LADY NOOR MACBETH: Orlando nightclub attacker’s wife helped him turn to terror, indictment shows.

Noor Salman, the wife of the Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen, deliberately helped her husband’s terror plans while trying to keep police and the FBI off their trail, according to the newly unsealed federal indictment which painted a much different picture from her claim that she was clueless about his intentions.

Salman, 30, “did knowingly aid and abet” her husband’s attempts to support the Islamic State terror group, the two-count indictment unsealed on Tuesday stated. It also charged her with obstruction of justice. The charges could send her to prison for the rest of her life if she’s convicted.

Salman was born in Afghanistan but was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.

SOCIAL JUSTICE MEDIA: Twitter Jumps on Rob Schneider for ‘Whitesplaining’ to John Lewis.

FASTER, PLEASE: Miniaturized Nuclear Power Plant? U.S. Reviewing Proposed Design.

“Miniature” in nuclear terms is still pretty big. The modules are small enough to fit on flat-bed trucks, but they would stand nearly nine stories tall. Moreover, a power plant would probably require several modules hooked together like giant batteries. Of course, they’d need to be operated by professional nuclear engineers.

But the design — a radical departure from other nuclear plants — would also have advantages.

Each module uses less uranium fuel, making a large-scale meltdown far less likely. The fuel would be housed in a special containment vessel that would be submerged in a pool of water, an added safety feature. And rather than using pumps of the sort that failed during the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the reactor would circulate the water using natural convection. The company maintains the design is simpler and safer than existing reactors.

I’m still waiting for those long-promised mini thorium reactors in every neighborhood.

PARENTING: Fancy Mommies Pay Strangers to Sleep Train Their Newborns While They Go to a Resort.

Both my boys were quick to learn to sleep through the night, so I’m in a bad position to judge this.

RICHARD COHEN: Trump’s presidency is doomed.

GOP presidents are failures before they’re sworn in, and Democrats are successes after eight years of failure.

THE VISIBLE HAND: Presidents Have Less Power Over the Economy Than You Might Think.

I’m old enough to remember when President Obama saved the U.S. economy from another Great Depression almost single-handedly, but eight years later we wouldn’t want to risk giving a Republican president too much credit.

MOTHER JONES: Trump’s education secretary pick has spent a lifetime working to end public education as we know it.

Too much of public education as we know it consists of featherbedding and indoctrination — or neglect.

That last item might explain this competing narrative: Black Leaders Praise Trump Education Pick Betsy DeVos.

CHUTZPAH: Obama names Iran deal salesman to Holocaust Memorial Council.

President Obama on Tuesday appointed deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, part of a slew of appointments given to high-profile staff and supporters in the final days of his presidency.

Rhodes, whose mother is Jewish, played a key role in shaping Obama’s foreign policy during his eight years in the White House.

He also came under fire from some U.S. Jewish groups for his role in selling the Iran nuclear deal and the administration’s decision to allow a resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity to pass the U.N. Security Council.

It’s said that A-players hire other A-players, but B-players hire C- and D-players — and now we know who D-players appoint.

Somewhat more seriously, Obama has again chosen the petty and mean course of action just because that’s who he is.

VOTING THEIR POCKETBOOK: Brazil firms shun Trump fears in busiest debt, stock window in years.

I suspect we’ll see a lot of these stories over the next few months.

MAD DUCK: In final days, Obama administration signs law enforcement pact with Cuba.

The agreement outlines U.S.-Cuban cooperation on a wide range of criminal and security-related issues, including terrorism, narcotics, cyber-security, immigration, money laundering, smuggling and human trafficking.

Fausta Wertz has the whole story, but the short version is that we’re now stools for Castro’s guards.

UH-HUH: The Most Successful Democrat Since F.D.R.

Most of FDR’s legacy — Social Security, American military primacy, the U.N., the permanent expansion of Washington’s size and scope — is still with us, for good and ill. Truman conceived of and built the postwar order which is shaken but still standing. LBJ’s legacy of civil rights legislation, welfare statism, Vietnam syndrome (and the Left’s resulting loss of sanity) lingers after 50 years.

What do you wager will be left of Obama’s legislative or foreign policy legacy by, say, the end of this summer?

If Obama has any lasting legacy at all, it will consist of little more than a mountain of debt and the ridiculous-ization of the Progressive Left.

WHAT OTHER KIND IS THERE? A Defense of Obama That Cherry-Picks the Facts.

Peter Berkowitz:

Chait’s case for Obama largely ignores the case against. It is one thing to defend the utility of deficit spending in a recession; it is quite another to blink away doubling American debt in eight years to a staggering $20 trillion and growing. It is appropriate to credit Obama for expanding access to health care, but it is deceptive to gloss over his repeated deceptions concerning insurance cost, keeping one’s doctor, and keeping one’s insurance. The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is good, but no excuse for undermining constitutional government by extravagant exploitation of executive orders to skirt the people’s representatives in the legislative branch. And while the Middle East was unstable and dangerous before Obama, it is negligent to overlook how his determination to circumscribe America’s international role has emancipated the forces of chaos and destruction in the region.

Overreach and underperformance have consequences. Not the least part of Obama’s legacy is a shrunken and enfeebled Democratic Party in the states, a successor in the White House he tried hard to derail, and Republican majorities in both houses of Congress who are determined to overturn his signature domestic and foreign policy achievements.

Obama’s real legacy will be sworn into office on Friday.

CHANGE: Russia’s Lavrov Wants Trump Administration at Syria Peace Talks.

Mr. Lavrov said he hoped the talks, which will take place in Almaty, Kazakhstan, would be more productive under Mr. Trump than they have been under President Barack Obama.

“It is totally possible to breathe new life into these [peace talk] mechanisms, considering that the new U.S. administration says it aims to fight terrorism in earnest, unlike [the administration] before it,” he told reporters.

The peace process stalled in recent months, as U.S. officials found themselves sidelined by an emboldened Russia, which helped the Syrian forces of President Bashar al-Assad recapture the key city of Aleppo.

It’s nice to be noticed again.

BREXIT: Britain will leave EU single market, May says.

“I want to be clear: What I am proposing cannot mean membership of the single market,” May told an audience of foreign diplomats and Britain’s own Brexit negotiating team at a mansion house in London.

“Instead we seek the greatest possible access to it though a new comprehensive, bold and ambitious free trade agreement. That agreement may take in elements of current single market arrangements in certain areas,” May said.

Her announcement that she will put the final Brexit deal to a vote in both houses of parliament comes ahead of a court decision on whether she has the power to start the process of withdrawing without parliamentary approval.

Brexit isn’t about ending free trade; it’s about restoring powers to Parliament, ceded to and usurped by Brussels.

SO IT’S COME TO THIS: Bruce Springsteen Cover Band Drops Out of Trump Inauguration Party.

Will Forte, the group’s 63-year-old keyboardist, manager, agent and publicist, among other roles, was telling the band about the “thousands of emails from both sides” he had received after news broke that the group would be playing the Garden State Presidential Inaugural Gala on January 19th as part of Donald Trump’s inauguration. “We’re standing out in the storm right here,” he told the band. “We gotta get out of the storm.”

In the past few days, they had started to feel isolated because, as Forte says, “the story was so distorted.” “There were misleading headlines like, ‘Trump Hires B-Street Band,'” he says. “We felt like we were out on our own on an island.”

The Left has gone so insane that they’re even driving cover bands out of work.

PROTESTOR BEWARE: North Dakota lawmaker’s bill protects drivers who negligently hit someone obstructing traffic.

The Star Tribune reported Monday that the legislation is a response to protests at Standing Rock Indian Reservation, and sponsored by state Rep. Keith Kempenich, R-Bowman.

“If you stay off the roadway, this would never be an issue,” he told the paper. “Those motorists are going about the lawful, legal exercise of their right to drive down the road….Those people didn’t ask to be in this.”

Kempenich told the paper that the law’s intent is to shift the blame from the driver to the person who was in the road who should not have legally been there. According to the report, Kempenich said he was concerned about panicked drivers who see a mob of protesters coming in their direction and hit the gas instead of the brake.

“You can protest all you want, but you can’t protest up on a roadway. It’s dangerous for everybody,” he told the paper.

You have the right to “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Not to block traffic and make yourself a nuisance or a danger to people trying to get on with their lives.

JAYVEE: ISIS Is Dropping Bombs with Drones in Iraq.

“It’s not as if it is a large, armed UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] that is dropping munitions from the wings—but literally, a very small quadcopter that drops a small munition in a somewhat imprecise manner,” [Col. Brett] Sylvia, commander of an American military advising mission in Iraq, told Military Times. “They are very short-range, targeting those front-line troops from the Iraqis.”

Because the drones used are commercial models, it likely means that anti-drone weapons already on hand with the American advisors are sufficient to stop them. The Battelle Drone Defender, spotted in Iraq last summer, is a gun-shaped jamming tool that can send some models of drone crashing to the ground. It’s part of a growing field of anti-drone countermeasures, many of which focus on radio-frequency jamming to disable the flying machines.

It’s worth noting that the bomb-dropping drones are just a small part of how ISIS uses the cheap, unmanned flying machines. Other applications include scouts and explosive decoys, as well as one-use weapons. ISIS is also likely not the first group to figure out how to drop grenades from small drones; it’s a growing field of research and development among many violent, nonstate actors and insurgent groups. Despite the relative novelty, it’s also likely not the deadliest thing insurgents can do with drones.

Techniques like these aren’t very effective against soldiers, but they’re cheap, easy to “export,” and perhaps deadlier against softer targets.

COFFEE — IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Cup of Joe Could Fight Age-Related Inflammation.

Next, researchers investigated why some older adults showed lower activation of the genes that encode IL-1-beta, and found an interesting correlation: The older participants who reported that they consumed more caffeinated beverages generally showed a lower activation of these inflammation-causing genes.

When researchers looked again at the blood samples of the older participants, they found that those whose blood had higher levels of caffeine and its breakdown products showed lower activation of these genes than participants whose blood had lower levels of caffeine and its breakdown products.

Researchers then turned to the laboratory again to confirm a cause-effect relationship. This time, they added caffeine into human immune cells growing in lab dishes, along with compounds that would trigger inflammation. Results showed that caffeine actually prevented these compounds from causing inflammation in cells. [10 Things You Need to Know About Coffee]

This finding may “explain why caffeine consumption correlates with lower blood pressure,” Davis told Live Science.

Stronger, please.

D. C. MCALLISTER: ‘PussyHats’ and the Real War on Women.

THE ATATURK REPUBLIC’S DEATH RATTLE: Bill to cement Erdoğan’s power passes first vote in Turkey.

QUESTION ASKED: Will Japan Stand in Splendid Isolation?

A man of the right, Abe has always stated that his mission was to make Japan a full-fledged sovereign state, free of the vestiges of wartime defeat, like Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, which banned war as an instrument of Japanese foreign policy. Moving away from the U.S. alliance was not, however, one of his priorities. Rather, his strategy has been to use the alliance with the United States to rearm Japan and enable its military to play a greater regional role in containing China, which is the key aim of Japan’s grand strategy.

Now, suddenly, owing to the unpredictable nature of democratic politics in its key allies, Abe and the Japanese elite are being forced to confront fundamental issues that had long been decided by Washington: Tokyo’s relationships with China, Korea, Russia, and Southeast Asia.

For Japan’s elite, it was humiliating to be a semi-sovereign state. But it had its benefits. Among them was Japan’s being able to become an economic superpower in the four decades since the end of the war, partly because it invested very little in defense. And it was comfortable. When things went right, like the U.S.-China rapprochement in the 1970s, Japan could share in the benefits. When things went wrong, like the war in Vietnam, Washington was there to blame, even as Japanese businesses made money from the war.

The Japanese are beginning to realize that being fully sovereign means dealing with headaches for which someone else had to take prime responsibility for over 70 years.

A while back, when asked what the future might hold for aging Japan, I joked, “Picture a giant nursing home, guarded by those Sentinel robots from The Matrix.”

That might end up being more true than amusing.

ANDREW MORAN: Obama wasn’t weak on foreign policy – he was just wise enough to realise that Asia, not America, is the future.

We heard a lot of similar talk in the years and even months before mighty Japan, Inc stumbled. Japan is now in its third “Lost Decade.” India (like Brazil) is so mired in corruption that (also like Brazil) it seems doomed as “the superpower of the future — and always will be.” And China? Who knows. If Mark Steyn had it right, then China will grow old before it gets rich.

The bright future, in other words, is always descending in Asia and yet lands only in America.

WHITE PAPER: The Southeast Has Emerged as the Driving Force in Automotive Manufacturing in the United States, and Tennessee Is its Engine.

Low taxes, light regulation, and right to work — Michigan should pay attention to Tennessee, because Washington isn’t their problem.

WELL, IT WAS THE MIOCENE EPOCH, YOU KNOW: Fossils from ancient extinct giant flightless goose suggests it was a fighter.

JEFFREY TUCKER: My Lyft Ride with a Black Trump Supporter on MLK Day.

“Here it is Martin Luther King Jr. Day and I’m supposed to be all upset that Trump attacked John Lewis, but Trump is right. Lewis said he is not a legitimate president, so yeah Trump got upset. What exactly is Lewis doing to improve the lives of the poor in this town? Nothing. At least Trump has some ideas. He seems to care.”

Ok, now I’m listening.

“I’m glad Lewis marched in the protests so long ago,” she continued, “but you have to do more than march. That’s all these people do is march. Meanwhile, there are sections of Atlanta I’m afraid to drive in. And I say that as a black woman! It’s not even about race. Many blacks in this town live better than white people anywhere in the world. But there’s whole communities that have been forgotten. They are paid off with welfare checks but they don’t have skills or jobs, and they fear for their lives on their own streets.”

She was just getting going, so I wondered how far I could push this. What about Obamacare?

Explosion.

“Don’t get me started. My premiums are through the roof. I can’t afford it. Because I drive all day and night making money, I’m not poor enough to get any subsidies. So this year I’m going to have to pay $750 on my tax return because I can’t afford to buy insurance. But I can’t afford the health care either! And have you seen those deductibles? If anything should happen to you, you go bankrupt. I’ll tell you who benefitted from Obamacare. Not the poor. It’s the insurance companies and the government.”

Sea change you can believe in.