FINALLY: Good News: Cops Nab DePauw’s Rock-Arranging Racists.

LAUREN SPAGNOLETTI: 9 Character Actors You Can’t Forget.

Solid picks, but I have to agree with the commenter bemoaning Stephen Root’s inexplicable absence.

“CULT” CLASSIC: How Living Colour made one of the most prescient albums of the 20th century, and conquered rock ’n’ roll in the process.

SIZE MATTERS: The 50 Biggest Conservative Accounts on Twitter.

“SECRETLY”: Army Special Forces Secretly Help Saudis Combat Threat From Yemen Rebels.

Let’s hope this NYT report didn’t put any of our people in increased danger.

BREAKING: Feds tapped phones of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and caught one call with White House.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Fake news! NBC corrects bombshell report saying Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was wiretapped.

OH: China Accused Of Using High-Powered Lasers To Harass US Fighter Jets Over Djibouti.

THE SCIENCE IS NEVER SETTLED: Massive Cosmic Collision Challenges Theories of the Early Universe. “Astronomers report witnessing the formation of a galaxy cluster — the largest type of gravity-bound structure in the universe. And it’s not what they expected.”

JAYVEE: ISIS Produces ‘Sophisticated, ‘Innovative’ Weapons to Bypass Need for Arms Dealers.

JEFF GREENFIELD: Thinking the Unthinkable: What If Trump Succeeds? “Or, why the talks with Kim Jong Un are a test for Democrats.”

Greenfield concludes:

But that feeling is all the more reason to retain a sense of perspective; to be able to consider seriously the proposition that this misbegotten president has somehow achieved an honest-to-God diplomatic success. After all, it won’t be long before he provides a whole new set of reasons to mourn the fact of his ascendance. If the possibility of a peaceful Korea becomes reality, let’s just let him have this one triumph.

That’s mighty generous of you, Jeff.

Left unasked: Will Democrats put party before country and attempt to sabotage the peace process?

It isn’t like they haven’t done so before.

TWO VIETNAMS: Ken Burns’ & Ours. “As expected, Mr. Burns’ latest effort ‘Vietnam’ does a creditable job as a documentary. He covers the political incompetence and misdeeds that were well known to many of us. The competence of the North Vietnamese senior military personnel most likely came as a surprise to most viewers. What is regretful is his relatively flat and neutral portrayal of U.S. troops. According to his telling, there were few U.S. victories, the troops were all dissatisfied, and from a humanitarian standpoint they did little.”

History which does not fit the Narrative goes down the memory hole.

UNLIKELY HEADLINES: Oreo-Craving al-Qaeda Operative Becomes First Guantanamo Release in Trump Era.

IT ISN’T ALWAYS NICE TO MAKE TWITCHY: ‘Bye bye’! Report about Dick’s Sporting Goods going ‘all-in on gun control’ sends heads to desks.

Also: “Get woke, go broke,” should make itself felt shortly.

HARDBALL: Amazon halts planning for Seattle office tower as city mulls new tax.

THAT WOULD BE NICE: Conservatives Urge Fairer Social Media Policies.

VIDEO: Giuliani Calls Mueller Probe ‘Garbage Investigation,’ Comey a ‘Disgraceful Liar,’ Hillary a ‘Criminal.’

21ST CENTURY SPYING: Pentagon bans sale of Huawei, ZTE phones on US military bases. “The Department of Defense is concerned that the phones pose a security threat to ‘personnel, information and mission’.”

BLUE STATE BLUES: ‘My Clients Are Fleeing NJ Like It’s on Fire.’

That headline arrives via email from a money manager in northern New Jersey. The Garden State already has the third largest overall tax burden and the country’s highest property tax collections per capita. Now that federal reform has limited the deduction for state and local taxes, the price of government is surging again among high-income earners in New Jersey and other blue states. Taxpayers are searching for the exits.

In the financial industry of course it’s not just the clients who are looking for greener pastures. One hedge fund manager moving his office to a southern state reports that his new home on a golf course will be more than double the size of his house in Chatham, N.J. while generating just one third of the current property tax bill.

Others are staying out of necessity, but that doesn’t mean they want to bet on a Jersey comeback. “The apartment market in New Jersey is booming because nobody wants to own here. As soon as people are not tied to the area for business reasons, they leave,” says Jeffrey Sica, founder of Circle Squared, an alternative investments firm. “We structure real estate deals for family offices and high-net-worth individuals and at a record pace those family offices and individuals are leaving the TriState for lower-tax states. Probably a dozen this year at least,” he writes via email.

It’s almost as though the wealthy residents of progressively governed states don’t actually enjoy paying for all the government they say they want.

FOURTH-WAVE FEMINISM: Mother, 19, stabbed boyfriend during sex after telling him men should only be used for ‘human sacrifice.’

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Rudy Talks about Daniels Pay Off and Much, Much More. “The media and the left is going berserk over this interview.”

MAXIM ERISTAVI: Russia Isn’t Just Interfering in Elections Around the World. It’s Doing Something Far Worse.

In recent weeks, I’ve been collecting stories of Russian dissidents who say they fell victim to exchanges of confidential information between European officials and Russian authorities. The leak of one Cyprus prosecutor’s emails in November has exposed a growing trend: in its hunt to track critics, the Kremlin is recruiting allies within Western states’ law enforcement agencies.

The communication leak on the part of Cyprus’ deputy attorney general exposes a much wider exchange of confidential EU information, some of it classified, with Russian authorities.

Take the detention of Nikita Kulachenkov, a prominent young Russian dissident, by Cyprus authorities in 2016 which made worldwide headlines. But what we didn’t know back then is the disturbing chain of email exchanges between Cyprus and Russian officials that led to his persecution and was exposed in November.

From the end of the Cold War until just a few years ago, I’d entertained hopes that Russia could become fully a part of the great Western family of nations. But Western missteps and Russian paranoia (and other attitude problems) have made that all but impossible — at least until they’re forced to come screaming for help against the Chinese.

IT’S A SAFE BET THAT ISN’T THEIR PLAN, ANYWAY: Mattis Claims Taliban ‘Cannot Win at the Ballot Box.’

HMM: New York Found a Fix for Some Hit by Tax Law. Employers Are Skeptical.

The idea, which became law last month, creates a new optional payroll tax that shifts the state and local tax deduction from individuals who can no longer fully take it to businesses that can. Employers are worried about compliance costs, interactions with union contracts, complexity across state lines and the difficulty of explaining to workers how a plan that might lead to smaller pay raises still puts more money in their pockets.

“It’s a creative approach by the governor’s office, and I give them credit for thinking through issues,” said Peter Faber, a tax lawyer at McDermott Will & Emery LLP in New York who advises large corporations. “As my clients consider the practical realities of implementing the scheme, they are concerned.”

The Wall Street Journal asked the 10 largest private employers in the state and in New York City, along with all Fortune 100 companies based in New York state, whether they would opt for the new payroll tax. None that responded said they would do so, though they have until Dec. 1 to make a decision for 2019.

Here’s a crazy idea. How about instead of Albany passing uncertain and incomprehensible new laws in order to circumvent national tax reform, instead they get their taxes and spending closer to national norms?

BETSY WOODRUFF: Trump’s New Lawyer Likely to Cut Him Off From Mueller Interview.

A longtime Washington lawyer who’s known Flood for quite some time and who spoke anonymously because of client sensitivities said there’s no chance Flood will let the president sit for an interview with Mueller.

“Mueller finally has somebody who’s his match,” that person said. “You’ve got a fair fight now.”

The person also said White House Counsel Don McGahn played a significant role in bringing Flood onto the president’s legal team—pushing for him to be offered Ty Cobb’s job and working to convince him to take the position. McGahn and Cobb reportedly had frequent clashes about how to handle the president’s legal woes, and Cobb was overheard complaining about McGahn at the BLT Steak restaurant a few blocks from the White House. With Flood, the president’s lawyers are likely to be more unified in an aggressive posture toward Mueller.

“He comes across like a Columbo-type—unassuming, but the intellect is gargantuan,” the person added.

Well, good.

#METOO: The US Military Wants Giant Transformer Robot Subs.

The Aquanaut unmanned underwater vehicle, or UUV, can chug beneath the ocean’s surface for hundreds of kilometers and then transform into a vaguely insect-like robot to perform delicate operations in the watery depths. Its biggest backers are players in the oil and gas exploration like Transocean, which are looking to better maintain oil rigs, offshore equipment, and help with operations. Houston Mechatronics co-founder and chief technical officer Nicholas Radford said the robots might would travel from site to site, like a frog swimming from one lily pad to another without ever having to be pulled out of the water. “‘We intend to blanket the Gulf of Mexico,” he said.

While big oil is the primary investor, the Defense Department — through a cooperative research and development agreement with the Navy — is also supporting the project. Radford expects additional financial funding from other sources within the military soon. The near-term objective is counter-mine missions “in area-denied water, or where you don’t want the presence of a top-side vessel,” he said.

Let’s just call this what it really is: Mechagodzilla.