SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET: 

ADVICE FOR TOURISTS – FROM LONDON'S MIRROR:  French people have been told not to fear wolves roaming Paris streets - as "they only eat four-legged animals".  Parisians are frightened that the endangered beasts - which have fought back from near extinction in the 1930s - are now within howling distance of the capital.  Indeed the discovery of paw prints, messy droppings and late-night howls from wolves - a distant relative of the domestic pet dog - are reported to be a now frequent occurrence in the city's suburbs.  While they are known to normally hunt in packs - when they are notoriously most dangerous - only lone wolves have been spotted so far wandering its streets.  Experts and eyewitnesses claim they are freely roaming French 'departments' (an administrative district) of Yvelines and Essone in Île-de-France - which overlaps with the Paris metropolitan area in the south and west - at night.  The French left will soon demand that the wolves be given the vote, the better to integrate them into French society.

HOW HELPFUL – FROM POLICE ONE:    WASHINGTON — Officers patrolling during the inauguration and days after will not be allowed to turn on their body cameras until they make an arrest.  A law bans officers in D.C. from recording demonstrators unless the officer has to take action and make an arrest, according to WJLA.  The ACLU said the camera shouldn’t be on because police shouldn’t be able to surveil first amendment activities.  “Our concern is around the availability of body cameras, what is done with that data, who looks at that data and what that data’s used for,” ACLU Spokeswoman Monica Hopkins-Maxwell told the news station.  While police won’t be allowed to film demonstrators, the ACLU is encouraging citizens to film police.  Along with citizens watching the police, federal law enforcement will be monitoring DC cops as well, the news station reported.   Must be fun to be a D.C. cop.  Much more fun to be a criminal.

OUTRAGE – FROM FOX:   Top Congressional Republicans condemned Tuesday the decision by President Barack Obama to commute former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning’s 35-year prison sentence for leaking classified documents.  House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., blasted the decision, calling it “outrageous.”  “Chelsea Manning’s treachery put American lives at risk and exposed some of our nation’s most sensitive secrets. President Obama now leaves in place a dangerous precedent that those who compromise our national security won’t be held accountable for their crimes,” Ryan said in a statement.  Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the decision was a “grave mistake.”  "It is a sad, yet perhaps fitting commentary on President Obama’s failed national security policies that he would commute the sentence of an individual that endangered the lives of American troops, diplomats, and intelligence sources by leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive government documents to Wikileaks, a virulently anti-American organization that was a tool of Russia’s recent interference in our elections."  As if Obama cares.

January 17,  2017