SPACE: Astronomers see material orbiting a black hole *right* at the edge of forever.

The photos are stunning.

HMM: Drive-by shooting suspect remotely wipes iPhone X, catches extra charges. “The iPhone was seized as evidence in the case, but police say that shortly after she triggered the remote wipe, an option available via Find My iPhone in iCloud. Normally the tool is intended for people with lost or stolen devices.”

SAUL MONTES-BRADLEY: Brenda Snipes, idiocy and how to destroy the electoral system.

For 15 years now, this harridan has been bungling elections in Broward County with a combination of incompetence, cupidity and corruption that would make Mexican drug dealers blush. She has managed to turn her County and State in the short list of the most corrupt on record. She has been found guilty of systematically violating the Florida Constitution, the law and the responsibilities of her office and…crickets.

The Sun Sentinel published a nice abridged list of her misdeeds here. “For 15 years, Snipes has served as Broward County’s elections chief, with mixed results. Long lines and vote counts that continued long after polls closed marred elections in 2002, 2004, 2006, 2012, 2016 and, of course, this year.”

And for all of those 15 long years, a succession of Republican governors have done NOTHING to end her reign of fraud and corruption. Jeb Bush, Charly Christ and Rick Scott sat on their gluteus maximus, occasionally raised a vapid complaint, and took no action. Now, as her team of activists continue to produce as many ballots as needed to revert the results of November 6th last, a chorus of indignant politicians wail their woes to the air, but all of them, from Rick Scott to Marco Rubio to the waitress at the Flashback Diner on Federal Highway knew well what was going on and lacked the testicular fortitude to do anything about it.

Now is too late. Their fates (and ours) are in her creepy hands.

Read the whole thing, because the stakes this week are far higher than just one senate seat or governor’s mansion.

YOU DON’T SAY: Recounts Rarely Change Elections Results, But When They Do, They Favor Dems. “Republicans are right to be skeptical of these recounts.”

21ST CENTURY CRIME: L.A. Band Threatin Faked a Fanbase To Land a European Tour No One Attended. “New details of this story have emerged including the existence of a fake record label, a fake press outlet, a fake award and more.”

LET’S GET FRACKING: Saudi Export Cuts, OPEC Committee Hints on Production Send Oil Sharply Higher.

DIGITAL HEALTH: New Findings Add Twist to Screen Time Limit Debate.

For years, the American Academy of Pediatrics had suggested a limit of two hours a day of TV for children and teens.

But after screen time started to include phones and tablets, these guidelines needed an update. So last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics changed its recommendations: No more than one hour of screen time for children ages 2 to 5; for older children and teens, they caution against too much screen time, but there’s no specific time limit.

This may give the impression that preschoolers are the only ones who need specific limits on screen time, with monitoring less important for older children and teens. Then a study came out last year suggesting that the imperative to monitor screen time for preschoolers may be overblown.

However new research conducted by me and my co-author Keith Campbell challenges the idea that vague directives and loose guidelines are the best approach.

Not only does this study suggest that specific time limits on screen time are justified for preschoolers, it also makes the case for screen time limits for school-age children and teens.

In fact, these older kids and teens may be even more vulnerable to excessive screen time.

Every minute in front of a screen is a minute spent not actually doing something.

BY ANY MEANS FAIR OR FOUL: Adam Schiff says if the acting attorney general doesn’t recuse himself from the Mueller probe, he’ll have to answer to Democrats.

BRUCE BAWER: Camille Paglia Is Still Provoking.

Isn’t she always?

POSTMODERN POLITICKING: Stacey Abrams Allegedly Attempts To Run Illegal Ads In Support Of A Non-Existent Gubernatorial Run-Off.

BRAVE SIR ROBIN: U.K. refuses asylum for Asia Bibi, fearing Muslim ‘unrest.’

Britain has rejected an appeal for asylum from Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian acquitted of blasphemy last week who is under the threat of death from Islamic leaders who struck a deal with her government to block her exit.

The British government said allowing Bibi to enter the U.K. would cause unrest among Muslims, according to an advocate, the Huffington Post reported.

Wilson Chowdhry, chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association, said he’s been led to believe that the British government “had concerns that her moving to the UK would cause security concerns and unrest among certain sections of the community and would also be a security threat to British embassies abroad which might be targeted by Islamist terrorists.”

How many Muslim “migrants” does Britain admit every year?

JASON LEWIS: Who Lost The House? John McCain. “His July 2017 vote killed ObamaCare repeal and made Democratic lies impossible to refute.”

The problem was—and still is—that under ObamaCare all policyholders are charged as if they are sick. If restoring a modicum of traditional underwriting by loosening the Affordable Care Act’s strict age-rating rule discriminated against the old, then ObamaCare was—and is—discriminating against the young. The AHCA would have relieved this problem by allowing states to opt out of ObamaCare’s most onerous mandates and instead cover the most difficult-to-insure with $138 billion worth of high-risk pools. That would have arrested the ObamaCare “death spiral” and, as the Congressional Budget Office admitted, reduced both premiums and the deficit.

Emerging in response to World War II-era wage and price controls, health insurance has been tied to employment. When older workers lose their coverage along with their job, it creates a serious barrier for entering the individual market, as pre-existing conditions are often the result of age. This is primarily due to an unfair tax code that gives employers but not individuals tax breaks for buying insurance.

Again, the AHCA sought to even the playing field by offering a refundable tax credit anyone could use to buy an individual plan. The bill also would have expanded tax-deferred health savings accounts to help cover deductibles, copayments and over-the-counter expenses.

All these provisions were an attempt to alleviate the pre-existing condition problem, not exacerbate it. To be sure, instead of running away from health-care reform after it failed, Republicans should have leaned in on the plan’s most important aspects. But because the AHCA didn’t pass, it was impossible to refute the lies about it.

McCain claimed to have been voting his conscience, but in reality he was just sticking it one last time to Trump — and his fellow Congressional Republicans.

JERRY BROWN: Climate-Change Deniers ‘Definitely Contributing’ to the ‘New Abnormal’ of Wildfires.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: I have a holiday weekend version of the Morning Briefing for you. Veterans, thank you for your service!

JEFF DUNETZ: Corn Continues To Thrive In The Swamp.

For more than a decade, the federal government’s Renewable Fuel Standard has required refineries to blend biofuels into their gasoline. The most popular biofuel by far is ethanol derived from corn. It has accounted for 87 percent of the RFS’s blending requirements since 2007.

The architects of the RFS claimed it would benefit the environment. When burned, ethanol produces fewer carbon emissions than traditional gasoline. So if car drivers started using ethanol blends en masse, America’s emissions would drop dramatically — or so corn lobbyists claimed.

In reality, ethanol blends have harmed, not helped, the environment. About 40 percent of the American corn supply is now devoted to ethanol. Farmers have converted previously untouched prairies into corn fields to meet the demand for the crop. Ethanol’s total emissions — including those from corn production — are 28 percent higher than emissions from regular gasoline, according to the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force.

Worse, the chemical runoff from the fertilizer used to grow ethanol crops despoils waterways. Runoff around the Gulf of Mexico has created a Massachusetts-sized “dead zone” totally uninhabitable to marine life.

But: “Last month, President Donald Trump directed the Environmental Protection Agency to allow the year-round sale of gasoline that contains 15 percent ethanol.”

Dumb.

BRAVO: Israel Conducts Daring Special Forces Raid Deep Into Gaza, Kills Top Hamas Commander.

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Why Did Facebook Fire a Top Executive? Hint: It Had Something to Do With Trump.

Facebook Inc. FB -1.97% executive and virtual-reality wunderkind Palmer Luckey was a rising star of Silicon Valley when, at the height of the 2016 presidential contest, he donated $10,000 to an anti-Hillary Clinton group.

His donation sparked a backlash from his colleagues. Six months later, he was out. Neither Facebook nor Mr. Luckey has ever said why he left the social-media giant. When testifying before Congress about data privacy earlier this year, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg denied the departure had anything to do with politics.

Mr. Luckey, it turns out, was put on leave, then fired, according to people familiar with the matter. More recently, he has told people the reason was his support for Donald Trump and the furor that his political beliefs sparked within Facebook and Silicon Valley, some of those people say.

If Mr. Luckey needs a good attorney with a winning record, may I recommend Kurt Schlichter?

BUT OF COURSE: In Palm Beach County, Democrats Argue To Count Votes Cast By Non-Citizens.

During review of provisional ballots to determine whether a recount is justified in the tight Florida governor, senate, and agriculture commission races, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher identified a voter as a non-citizen and declared that the ballot would not be counted.

Attorneys representing the Democratic candidate for senate Bill Nelson and the Democratic candidate for governor Andrew Gillum objected. A copy of the uncertified transcript shows the interaction.

Chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party Michael Barnett attests to the validity of the transcript. He told The Federalist that several Republican lawyers and party officials heard the back and forth between the canvassing board and attorney’s from the Gillum and Nelson campaigns.

“I would think this is something we could all agree on—that non-citizens shouldn’t vote, but evidently that’s not the case with Democrats,” Barnett said.

The Democrats mean to win. Does the GOP?

NARRATOR: “IT WON’T.” Venezuela to OPEC: “Petro Will Become the Digital Currency of Oil Transactions Worldwide.”

RICK MORAN: Illegal Alien, Released in NJ, Charged with Triple Murder in Missouri. “Advocates of sanctuary policies really don’t care if you live or die.”

BRUCE BAWER: Norway’s Mosques Are Multiplying, and Taxpayers Foot the Bill.

PATRICK POOLE: Islamic State Claims ‘Known Wolf’ Terror Attack in Australia.

SKYNET SMILES: Robot Reporters Are Here.

Based on the video at the link, I’d say there’s still a ways to go before digital TV news anchors make the leap across the uncanny valley.

DEB HEINE IS STAYING ON TOP OF THE FLORIDA RECOUNT SHENANIGANS at the PJMedia Live Blog.

LONGEVITY: Genetics play less of a role in lifespan than we thought.

The calculations are complicated, but the thinking behind them is simple: when genes play a role in a trait, you should be pretty similar to your siblings and parents, a little less similar to your cousins, less similar to your second cousins, and so on. Ruby and his colleagues used the family tree data to explore whether lifespans were similar between more closely and distantly related relatives. This produced heritability estimates similar to those calculated before: siblings’ lifespans were highly correlated, first cousins’ a bit less correlated, and so on.

But spouses’ lifespans were correlated, too. That could be easily explained by spouses sharing the same household and lifestyle: eating the same healthy diet or puffing on cigarettes together. But the researchers noticed something odd: the lifespans of other relatives related only by marriage also correlated. That can’t be explained by genes, and it can’t be explained by shared environment.

So Ruby and his colleagues started investigating the lifespans of in-laws. They looked at siblings-in-law, and first-cousins-in-law, and then further afield, at relationships like “the sibling of a sibling’s spouse” (your brother’s wife’s sister) and “the spouse of a spouse’s sibling” (your husband’s sister’s husband). Even at these distant relationships, lifespans were correlated—if your spouse’s sibling’s spouse lived to a ripe old age, that means you’re a bit more likely to do the same.

What’s going on here is assortative mating: people are likely to marry people who match them on certain characteristics, like education and wealth, and those traits are in turn related to longevity.

I’d wager that happiness plays a factor in this as well.