CNN’S DON LEMON: Anti-Trump Violence Against Disabled Man ‘Not Evil’

The Daily Caller’s Matt K. Lewis described the event as “evil.” “That’s what this is, it’s evil, it’s brutality, it’s man’s inhumanity to man.”

At that, Lemon disagreed. “I don’t think it’s evil,” he said, repeating the point for emphasis. “I think these are young people and they have bad home training.” Then, he explained, “I have no idea who’s raising these young people, because no one I know on earth, 17 years old or 70 years old, would ever think of treating another person like this.”

Those “young people” partially scalped a special-needs teen. If that isn’t evil, we need a new word.

LAYERS OF EDITORS AND FACT CHECKERS: The Washington Post Uses Male Symbol to Announce Historic Women’s March.

Who over there doesn’t understand exactly what that symbol represents?

GOOD LORD: An engine dropped out of a B-52 bomber during a training flight on Wednesday.

The youngest B-52 was built in 1962.

CHRIS PLANTE TO TUCKER CARLSON: Journalists Exposed By WikiLeaks To Cover Trump White House.

“I was talking to somebody about this earlier: It is almost like the Soviet Union, but worse. At least in the Soviet Union, there was a penalty for not collborating with the state. These guys do it quite voluntarily. They do it because they are on the team. Harwood is far from alone.

“Glenn Thrush of Politico was caught sending emails to the Clinton people for their prior approval. He called himself in his own email a “hack.” he confessed, lamenting perhaps, that he is a hack…

“He was with Politico, and I’ll have you know he’s no longer with Politico. He’s now with the New York Times. The Times saw this and said they liked the cut of his jib. So they hired him away from the Politico… It is considered to be a big promotion…

“The New York Times saw Glenn Thrush collaborating behind the scenes with the Clinton campaign and they hired him away from the Politico.”

Video at the link.

And I won’t ask you to think of Thrush as a Democratic operative with a byline, because that’s simply what he is.

PROCUREMENT: We CAN Build More Virginia-Class Attack Submarines Faster.

In a special exclusive interview with Scout Warrior, former Navy Director of Undersea Warfare said the Navy and its industrial partners to have the ability to build 2 Virginia-class submarines per year once production of the Ohio Replacement Program nuclear-armed submarines begins in the 2020s.

The current status-quo effort to build two Virginia-Class boat per year, however, will drop to one as construction of the Ohio Replacement Program, or ORP, begins in the early 2020s.

Rear Adm. Charles Richard, prior Director of Undersea Warfare, said in an interview with Scout Warrior last year that the Navy has completed a special analysis of strategic imperatives and industrial base capacity on the issue which has been submitted to Congress for review.

“The new news here is that we have industrial base capacity to go to two Virginias as we go to Ohio. In our report (Navy officials specified this as an internal Navy report), we have an analytic underpinning that this is now a choice that is available to the nation,” , said in the interview several months ago in 2016. “We are working very hard and how can we structure this so that it is something that we can go execute,” Richard said.

Richard was clear that Congressional budget approvals and additional developments will need to happen in order for this plan to formally go forward, but he did emphasize for the first time that the ability to accomplish this was there. The acquisition success of the Virgina-class submarine program, he added, was in large measure one of the key reasons why the ability to build more would be possible.

The Virginia-class boats are a real success story for the Navy. They’re coming in under budget, and ahead of schedule — and are effective as hell. But currently they aren’t being built fast enough to replace retiring Los Angeles-class boats, or to keep up with Russian and Chinese shipbuilding.

RETAIL BLUES: Sears Sells Craftsman Brand, Will Close 150 Stores.

Sears is flipping the Craftsman brand to Stanley Black & Decker Inc., and it will license back the ability to sell Craftsman-branded products royalty-free for 15 years after the deal’s closing. The acquisition gives Stanley the rights to develop, manufacture and sell Craftsman-branded products outside of Sears.

Today just 10% of Craftsman-branded products are sold outside of Sears. Stanley Black & Decker said the deal will help boost Craftsman sales in untapped channels.

“We intend to invest in the brand and rapidly increase sales through these new channels, including retail, industrial, mobile and online,” said Stanley Black & Decker Chief Executive James Loree. Stanley also recently signed a $1.95 billion deal to buy Newell Brands Inc.’s tools business.

A Sears spokesman confirmed the unlimited lifetime warranty on Craftsman hand tools made in the U.S.—“a hallmark of the brand for generations”—will be kept in place.

Craftsman remains what Sears was; I hope Stanley doesn’t mess with it.

SELF-DEFENSE: Pistol Packing Texas Grandma Chases Off Armed Home Invader.

SPYWARS: Donald Trump Plans Revamp of Top U.S. Spy Agency.

The move is prompted by his belief that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has become bloated and politicized, these people said.

The planning comes as Mr. Trump has leveled a series of social-media attacks in recent months and the past few days against U.S. intelligence agencies, dismissing and mocking their assessment that Russia stole emails from Democratic groups and individuals and then provided them to WikiLeaks for publication in an effort to help Mr. Trump win the White House.

One of the people familiar with Mr. Trump’s planning said advisers also are working on a plan to restructure the Central Intelligence Agency, cutting back on staffing at its Virginia headquarters and pushing more people out into field posts around the world. The CIA declined to comment.

“The view from the Trump team is the intelligence world has become completely politicized,” said the individual, who is close to the Trump transition. “They all need to be slimmed down. The focus will be on restructuring the agencies and how they interact.”

The pushback against Trump from the intelligence community began weeks ago — or is this Trump’s pushback against the IC?

HACKING: Five things to watch for in Russia hearings.

Here’s one:

What evidence does the IC have that Putin wanted to assist Trump?

The CIA reportedly believes that Russia was explicitly trying to help Trump — raising politically explosive questions about the degree to which it succeeded.

Publicly, the administration has been much more circumspect.

“President Obama and this administration is 100 percent certain in the role that Russia played in trying to sow discord and confusion and getting involved, through the cyber domain, in our electoral process,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told CNN Tuesday.

Reports of the CIA’s stronger assessment are based on anonymous leaks to a number of publications.

The leaks have given ammunition to critics who say the Obama administration is trying to undercut Trump before he takes office on Jan. 20.

“There are real questions about why there have been so many leaks over the last seven or eight weeks from the administration about the motivations or the intentions of Vladimir Putin or other foreign leaders,” Cotton said Tuesday.

While we’re at it, let Senate committee ask about the truth of the information released by Wikileaks, and get that on the record.

SOCIAL JUSTICE MEDIA: 4 arrested in beating broadcast on Facebook Live.

The disturbing 30-minute video shows a man tied up and his mouth covered, cowering in the corner of a room. His attackers laugh and shout “f*ck Donald Trump” and “f*ck white people” as they kick and punch him.

The video shows someone cutting into his scalp with a knife leaving a visibly bald patch.
Police said the victim is an 18-year-old with special needs. Officers found the disoriented young man wandering a Chicago street “in crisis” Tuesday afternoon.

He was so traumatized that it took most of the night for him to calm down to the point that he was able to talk to police, Captain Steven Sesso said.

The suspects, two men and two women, all 18, are in custody awaiting formal charges.

The victim knew at least one of his accused attackers from school, Commander Kevin Duffin said. Though he may have voluntarily gotten into a van with the group, police are considering kidnapping charges.

Because the victim is white and the people in the video are black, police also are investigating whether hate crime charges are appropriate, Duffin said.

“Although they are adults, they’re 18. Kids make stupid decisions — I shouldn’t call them kids, they’re legally adults, but they’re young adults and they make stupid decisions,” Duffin said.

Where did these “kids” learn such hate?

UPDATE: Analysis from Walter Hudson.

BRRR: Earth Cooling At The Fastest Rate On Record.

LIFE AFTER POLITICS: Australia’s oldest living prime minister really knows how to chug a beer.

SECURITY THEATER: The 10 craziest things TSA found in carry-on bags in 2016.

I’m not sure how confiscating “five dead endangered seahorses in a large liquor bottle” makes a flight any safer.

FUTURE UNCERTAIN: Faraday Future’s FF 91 is an SUV-shaped supercar with a lot of promises to keep.

Faraday Future unveiled the FF 91, its first production EV, at CES in Las Vegas Tuesday night. Unlike the fantasy racecar at last year’s show, the FF 91 (pronounced “nine-one”) actually moved and drove—drove itself, parked itself, and did 0-60 in 2.39 seconds live onstage (with a driver). Also unlike last year’s car, Faraday has plans for the FF 91, including the production of 300 limited editions in March and mass production sometime in 2018.

What was like last year’s show was the raft of big promises. The FF 91 is “the first of a new species,” said Nick Sampson, senior vice president of R&D and engineering. Sampson and other Faraday Future presenters heralded the FF 91’s unparalleled intelligence, cutting-edge design, fast charging, and pure, raw speed. They even promised a mobility ecosystem where the car would provide connectivity, convenience, and customization to enhance the user’s driving experience.

It’s certainly impressive on video. But as Apple, Google, and even Tesla are learning, mass automobile production is hard.

THE INTERNET OF DIRTY THINGS: Amazon’s Alexa Mistakes Children’s Song for Porn Request.

I’m a gadget nerd and an early adopter, but I won’t have one of these things in my house.

YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT: We have mandates because we want preexisting-conditions coverage.

There are two big, important pieces of the Affordable Care Act that will be of concern as Republicans go about replacing it. The first is the so-called individual mandate, which actually isn’t all that much of a mandate but which theoretically requires the great majority of American adults to purchase a federally defined minimum level of health insurance. The second is the rule requiring that insurance companies cover “preexisting conditions,” which mandates that U.S. insurance companies participate in the fantasy that we can insure against events that already have happened.

The preexisting-coverage rule defies economic reality (also space-time reality) and hence is the popular part of the law. The individual mandate is less popular, because people do not like being told what to do by the government, especially if it costs them money.

You can see the obvious problem here.

We have to have an individual mandate because we want a preexisting-coverage mandate.
…
If you want to keep the preexisting-coverage rule — and Republicans say they do — then you are going to end up with Obamacare, or at least a version of it. It might be a slightly better or slightly worse version, but that is what you will have.

If diplomacy is the art of saying “Nice doggie!” until you can find a rock, then conservative politics must become the art of saying “No, voters!” while still beating Democrats.

You can see the obvious problem here, too.

GUT FEELING: Scientists confirm a ‘new’ human organ.

For centuries, the mesentery (which links the intestine to the abdomen) has been treated as a group of distinct structures in your digestive system. It wasn’t anything special. However, the medical world now has to rethink that belief. Scientists recently determined that the mesentery is really one, cohesive entity — that’s right, they confirmed the existence of a ‘new’ organ. Researchers first discovered the continuous nature of the mesentery through microscopic examinations in 2012, but the past few years have shown that it has enough function to be considered an organ.

This doesn’t mean that the scientific community understands exactly what the mesentery does. With that in mind, the very act of classifying it as an organ should have a far-reaching impact. On a basic level, it’s shaking up education. The medical field had to update its definitive Gray’s Anatomy textbook to account for the new findings, and students are already learning about the mesentery as a matter of course.

More importantly, it’s opening up a line of inquiry that hadn’t been available before — it’s a “whole new area of science,” the discovery team’s J. Calvin Coffey says. If scientists can learn more about how the mesentery interacts with the digestive system, they could develop better treatments for diseases and identify conditions that are specific to this part of the body.

It’s unusual to wake up one day to learn you have an organ you never knew you had before.

CHANGE? Senator Cruz, Rep. DeSantis Introduce Constitutional Amendment to Impose Term Limits.

I once opposed term limits on philosophical grounds, but as a practical matter they’ve become an absolute necessity.

WELL, GOOD: Issa Introduces Bill To Wipe Out Last Minute Obama Regulations.

California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa re-introduced legislation Tuesday that would allow Congress to overturn executive branch regulations finalized in the last 60 legislative days of an outgoing presidential administration.

The bill amends the Congressional Review Act, which would allow Congress to recoup the ability to essentially curb numerous regulations rushed through the regulatory process in the last days of an outgoing administration at one time.

Issa’s office claims the bill is designed “to stem a growing trend by Presidents, of both parties, to use their last few months in office to rush in costly, expensive or controversial new regulations.”

The legislation, expected to be approved by the House Wednesday, was already introduced with support from the Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Tom Marino.

The way things are shaping up in the new Congress, President Trump is going to have a full inbox after his swearing-in.

DAVID HARSANYI: Democrats are more likely to believe the Russians installed Donald Trump into the presidency than Republicans are to have ever believed Barack Obama was a Muslim.

Why are Democratic constituencies such cesspits of paranoia and outdated beliefs?

GOP ETHICS PANEL HIJINKS: Amateur Hour, Not Corruption.

THAT VOW WAS JUST FOR THE RUBES: Whatever happened to that smooth presidential transition Obama vowed?

Andrew Malcolm:

Since Obama vowed to run a smooth presidential transition, what’s the real point of picking a tardy diplomatic scuffle with Putin? What’s the real point of setting Israel (and the annoying Netanyahu) adrift at the United Nations now?

Why issue all these offshore drilling bans and new federal regulations? Why commute more federal prison sentences than a dozen past presidents combined? Why keep releasing Guantanamo terrorists when so many return to their homicidal careers?

Might it be to plant political IEDs for his annoying successor, as Democrats seek to restore their party? For the first time in nearly a century a former president decided to reside in Washington. Obama has rented a mansion and office space where he’ll be easily accessible to media friends for, say, kibitzing his successor – unlike Obama’s predecessor, who went silent for more than a year.

Obama is the Loki of presidential politics.

KURT SCHLICHTER: For Democrats, 2017 Will Be The Year of Living Stupidly.

So a lot like 2016 then.

FOR THE WIN:

THE SAME WAY HE CAME IN: Obama is going out in a blaze of self-interest.

Creating national monuments in Utah and Nevada, banning offshore oil drilling in the Arctic and the Northeast, deleting the database of Muslim men at the Department of Homeland Security: All of these things will earn him toasts at all the right parties.

Despite a remarkable lack of evidence that the Russians “hacked” the election (as opposed to their more obvious complicity in the WikiLeaks shenanigans), the conviction that Hillary Clinton lost because of Putin’s skulduggery is rapidly gelling into liberal conventional wisdom. These sanctions give Obama yet another useful talking point in retirement.

They’re also having the desired effect on the Trump team, which for obvious reasons hates any suggestion that The Donald’s election was less than legitimate.

But will they actually “box in” a President Trump? It seems unlikely.

Obama plans to stick around in Washington past his sell-by date and has said he’ll break precedent by speaking out (lecturing? hectoring?) on policy issues after he’s left office.

In other words, he’s the gift that keeps on giving — to the GOP.