Who knew that a Tatooine farmboy would rise up from his humble beginnings to become one of the greatest defenders of net neutrality the galaxy has ever known? 
 
 But this is 2017, so we shouldn't expect anything less at this point. So please, pull up a chair while we unpack how actor Mark Hamill, best known for his role as Luke Skywalker, clapped back at Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in a Twitter debate about ending net neutrality. 
 
 The backstory: Last week, the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal rules that protected net neutrality by barring internet service providers from slowing websites or charging premiums for specific sites. The FCC is led by longtime net neutrality critic Ajit Pai, who was appointed to the role by President Trump, so the vote was not entirely surprising. 
 
 Critics argue that the move to get rid of net neutrality favors big corporations, and have threatened to file lawsuits to try to slow or stop the process of deregulation. Artists, actors, and musicians have also argued that repealing net neutrality will hurt those in entertainment and other creative industries. 
 
 In what would otherwise have been completely unrelated news, the latest Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi, was released Friday and everyone was really excited about it, including one of the film's stars, Mark Hamill. Hamill happens to be really good at Twitter and likes to chat with his fans, and has also occasionally tweeted things that make it clear he's not a fan of Trump. ||||| Photograph by Mary Evans/LUCASFILM/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection 
 
 Updated 3:08 pm EST 
 
 President Barack Obama is no Jedi knight, and no Vulcan — by his own accounts today. 
 
 And he’s certainly not both. 
 
 It would seem that to cross “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” in one reference, as the commander-in-chief did today at the White House, is best not done. At the same time, one expert tells us, Obama may have been on to something. 
 
 There was Obama this morning, apparently mixing up his Spocks and Solos after meeting with congressional leaders in an apparently-futile meeting to dodge the budget cuts of sequestration. 
 
 “I know that this has been some of the conventional wisdom that’s been floating around Washington,” the president said, “that somehow, even though most people agree that I’m being reasonable, that most people agree I’m presenting a fair deal, the fact that they don’t take it means that I should, somehow, you know, do a Jedi mind meld with these folks and convince them to do what’s right.” 
 
 Instantly Twitter lit up in high snark that the president had confused two of the most famous tactics of science fiction — the Jedi mind trick and the Vulcan mind meld — sparking “geek outrage” 
 
 Yet something triggered in my mind, stored in the files of years of sci-fi fandom, that perhaps the president wasn’t actually incorrect. Maybe Twitter was wrong. And somehow, I think LucasFilm was expecting my call. 
 
 Here’s the verdict, according to those who should know: Obama was actually — probably inadvertently — right. 
 
 There is such a thing in Star Wars books and spinoffs as a Jedi battle meld, according to Pablo Hidalgo, who goes by the informal title of “Star Wars guru” at LucasFilm. In such a battle meld, those fluent in the Force link their minds toward a common purpose at a time of great conflict. 
 
 And though Hidalgo — chuckling throughout the entire interview — suspects it was probably a mixup of of Star Wars and Star Trek, he can’t be 100 percent sure. While there’s no evidence the president of the United States reads or has read Star Wars books, or is conversant in extended Star Wars lore, Hidalgo said, “he may have tipped off deeper knowledge than anyone may have suspected.” 
 
 Twitter is still on the case: 
 
 Ease The Geek Rage: Obama’s Technically Right, There Is a Jedi Meld tcrn.ch/Z2P4y7 by @ferenstein — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) March 1, 2013 
 
 Even Spock weighs in: 
 
 Only a Vulcan mind meld will help with this congress. LLAP — Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) March 1, 2013 
 
 And finally the White House, with some more mixing of Wars and Trek: ||||| Rand Paul Gets Into The Holiday Spirit With A Festivus Tweetstorm 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Timothy D. Easley/AP Timothy D. Easley/AP 
 
 Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., took to social media to poke fun at his political colleagues including an "airing of grievances" about government waste, President Trump, Fox News and Washington politics overall in a tweetstorm on Saturday. 
 
 In a nod to the classic Seinfeld episode, the onetime presidential candidate, wished his 1.86 million Twitter followers a "Happy Festivus" — a made-up holiday meant to shine a light on the hypercommercialization of Christmas and to confront those who have disappointed throughout the year. Festivus, for those who "celebrate" it, typically falls on Dec. 23. 
 
 Paul kicked off the day with a simple tweet: 
 
 "Good morning and #Happy Festivus! Later today I will help you celebrate with some #AiringofGrievances." 
 
 Trump, who is at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, was the subject of a number of Paul's tweets including: 
 
 "I want to pause to wish @realDonaldTrump a Happy Festivus. We told him to take today off, since he airs his grievances on here every day. " 
 
 It got better from there. 
 
 Before he got rolling though, he issued a warning tweet at Fox News, seemingly to playfully ensure that the network didn't issue a bulletin saying he was attacking Christmas. 
 
 "Before we get started, I need to alert @FoxNews and someone in DC that this is NOT a war on Christmas. It's a war on everything else," another tweet said. 
 
 Paul also poked fun at fellow Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, for his Twitter beef with Mark Hamill, the actor who played the iconic Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars films, tweeting, "There are how many millions Americans who've wanted to force-choke Ted, and he picked on the one who could do It. Brave, he is," Paul said in another tweet, followed by: "I'm KIDDING, Ted. You're likeable enough." 
 
 He also blasted former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Paul's grievance on this issue stems from the news this week that the Pentagon secretly spent more than $20 million on UFO research, a program Reid secured funding for, according to reports. 
 
 In all caps, Paul tweeted: 
 
 "HOW IS IT YOU NEVER TOLD ME ABOUT THE ALIENS, HARRY??!!" 
 
 Paul goes on to tweet about Hillary Clinton's book What Happened, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and what Paul says was $563,421,523 in federal government waste among other things. 
 
 Then Paul pivoted back to the president about wanting funding for his wall along the southern border, tweeting: "And @realDonaldTrump thinks there is a chance in hell someone is going pay for that border wall." 
 
 Attached to that tweet was a gif from the 1994 movie Dumb and Dumber that read: "So you're telling me there's a chance." ||||| James Gunn has issued an apology after a series of old tweets, in which he joked about topics including pedophilia and rape, resurfaced — and resulted in Disney severing ties with the “Guardians of the Galaxy” filmmaker. 
 
 "My words of nearly a decade ago were, at the time, totally failed and unfortunate efforts to be provocative," Gunn, who deleted his Twitter account on Friday, said in a statement obtained by Variety. 
 
 "I have regretted them for many years since — not just because they were stupid, not at all funny, wildly insensitive, and certainly not provocative like I had hoped, but also because they don't reflect the person I am today or have been for some time." 
 
 He continued: "Regardless of how much time has passed, I understand and accept the business decisions taken today. Even these many years later, I take full responsibility for the way I conducted myself then." 
 
 "All I can do now, beyond offering my sincere and heartfelt regret, is to be the best human being I can be: accepting, understanding, committed to equality, and for more thoughtful about my public statements and my obligations to our public discourse. To everyone inside my industry and beyond, I again offer my deepest apologies. Love to all." 
 
 “The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James’ Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio’s values, and we have severed our business relationship with him." - Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn 
 
 Gunn's past tweets were dug up on Thursday by critics who oppose his political beliefs. The filmmaker is an outspoken liberal who often criticizes President Trump. 
 
 
 
 One of the now-deleted tweets said, “I like when little boys touch me in my silly place.” 
 
 Another message read: “The best thing about being raped is when you’re done being raped and it’s like ‘whew this feels great, not being raped!'” 
 
 Other now-deleted tweets from 2008-2011 included jokes about the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, AIDS and the holocaust. 
 
 “The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James’ Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio’s values, and we have severed our business relationship with him,” Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn told Fox News in a statement. 
 
 He will no longer direct “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” 
 
 Gunn responded to the backlash in a series of tweets in which he claimed he was a “provocateur” who made "jokes that were outrageous and taboo” and addressed the situation without issuing a new apology – claiming he has apologized in the past. 
 
 “As I’ve developed as a person, so has my work and my humor,” Gunn wrote. “It’s not to say I’m better, but I am very, very different than I was a few years ago; today I try to root my work in love and connection and less in anger. My days saying something just because it’s shocking and trying to get a reaction are over.” 
 
 Gunn said he meant it when he said he was sorry for the offensive tweets. 
 
 “I truly felt sorry and meant every word of my apologies,” Gunn wrote. “For the record, when I made these shocking jokes, I wasn’t living them out.” 
 
 Gunn concluded his thread by saying, “I used to make a lot of offensive jokes. I don’t anymore. I don’t blame my past self for this, but I like myself more and feel like a more full human being and creator today. Love you to you all.” 
 
 The Daily Caller, OAN correspondent Jack Posobiec and right-wing commentator Mike Cernovich are among those who unearthed the offensive rhetoric. 
 
 Gunn also deleted his personal website as his name became a trending topic on social media, according to TheWrap. 
 
 Gunn wrote and directed the Disney hits “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” in addition to several other projects. He is credited as an executive producer on “Avengers: Infinity War” and has written “Movie 43,” “Scooby-Doo,” “Dawn of the Dead” and “The Belko Experiment.” 
 
 Earlier this week, Gunn defended liberal actor Mark Duplass, who came under fire for encouraging his fans to follow conservative pundit Ben Shapiro to hear views from the other side of the aisle. Gunn mocked Shapiro in the process, which appears to be the impetus for conservatives digging into the filmmaker’s past. 
 
 Gunn’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment. ||||| Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) reiterated Wednesday that he was not the person who highlighted an explicit Twitter post that made the senator the target of viral mockery online. 
 
 “It was not me, and it’s not going to happen again,” Cruz said in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash. 
 
 The Texas senator woke up Tuesday to find his name trending on Twitter — linked overnight to a certain explicit video, perhaps unfairly, perhaps irrevocably. 
 
 The video clip itself is just over two minutes, details of its contents mostly unprintable. It features a sectional sofa, the pornographic actress Cory Chase, her fictitious nude stepdaughter, and a very energetic young man. 
 
 Cruz, of course, is nowhere to be seen in the footage, which has been floating around the Internet for more than a year. But around midnight Eastern time, someone signed into the senator’s official Twitter account and clicked a little heart below the video — and thus did @tedcruz “like” porn. 
 
 That someone was a staff member who had accidentally hit the wrong button, the Texas senator told CNN. 
 
 “It was an honest mistake,” he explained. 
 
 Cruz declined to identify the staff member or say if the person would be punished. 
 
 On Tuesday morning, reporters waited outside the U.S. Capitol to question Cruz about his online alias’s handiwork, which he disavowed. 
 
 “It was a staffing issue and it was inadvertent,” the senator said. “It was a mistake.” 
 
 He said “a number of people” in his office had access to his account — contra Jimmy Kimmel and much of the critical Internet, who had assumed the senator himself clicked the heart, before someone else unclicked it after news of the “like” became an online joke. 
 
 And twice that morning, reporters asked him if he himself was the liker. 
 
 “No,” Cruz said quietly as he finally walked away. 
 
 Cruz has watched porn on the Internet at least once, regardless of what happened on his Twitter account Monday night. He said so in his book “A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Promise of America.” 
 
 It was back in the 1990s, and all very proper. 
 
 Cruz at the time was a 26-year-old law clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court, which was deciding whether Internet porn should be regulated. Some justices decided they first needed to see the stuff for themselves, and so the young future senator got an eyeful. 
 
 “As we watched these graphic pictures fill our screens, wide-eyed, no one said a word,” Cruz wrote regarding some act involving a cantaloupe. “Except for Justice O’Connor, who lowered her head, squinted slightly, and muttered, ‘Oh, my.’ ” 
 
 Which is exactly the same thing @KieraGorden said in the small hours of the morning more than 20 years later, when she and what seems like half the conscious online population discovered the clip of stepmother and stepdaughter and sweaty male friend beneath the senator’s banner portrait. 
 
 “OH MY.” 
 
 Well done @TedCruz using the power of "like" to illustrate the evils of porn #Weiner pic.twitter.com/SQDPh1cRTp — Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) September 12, 2017 
 
 It was gone by about 2 a.m., and the senator’s spokeswoman Catherine Frazier wrote shortly afterward on her own account: “The offensive tweet posted on @tedcruz account earlier has been removed by staff and reported to Twitter.” 
 
 That only raised more questions, including: Reported the tweet for what? A Twitter spokeswoman said the company never comments on individual accounts, though porn is allowed on the site, with some limitations. 
 
 Even if the details of its travels into @tedcruz’s column of “likes” remain a mystery, the video’s provenance is fairly clear. 
 
 It published in early 2016 on the porn site Reality Kings. “Cory has not been getting along with her step daughter Kacey lately,” reads the jacket blurb. They were getting along fine by the end of the film. 
 
 Then, as porn tends to, clips of the movie made their way across the Internet. 
 
 Early Monday morning, they entered the endless stream of tweets on the account known as @SexuallPosts. 
 
 And about 24 hours later, the owner of that account was among the first to learn that a U.S. senator’s name was listed among his contents’ endorsers. 
 
 “A friend texted me. It’s really pretty comical,” said Kyle, who didn’t want to give his last name, lest he have to explain to friends and family why he runs a few sexually explicit “marketing sites” among the dozens of Twitter accounts he owns. 
 
 Kyle didn’t know more than anyone else about how and why @tedcruz liked that particular clip, which he said had been viewed more than 2 million times before Cruz was forced to publicly deny clicking on it. 
 
 Denial or not, it’s been good for business. 
 
 “Follow for the Same Porn @TedCruz Watches,” reads the new banner text on @SexuallPosts. 
 
 And denial or not, the senator continues to be mocked across the Internet. 
 
 “Everyone on twitter after 1 a.m. on a Monday knows exactly how this whole thing works,” one wag wrote after Cruz’s spokeswoman blamed staff for the like. “You’re foolin’ nobody.” 
 
 Quipped another: “Liking a porn tweet is by far the least offensive, most normal thing Ted Cruz has ever done.” 
 
 Sexual prurience hasn’t been a major theme of Cruz’s politics over the years. But he has intersected with porn a few times since his days of Supreme Court justices and cantaloupes. 
 
 As the solicitor general for the state of Texas in 2004, Mother Jones reported, Cruz’s legal team tried to defend a law banning the sale of sex toys. His office drafted a 76-page brief that argued that the government had an interest in discouraging “autonomous sex,” Mother Jones wrote — and “there is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one’s genitals for nonmedical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship.” 
 
 Some recalled the case years later, when Cruz ran unsuccessfully for president in the Republican Primary in 2016. One was his freshman-year college roommate: 
 
 Ted Cruz thinks people don't have a right to "stimulate their genitals." I was his college roommate. This would be a new belief of his. — Craig Mazin (@clmazin) April 13, 2016 
 
 Another was a radio host, who prompted candidate Cruz to disavow the long-dead Texas dildo ban, and say: “What people do in their own private time with themselves is their own business and it’s none of government’s business.” 
 
 Cruz made the same point Wednesday when CNN’s Bash asked about his past defense of the sex toys sales ban. The senator said that as then-solicitor general, his job was to “defend the laws passed by the Texas legislature.” 
 
 “One of those laws was a law restricting the sale of sex toys. It’s a stupid law,” Cruz said. 
 
 “Consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want in their bedrooms.” 
 
 But election business was another matter. The same year, the Cruz campaign inadvertently cast a former soft-core porn actress in an ad attacking his rival, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). 
 
 The campaign killed the ad after discovering Amy Lindsay’s film history, and the actress protested that she worked mainstream roles along with the occasional erotic film. 
 
 “You guys have all painted me as this big porn star, which I am not,” Lindsay told The Post at the time. 
 
 Speaking of porn stars, the other big name from Tuesday’s tweet scandal was apparently one of the last to find out her star had crossed with Cruz. 
 
 “So I hear I am trending with Ted Cruz,” Cory Chase wrote on Twitter in the late morning — long after the like had been revoked. “I am literally in the dark with hardly any access to the Internet world. #OMG #hurricaneirma.” 
 
 And so the actress reminded us all that, porn storms aside, there are other things going on in the world. 
 
 “This was not how I envisioned waking up this morning,” Cruz told his journalist interrogators at the Capitol, and then got in a crack of his own: 
 
 “If I had known that this would trend so quickly, then perhaps we should have posted something like this during the Indiana primary.” 
 
 This post has been updated. 
 
 More reading: 
 
 Why Ted Cruz watched pornography with Supreme Court justices 
 
 Cruz kills campaign ad featuring former soft-core porn star 
 
 Cruz calls Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling ‘fundamentally wrong’ 
 
 Ted Cruz definitely isn’t the Zodiac Killer
– The Force was not with Sen. Ted Cruz on Sunday when he tried to use Star Wars references to win an argument on net neutrality—with Luke Skywalker. BuzzFeed reports that it began Saturday when Mark Hamill tweeted a picture of FCC chair Ajit Pai wielding a lightsaber in a video he made to defend killing Obama-era net neutrality rules. Hamill said Pai was "profoundly unworthy" because "a Jedi acts selflessly for the common man." On Sunday, Cruz tweeted to Hamill, misspelling his name as "Hammill": "Luke, I know Hollywood can be confusing, but it was Vader who supported govt power over everything said & done on the Internet." He added: "Reject the dark side: Free the net!" Hamill quickly fired back with a burn: "Thanks for smarm-spaining it to me," he tweeted. "I know politics can be confusing, but you'd have more credibility if you spelled my name correctly. I mean IT'S RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU! Maybe you're just distracted from watching porn at the office again," he said, mocking the gaffe that Cruz blamed on a staffer. In a follow-up tweet, he said he regrets leaving the "L" out of "smarm-splaining"—and the fact that Twitter's 280-character limit isn't enough to unpack "all the lies and all the stupid" in a Cruz tweet. Cruz quoted Yoda in another tweet to Hamill, saying Hamill had responded with anger instead of facts and asking: "Who was it that said, "Fear is the path to the dark side…fear leads to anger…anger leads to hate?"