as the electoral triumph of the center. Candidates from outside the fold are deemed “semi-fascist” and thus illegitimate.

A vast apparatus of control—an octopus-like conglomerate of institutions that includes the federal bureaucracy, the news media, and the digital platforms—has been deployed to stop the populist wolf from crashing through the door. The panic evoked by Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter betrays an unhappy suspicion that the beast will break in anyway. The system is as nakedly rank-based as Marie Antoinette’s France. Having assumed guardianship over the complexities of twenty-first-century life, the elites must govern because they are who they are.

Ostensibly, the center seeks power to preserve the establishment.

Well, more like it uses the establishment to preserve its power.

Plus: “The politics of control unite the extreme center and left populism: at present, the two factions share an uneasy alliance. This is only partly a contradiction. The center is ideologically exhausted and requires justification for control. In identity and environmentalism, the Left supplies that justification. The center is also aware that institutional power has decayed and verges on collapse. By its ability to summon the digital mob, the Left can offer social control over a restless public. At any rate, left populism today is not revolutionary but performative: it needs the media to build a proper stage on which to strut. The young rebels are often the children of the elites, getting credentialed in moral drama before they ascend to leadership.”

TO STOP FRETTING AND JUST BAN IT ALREADY? What the U.S. can learn from India’s TikTok ban.

A U.S. ban might seem unprecedented — but there’s a major precedent many overlook. In June 2020, TikTok had more than 200 million Indian users (then ByteDance’s largest market outside China) when the Indian government abruptly banned it, citing issues of privacy and national sovereignty. The decision came two weeks after Chinese military aggression in India’s northern border led to a high-octane tussle resulting in the death of at least 20 Indian soldiers. TikTok was one among over 200 Chinese apps that were blocked from operating within the country.

India’s experience with TikTok is particularly important as U.S. policymakers grapple with potential economic and political fallout from a ban. India’s ban really did result in a long-term split from Chinese technology, as some in the U.S. have worried. But otherwise, Indians have largely taken the restrictions in stride — and there’s been no meaningful political effort to overturn them. Some influencers still miss the joys of the TikTok era, but investors and consumers have largely moved on and adapted to alternatives.

“We haven’t faced any downside,” said Anand Lunia, founder of Indian venture capital firm India Quotient and a prominent tech critic. “I don’t think that anybody has really complained about missing TikTok.”

TikTok isn’t just spyware; it’s cultural malware.

THE WAR ON CHILDREN: Is Your Child Being Forced to Sit Through ‘Silent Lunch’ at School?

The next time someone warns me that homeschooled kids will never learn social skills, I’m going to bring up this story.

A mom I know posted on Facebook last week that her daughter received detention at school for talking during lunch. I kid you not.

The offending 4th-grader was cited for “excessive talking” after a boy asked if she wanted his fruit snack. The girl responded with a simple “no,” which was enough for the lunch supervisor to slap her with her first detention. Another parent responded to the post, saying that when she visited the school to have lunch with her kids, she was shocked to learn that they were forced to put their heads down on the table after they finished eating. Not only that, but at this school, the children are forced to sit in rows facing the front of the room and are not even allowed to choose their lunchmates. This is utter madness — and abusive.

Yes, it is. But there’s a chance that kids who have been schooled this way think it’s “normal,” and haven’t told their parents about silent lunch.