THEY’RE NOT ‘KEEPING SECRETS’ THEY’RE DEFENDING THE PUBLIC’S RIGHT TO NOT KNOW:  Harvard Corporation under fire for keeping secrets to protect Claudine Gay: ‘Must not be published’.

IT’S ALL MENTAL ILLNESS:  Report: Iowa School Shooter Posted Bizarre Bathroom Selfie on TikTok Before Shooting Rampage.

IT’S PROBABLY BEEN ‘ACCIDENTALLY’ MISFILED UNDER “DON’T ASK”:  The missing data that could prove whether the covid ‘vaccines’ are safe.

THERE’S A HOLE IN THE HANDBASKET AND TRUTH’S LEAKING OUT:  A beginners’ guide to Covid, Part 10: Did masks and social distancing work?

THIS MAY BE A HIGHER PERCENTAGE THAN BELIEVE ANYTHING THEY READ IN THE WAPO*:   A quarter of Americans believe FBI instigated Jan. 6, Post-UMD poll finds.

a) A portion of Americans who believe this are b) willing to say it to a pollster.  I think the people who believe Jan 6 was an insurrection is now limited to shut ins, Alzheimer patients and Liz Cheney personal group of friends. And they might not believe it. They might just be humoring her.

*N.B.: The In-house Newsletter of the Nomeklatura asserts the falsity of the claim by relying only on the… FBI’s assertion.  If you guys need a new definition of “idiot studying to be a moron” you have it, right there.

PHIL HAMBURGER ASKS ME TO POST THIS, AND I’M HAPPY TO:

Dear Instapundit readers,

Please forgive me for intruding on your time, but if any of you are members of the Supreme Court bar and would be willing to file an amicus brief pro bono in defense of the Texas free-speech law in NetChoice v. Paxton, I would be grateful if you could please contact me at .

The social media platforms represented by NetChoice seem to have spread their legal work across almost all of the substantial law firms in the United States, and therefore many lawyers who are inclined to file amicus briefs on the other side have been conflicted out. This has become a serious problem for those of us defending the Texas free-speech law. In the last round at the Supreme Court, several amici were therefore unable to file. So if you don’t have a conflict, and have time to file a brief pro bono next week, please let me know.

Gratefully,

Philip Hamburger

He’s a smart guy and if you can help him out I think you should.

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE IOWA SCHOOL SHOOTER.

UPDATE: A friend writes:

Re Iowa.

I used to wonder, when there was a mass shooting and pols started calling for gun control, why doesn’t anyone want to know why our society is producing young men who want to kill children? Seems like the pressing question at the heart of the matter.

Now I wonder why nobody wants to know why our society is producing young genderfluid men and women who want to kill children.

I don’t.

OPEN THREAD: Come inside, come inside. There behind the glass stands a real blade of grass. Be careful as you pass. Move along, move along.

OH NO! ANYWAY . . . Iraq Condemns U.S. After Drone Strike in Baghdad: The attack, acknowledged by the Pentagon, killed a senior militant leader of an Iran-allied group with ties to the Iraqi government’s security apparatus.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Starship, Starlink and more: SpaceX poised for huge 2024.

MICROBIOME NEWS: Chemical Produced by Gut Microbes Seems to Prevent Obesity in Mice.

LONGEVITY UPDATE: Aging’s Antidote? The Crucial Role of HKDC1 in Keeping Cells Youthful.

HOW IT STARTED: Next mayor wants NYC to be even more of a ‘sanctuary’ for illegal immigrants.

Every single one of the eight Democrats running for mayor vowed to protect illegal immigrants from deportation, solidifying the Big Apple’s often infamous status as a “sanctuary city.”

* * * * * * * *

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, the son of legal Taiwanese immigrants, said, “I appreciate anyone who comes to this country or New York City for a better life.”

And Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said migrants were his neighbors growing up in Queens.

“My mother worked two jobs to provide for the six of us and we had a group of undocumented residents that lived in our community,” Adams said.

The other candidates — city comptroller Scott Stringer, former Obama housing secretary Shaun Donovan and nonprofit leader Dianne Morales — also voiced their support for the Big Apple as a sanctuary city.

—The New York Post, June 2nd, 2021.

How it’s going: Fed-up Eric Adams sues bus companies for $700M to cover cost for over 33K migrants hauled to NYC.

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration on Thursday sued 17 bus companies that have hauled more than 33,000 migrants from Texas to the Big Apple — claiming they should pony up the $700 million it cost the city to care for the asylum seekers.

The charter bus operators have earned “millions of dollars” from the Lone Star State while acting in “bad faith” to implement Gov. Greg Abbott’s plan to transport migrants coming over the US-Mexico border to Democrat-run cities such as New York, Chicago and Denver, the Manhattan Supreme Court suit claims.

“These companies have violated state law by not paying the cost of caring for these migrants, and that’s why we are suing to recoup approximately $700 million already spent to care for migrants sent here in the last two years by Texas,” Adams said in a statement.

Roughly 33,600 migrants have been bused using these companies since the start of New York City’s migrant crisis in April 2022, according to the suit.

The coach companies were paid roughly $1,650 per person they transported — a bloated price tag that’s more than five times the average rate for one-way tickets from Texas to NYC, the suit claims.

—The NY Post, today.

This isn’t who we are. Adams clearly needs to reread the words on the Statue of Liberty — and his own promise that New York is a sanctuary city.

Earlier: Sanctuary Cities Seethe as Illegal Immigrants Actually Arrive.

The surest sign that public policies are simply virtue signals is when the messages don’t cost anything. The easiest way to tell when that signal starts to fail is to watch politicians flounder as the costs start to rise and voters demand relief.

It was free—and meaningless—for progressive churches to post banners calling themselves “nuclear free zones” during the Reagan era. Their dwindling congregations loved it. It was free, after George Floyd‘s murder, to post woke catechism signs on your front lawn, proclaiming “In this house, we believe: Black Lives Matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal” and so on. Maybe the neighbors gave you high-fives. And for years it has been free for deep-blue cities to proclaim themselves “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants. That’s changing now that voters want some sanctuary for themselves.

Changes like this happen when voters realize the old virtue signals actually entail serious costs—and that they will have to pay them. That is exactly what’s happening in New York City and Washington D.C. now that Texas governor Greg Abbott is sending those cities a few busloads of illegal immigrants from his state.

These progressive bastions were silent when the Biden administration flew planeloads of illegal immigrants to suburban airports in the middle of the night. TV coverage was prohibited, and the arrivals were secretly dispersed. Abbott’s buses, by contrast, arrive downtown greeted by local TV crews. Now you can hear the politicians screech.

Saul Alinsky smiles.

AMAZING: WaPo Reporter Does Exactly What Vivek Predicted in His Terrific Takedown of Lib Media Tactics.

Yesterday, Ramasamy told the WaPo’s Meryl Kornfield:

I’m not gonna recite some catechism for you. I’m against vicious racial discrimination in this country, so I’m not pledging allegiance to your new religion of modern wokeism which actually fits the test. I’m not going to bend the knee to your religion. I’m not asking you to bend the knee to mine. I’m not going to bend the knee to yours. Do I condemn vicious racial discrimination? Yes, I do. Am I gonna play your silly game of gotcha? No, I’m not.

And frankly, this is why people have lost trust, and I know you’re going to go print the headline tomorrow, I already know this, we already know how your game works. “Vivek Ramaswamy refuses to condemn white supremacy” because I know how your game works.

The reality is that I condemn vicious racial discrimination in this country but the kind of vicious and systematic racism that we see today is discrimination on the basis of race in a very different direction.

You wanna know what the best way is to end discrimination on the basis of race. Stop discriminating on the basis of race. Do that and we’re going to move this country forward.  And I don’t care whether you’re black or white or brown, or anything in between. That’s how we’re going to unite this country.

You people have been responsible for dividing this country to a breaking point, creating a projection of national division. I meet people from the South Side of Chicago to meetings like this one, of every shade of melanin, from man to woman — doesn’t make a difference — who are hungry for reviving unity in this country. And you with your catechism that you try to get politicians to whatever fake headline you’re going to print on the basis of this conversation tomorrow.  That’s what’s dividing this country to a breaking point. Shame on you. Look people in the eye and tell them what you’ve actually failed to tell them for the last five years. Own the accountability for your own failures as the media. That’s how we rebuild trust in this country. And until then, I don’t have a lot of patience to play the games.

“So can you guess what happened next?” As an earlier Republican might have said to Kornfield, “Well, there you go again:”

Now, if you hadn’t seen the video and just listened to what she said you would think that he hadn’t condemned white supremacy when the whole gist of everything he said was against discrimination. So pushing this is just pushing narrative propaganda. She knows what he truly said, but that doesn’t matter to her.

Community Notes wasn’t having any of this, calling what the WaPo reporter said “disingenuous.”

This is a disingenuous framing of the exchange. He condemned all forms of racism, but refused to participate in a clear “gotcha” moment by the journalist.

This was what Vivek predicted that the reporter would do. Not only did he deliver the perfect takedown of this hack reporter and completely own her, but he called it big time. Could the media be any more disgusting, predictable, biased, or hilarious than this? And they wonder why we don’t trust them. This is one example of why. He said she was going to do it, calling her out in advance and still she couldn’t help herself. What does that say about how low they’ll go? They truly have no shame.

Democracy dies in gaslighting, to paraphrase the motto of Jeff Bezo’s opinion paper.

HEH:

To quote Ron Burgundy in Anchorman when his dog pooped on the inside of the refrigerator: “I’m not even mad. I’m impressed.” https://t.co/hTi0hoCTgU

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) January 3, 2024

MARK JUDGE: Why Aren’t Movies Fun Anymore?

Playfulness, connection and flow—it’s a good guide to why movies today aren’t that much fun. Few have these three elements. According to Collider, the five best comedies of 2023 are: The Holdovers, Poor Things, Asteroid City, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Barbie. These are all good movies—but are they fun? Compare them to the comedies of the 1980s—Beverly Hills Cop, Back to School, Ruthless People, Stripes, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Little Shop of Horrors. Barbie is a sociology lecture compared to, say, Ghostbusters. Airplane!, A Fish Called Wanda, The Blues Brothers? Fun, fun, fun. Eddie Murphy in the 80s was fun incarnate. Film critic Anne Hornaday once said of Steve Martin, “It’s a delight to watch him chase after a cab.” Can you say the same about Amy Schumer? Ferris Bueller is an entire movie about playfulness, connection and flow.

Over the past few decades, fun movies were gradually replaced by comedies that felt they had to push the scatological and sexual edge—The Hangover effect. Film critic Carey O’Dell summed it up well: “The ‘adult’ language, gross-out shtick, scatological references, sexual entendre, and anatomical focus that now populates many of the worst films coming out of Hollywood—from Spring Breakers to The Paperboy—often makes these films disturbing, not just stupid or slow-paced, to sit through.” Adam Sandler always seems to be trying too hard. His little baby voices are annoying. Jim Carey’s obviously fun. He may have been the last one to pull it off.

The obsession with sex and bathroom humor, along with the shoehorning in of “socially relevant” messages, prevents the flow of real fun, which doesn’t take things too seriously. Superhero movies are especially serious. In Rebel Moon, Zach Snyder remade Star Wars minus the fun.

Hey, no fair working Disney’s side of the street!

WE’RE PUTTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER! Professional Race Baiters Decry Resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay.

NBC/Comcast to boot:

Al Sharpton has organized the most low-energy, low-powered protest of @BillAckman imaginable. A small crowd, median age of about 50, summoning up nostalgia for Sharpton's previous demagoguery against New York Jews. Shameful, pathetic, ineffective.pic.twitter.com/3uH4gjMCrm

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) January 4, 2024

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: Story Disappears in 3, 2, 1 –> Iowa High School Mass Shooter Appears to Be LGBTQ/Trans Activist (Pics).

REVIEW: The Acura Integra Type S Is One of the Best New Cars Under $100,000. “It is one of the finest front-wheel-drive cars ever sold, it is an incredible performance bargain, overachieving on the track, and its back seat is big enough that you could pay for one by using it as an Uber.”

DEAL OF THE DAY: TurboTax Deluxe 2023 Tax Software, Federal & State Tax Return. #CommissionEarned

HARVARD, CLAUDINE GAY AND THE SILVER SPOON RULE: It can never, ever, ever be elite higher education’s own fault.

For the love of God, if you are defending the status quo in higher education — particularly at Harvard, of all places — you are defending some of the most influential and powerful megacorporations in the country, wherein even regular professors make more than triple what the average American family makes in a year. These schools are so wealthy they can leave tens of billions of dollars in their “rainy day fund.” Whether you’re right or wrong on the points, you are certainly not rebels fighting the power, looking out for the little guy, or, otherwise on the side of “the people.” 

MISS AMERICA RUES MISSED OPPORTUNITY: Last year’s Miss America, Grace Marie Stanke, writes on how America needs to invest in nuclear energy.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: So you’ve just bought an AR-15. Now what?

IF YOU WALK WITHOUT RHYTHM, YOU WON’T ATTRACT THE WORM: ‘Giant’ predator worms more than half a billion years old discovered in North Greenland.

Or maybe swim without rhythm.

THAT’S CRAZY TALK. REAL AMERICANS TAKE A PILL: Kelly Clarkson says she lost weight by ‘listening to my doctor’ and eating a ‘protein diet.’