IN THE MAIL: From David McCullough, The Wright Brothers.

Plus, today only at Amazon: Up to 60% Off Select Resistance Trainers and Yoga Products.

Also: Ekogrips Max Heat Silicone BBQ Grill Oven Gloves.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 974.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD HARDEST HIT: Getting the Pill Without a Doctor: The Revolution Begins.

As Virginia Postrel has written, requiting women to get a prescription for hormonal birth control means that some of them will end up resorting to other forms of birth control they don’t prefer, because they forgot to get to the doctor before the prescription ran out.

That may not mean a whole lot of extra unintended pregnancies or births. (Used correctly, over-the-counter methods like condoms are pretty effective, especially when a backup like the morning-after pill is available.) But “does it prevent a lot of extra unintended births” is far too narrow a question for policy makers to ask. The Soviet system, in which birth control was unavailable but abortions were extremely common, prevented a lot of unintended births. It was still a lousy system.

Absent a compelling reason that women need to see a doctor, it should be as easy as possible for them to get any form of birth control they might like to have. Obviously, this is not practically feasible in every case. We are not going to see at-home IUD insertions any time soon. But it should include oral contraceptives, some of the most extensively studied medications of all time.

Oregon now requires patients to fill out a short questionnaire and have their blood pressure checked in order to get a prescription from a pharmacist, which seems like a reasonable enough procedure to weed out the small number of women who really shouldn’t take it. Though even that may go too far.

I’m conflicted. On the one hand, I think that the dangers of hormonal birth control are substantially underestimated. On the other, I think that the vast majority of prescriptions for same are nothing more than a toll charged by doctors, with no significant actual medical oversight involved.

BECAUSE WE HAVE A STRONG WORK ETHIC, A REMNANT OF THE TIME WHEN OUR SYSTEM REWARDED HARD WORK: Why Do Americans Work So Hard? Though to my observation, that seems to be fraying in the late-Obama era.

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JOE BIDEN HARDEST HIT: Hugs, neck rubs could be ‘sexual battery,’ says university.

Are you a hugger? Do you sometimes give neck rubs to friends or acquaintances just out of friendliness? Well now you could be accused for sexual battery and expelled at East Carolina University.

All it takes is for one person who is scared from the sexual assault portion of orientation or who has friends with certain ideologies to ruin one’s life at ECU, thanks to a new policy recently adopted for the new semester going forward. . . .

Any contact, “however slight,” is considered sexual battery. Of course, it’s the accuser who decides whether it is sexual battery, and with the current pressure on colleges and universities to capitulate to accusers in the name of political correctness, any friendly contact is subject to an investigation.

Today’s university administrations — like the Victorians, but without their positive attributes.

Meanwhile, on Biden: Ouch.

I mean, even Talking Points Memo is asking: Why Does Creepy Uncle Joe Biden Get A Pass From Liberals?

THOMAS SOWELL ON GUNS AND THE SHOWMAN-IN-CHIEF.

Strike a pose; there’s nothing to it.

LYING LIAR BUSTED FOR LYING: Watchdog faults State on Clinton emails.

The State Department has been providing “inaccurate and incomplete” responses to requests for the emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a watchdog says in a new report released Thursday.

The 29-page inspector general (IG) report says the leadership of the State Department “has not played a meaningful role in overseeing or reviewing the quality” of the responses to requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

As a result, requests from organizations such as The Associated Press, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Judicial Watch have been mishandled in various ways, the IG said.

In one example, CREW asked for records in 2012 that would show the number of email accounts held by then-Secretary Clinton. While senior staffers at the department regularly corresponded with her on her private account and her chief of staff was made aware of the request, the State Department replied that there were “no records responsive” to the query.

At other times, the IG said, media organizations have put in nearly identical requests for documents, only to receive different sets of records in response.

In 2015, Clinton’s use of a private email server emerged as a flashpoint in the presidential race, with Republicans using it to attack her candidacy.

Those dastardly Republicans, “using” grossly dishonest behavior to “attack” poor Hillary.

JEB BUSH TO EARN COVETED BURMA-SHAVE ENDORSEMENT: Team Jeb! Battles Trump’s Social Media Prowess with Cutting Edge Billboard Strategy.

Related: “This is what it’s come to. This is the whole Jeb campaign in one image — an antiquated advertising platform, a pitifully weak jab at the bully Trump, an overreliance on the fading authority of the Bush brand, and a bizarre blindness to how this stuff looks to other people…the saddest political ad ever.”

HEADLINES FROM 1942, AS EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: David P. Goldman asks, “Why Does Germany Condone Mass Rape?”

CHANGE: Slovakia vows to refuse entry to Muslim migrants. “Responding to the sexual assaults in Cologne and Hamburg, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has reiterated his aim to allow no Muslims into the country. According to reports, some of the attackers were refugees.”

Related: Reports: Cologne NYE assaulters were largely asylum seekers.

THIS COULD BE HILLARY’S CAMPAIGN SLOGAN: “I know what you’re thinking, but let me offer a competing narrative.”

VAN JONES COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Obama: ‘Conspiracy’ Theories Just Part of American DNA.

Related: Obama’s Chicago-era buddy and Rev. Wright sidekick Michael Pfleger was one of the DNC-CNN plants in Obama’s anti-Second Amendment infomercial audience last night — I wonder if he’ll be endorsing Hillary this year?

THE HATEFUL EIGHT YEARS: “Who is Mr. Netanyahu at war with? To watch the Frontline special, you’d think that it wasn’t the Iranians or the Palestinians or anyone else actually taking up arms against Israel, but rather Obama’s theory of history. No real war, no real consequences, just two men and their competing ideas. It’s the stuff public broadcasting dreams are made of.”

Because for the left, failures are always due to messaging, never their ideology. No wonder they’d frame Netanyahu through the same prism.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Goldman Sachs: Higher Ed Ripe for Disruption.

A Goldman Sachs investment research report issued last month paints a very grim picture of the state of American higher education (h/t Bryan Alexander). The bottom line: “returns on a college education are falling,” and quickly.
According to a striking graph included in the report, the average “wage premium” from going to a four-year college (that is, the difference in incomes between college graduates and high school graduates) and college tuition (including room and board) rose in tandem throughout the 1990s. Then, starting in about 2002, something changed—the wage premium growth started growing more slowly, even as tuition kept rising as fast as ever.

This disconnect, Goldman notes, is not a problem for all classes of colleges. It appears that the top institutions (as ranked by SAT scores) are still delivering good returns, while the returns for schools in the bottom half, and especially the bottom quarter, are falling off steeply. This can’t go on forever. If costs continue to exceed returns, the bubble will burst eventually—even if Washington keeps subsidizing it.

Do tell.

NO WORD ON HOW ‘CLIMATE CHANGE’ AFFECTED ALIENS: Maybe Hillary will tell us. Claim: Climate Change Forced Bigfoot to Migrate to America.

BEYOND COLOGNE. HELSINKI COPS: ‘Widespread’ Sexual Harassment By ‘Asylum Seekers’ on New Year’s Eve.  (Sorry, link broken.  Fixed now.)

DO LET’S CONSIDER THE ACTION, NOT THE METHOD: They kill people!!

AND WHY AFTER ALL THIS SHOULD WE LISTEN TO THEM? Government revises Dietary Guidelines for Americans: Go ahead and have some eggs.

HORSE MANURE: Scientists say humans have now brought on an entirely new geologic epoch.

YEAH, IT’S BAD ADVICE, FOR THE NERDS (WE PREFER GEEKS.):  I told a friend yesterday there is a war on competence.  That’s what this boils down to.  Hey, guys, if you’re intelligent and have geeky interests, you don’t know how to treat people and don’t care about feelings.  You heard it from the Washington Post first.  Oh, no, wait, my bad.  You heard it from stupid teachers and taunting classmates first. Hollywood has told women to date nerds for decades. It’s bad advice.

AND DON’T EVEN DREAM OF GETTING THE REAL NUMBERS: Friday’s jobs stats could stir up Wall Street drama.

PARTICULARLY SINCE YOU CAN GET ON THE LIST FOR ALL SORTS OF CRAZY THINGS: Labeling sex offenders’ passports is overkill.

HATERS GOT TO FIND HATE:  Also, how dare you have fun they haven’t approved of?  Listen to the joyless scolds.  They know how you should have fun, the RIGHT way. Does Quentin Tarantino Hate Women and Minorities? (This is not my circus, not my monkeys, since I rarely watch movies, but what they’re saying is so familiar, as it will be to anyone who games, reads, or just wants to attend school and live their own lives.)

IT’S CALLED MULTI-CULTURALISM: The European Sickness Spreads.

COMMIES GONNA AIRBRUSH: MSNBC Edits Out Footage of Bill Clinton Being Asked About Juanita Broaddrick.

SHOCKER: Feds arrest two Middle East refugees on terror-related charges. “Both men were Palestinians born in Iraq and living as refugees in the United States, according to the U.S. Justice Department. And both of them are accused of lying to immigration officials about their alleged ties to terrorist organizations.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

UPDATE: From the comments: “Mr. Obama would confer a high level conference which would ban all fraternities. Is it any wonder Trump has traction? Our ruling elite is corrupt to the core. To the core. And cares nothing for the average citizen.”

FLASHBACK: Dems Turn to Mocking Terror Fears.

STACY MCCAIN: Feminist Barbie and ‘Rape Culture.’

ACTUALLY, IT TURNED OUT TO BE A GENUINE SUICIDE VEST: Paris Cops Kill Man in Fake Suicide Vest: He had a knife, shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ at police station.

He will not be missed. Just think of it as evolution in action.

YOU WERE ALREADY IRRELEVANT, JEB, AND NOW YOU’VE JUST MADE YOURSELF MORE SO: Jeb: Trump’s An Isolationist, And I Won’t Promise To Support Him If He’s The Nominee. Didn’t you take a pledge to support the nominee, whoever it was?

Jeb has underperformed more than anyone could have expected. He should have taken the advice I gave him a year ago.

Related: “The GOP plotted to restore the Bush dynasty, but instead triggered a class war.”

LOW ENERGY.

HALFWAY THERE: New Dietary Guidelines Urge Less Sugar for All and Less Protein for Boys and Men.

MARK STEYN ON THE GHOSTS OF CHARLIE HEBDO, ONE YEAR LATER: “The weepy passive candlelight vigils — the maudlin faux tears and the Smug Moral Preening overdose — aren’t enough. If you don’t want to put out the fire, it will burn your world to the ground.”

And you can’t put out a fire this big with an airbrush.

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CHARLES C.W. COOKE: Even Obama Understands the Second Amendment Better Than Liberal Activists:

Consider: In order to argue with a straight face that the right to keep and bear arms is inextricably linked with “service in an organized and sanctioned militia,” you would have to believe the following unbelievable things: 1) that the Founders’ intent in codifying the Second Amendment was to protect the right of individuals to join an organization over which the federal government has constitutionally granted plenary power; 2) that unlike every other provision in the Bill of Rights — and every other constitutional measure that is wrapped in the “right of the people” formulation — the Second Amendment denotes something other than an individual right that can be asserted against the state; and 3) that every major judicial figure of the era was mistaken as to its meaning — among them, Joseph Story, William Rawle, St. George Tucker, Timothy Farrar, and Tench Coxe, all of whom explained the Second Amendment perfectly clearly — whereas a few judges and politicians in the 20th century have been bang on in their comprehension.

Furthermore, one has to grapple with the theory’s obvious consequences. If it is indeed the case that “a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state” — and if this supposition is binding rather than explanatory — then one has no choice but to conclude that America is both insecure and unfree, and and no choice but to wonder aloud whether the government has abdicated its enumerated constitutional responsibilities to the point at which its legitimate authority must not only be called into question but supplanted by volunteers.

As Fordham’s Nicholas Johnson has noted trenchantly, presumptions such as these are flatly unsustainable in the face of sedulous investigation, and their key progenitor — the now-retired Justice John Paul Stevens — has done little but embarrass himself with their promulgation.

Most of them, however, are beyond embarrassment.

RANDY BARNETT: Why Ted Cruz is a “natural born citizen.” “Just as the offspring of the sovereign monarch are ‘natural born subjects’ of the realm regardless of where they are born, so too are offspring of the sovereign individual citizen ‘natural born citizens’ of the United States, though they may be born outside its borders. Who is the sovereign, not territory, is what matters. In the United States, it is We the People, each and every one.”

A QUESTION SHE’LL NEVER BE ASKED: Would today’s Hillary Clinton would have supported the Bill Clinton of the 1990s if he weren’t her husband?, ponders Betsy Newmark.

And speaking of a nation whose elites have moved far to the left of where they were in the mid-1990s, also at the same link as part of Betsy’s aggregation of news stories, Dan Henninger on the “Revolt of the Politically Incorrect — Donald Trump and Ben Carson popped the valves on decades of pent-up PC pressure.” As Henninger writes, “The PC game has always been: We win, you lose, get over it, comply. But people don’t get over it, and they never forget. For a lot of voters now, possibly a majority, their experiences with enforceable, politically correct behavior, speech and thought have bred a broad mistrust of elites.”

Who have chosen the form of their destructor, to coin an Insta-phrase.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE ABOUT RAPE: White Woman Accuses Black Man Of Rape After Bragging.

The two accused students, identified in the lawsuit as Justin Browning and Alphonso Baity, II, are both African-American. They were accused by a white woman, identified in the lawsuit only as M.K., after an encounter at a party.

Browning and Baity were expelled despite the fact that every witness interviewed corroborated the accused students’ story, and that witnesses came forward to say that M.K. bragged about the encounter as a consensual act. Not only were they expelled, but the expulsions came just two days after the accusation was filed, and campus procedures regarding sexual assault accusations were not followed. . . .

At some point M.K. returned to the bedroom with Browning and again engaged in sexual activity. Again, the lawsuit claims the acts were consensual and that M.K. initiated.

Throughout all of this, the roommates and friends heard sounds coming from the bedroom that indicated consensual sexual activity.

M.K. left in the morning and returned to her dorm, where she discussed the previous night with other women in the dorm, including the resident assistant. According to at least one of these women, M.K. bragged about the evening and her sexual activity with Browning and Baity. M.K. never suggested any sexual assault took place.

Around that same time, M.K. also told another of her friends about the sexual activity with Browning and Baity; again, she was bragging. She even interacted with Baity and his friends in the days following the encounter.

Yet 10 days later, M.K. would accuse Browning and Baity of sexual assault.

Another case of “regret rape.”

OBAMA’S FIDDLING, WHILE NORTH KOREA GIVES GLOBAL TUTORIALS ON HOW TO GET THE NUCLEAR BOMB, Claudia Rosett writes:

Surely North Korea’s weapons clients in Iran are watching closely, even as they benefit from a nuclear deal struck just last year — which they are already violating, and can scrap entirely at a time of their choosing. So are others in the Middle East, where the feckless Iran deal has already fueled interest in a nuclear arms race. The world is watching. And learning. Whether it was an H-bomb or an A-bomb is an important question. The bigger question is what must now be done to ensure that North Korea is stopped. Entirely. And who will do it?

Well, not this administration, of course. Which is why, as Victor Davis Hanson writes, “Look for America’s Enemies to Take Advantage of Obama’s Last Year.”

And the DNC-MSM are happy to cover for him — minimizing Obama’s foreign policy disasters simultaneously hides those of his former Secretary of State.

H.L. MENCKEN LEFT THE BUILDING A VERY LONG TIME AGO: Baltimore Sun editor calls for ‘searchable database of gun owners online.’

That program would of course, also serve double-duty as a searchable database of their neighbors without guns. Which presumably means that unlike these scaredy-cat Democrat operatives with bylines, Sun deputy editorial page editor Tricia Bishop would have no problem displaying a “This Home Proudly Gun-Free” sign on her front lawn, right?

FOR HILLARY CLINTON, THE QUESTION IS NOT HOW WOULD YOU HANDLE NORTH KOREA BUT HOW DID YOU HANDLE IT?

LAURENCE JARVIK: A Discourse on “Critical Thinking.”

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IT’S A BAD DAY FOR THE CLINTONS WHEN VOX FAIRLY EXPLAINS THE RAPE ALLEGATION AGAINST BILL.

SMOOT-HAWLEY FOR POTUS 2016! Trump wants a 45 percent tax on Chinese imports.

As Tom Nichols tweets, “I bet this sounds awesome to people who have no idea how much stuff they buy from China.”

Relax — I’m sure that trade protectionism will work this time.

SUSPECT IN COLOGNE SEX ATTACKS: “I AM SYRIAN. YOU HAVE TO TREAT ME KINDLY. MRS MERKEL INVITED ME.”

Related: The Migrant Rape Culture The Political Elite Wishes Were Fake:

It’s hard to explain the “why” behind the troubling correlation between increased Muslim immigration and sexual assault. But one explanation can be found in Islamic culture itself and the heinous way it treats victims of rape.

Many women who find themselves the victims of sexual assault can later become victims of brutal punishments handed down by Sharia courts. In 2008, a Somali girl was stoned to death after being gang raped. Her crime was for engaging in fornication, according to the Islamist court which sentenced her. Courts in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh regularly hand down multiple lashings to rape victims and do little to rapists.

Even if the law does nothing, victims can still find themselves murdered in honor killings. For instance, a Syrian woman who suffered a gang rape in her native land was later stabbed to death in October in an act to purify her shame. The murder took place, shockingly enough, in Germany.

It looks like Europe may engage in victim blaming today and victim slaying tomorrow if it doesn’t get a handle on this problem soon enough.

Which dovetails perfectly into this headline — German Interior Minister: Chatroom Comments are Just as Bad as Muslim Mass Sex Attacks on Women.

WINNER OF 2015′S WORST COLLEGE PRESIDENT OF THE YEAR: Peter Salovey of Yale. A good call, though it was a rich field this year.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Toyota Wants Its Cars To Expect Its Unexpected. I love my car, but if I were to buy a new one it would be for some of the fancier semi-autonomous electronics. But not yet.

WHEN JUDGES VIOLATE THE LAW: Court ordered a billionaire businessman not to speak online about a rival businessman, and to remove posts about him. “In late 2014, a Florida trial court issued an injunction ordering billionaire businessman Alki David not to post about businessman John Textor and to remove posts about Textor. Yesterday, the Florida Court of Appeal quite rightly held that the injunction violated the First Amendment — but such injunctions have regrettably become common and often stay in place when the speaker lacks David’s financial resources and thus can’t hire a lawyer for an appeal.”

We need more accountability for judges who violate people’s rights.

SO YESTERDAY, when I wrote about grid failures, blackouts, and generators, some readers suggested that while a home generator is nice, proper disaster-prep involves having more than one source of backup power, heat, etc. They’re right. I also recommend inverters, which you can take with you, or use at home. I’ve had posts on that here and here.

SAYS THE MAN WHO WOULD HAPPILY CONFISCATE 90 PERCENT OF TAXPAYER EARNINGS: Bernie Sanders: ‘Greed Is Not Good.’

CLAIM: Rahm Emanuel offered family five million in taxpayer hush money to keep dashcam shooting video embargoed past election:

Emanuel had maintained since McDonald’s death that he has never seen the dash-cam video, but the emails prove the mayor knew exactly what the footage showed when city lawyers negotiated a deal that would at least delay the video’s release. Attorneys for McDonald’s estate sent Platt screenshots of the video and a detailed description:

“After Laquan immediately spun to the ground, graphic puffs of smoke from ricochet shots establishes that Officer Van Dyke continued to fire his weapon for approximately 16 seconds after Mr. McDonald laid helplessly in the street.”

Emanuel’s lawyers were offering $5 million in hush money to keep this hidden just weeks before the runoff election. And the biggest part of the deal—that McDonald family attorneys agreed to keep the video to themselves until criminal proceedings were concluded—just so happened to be inked the day after Emanuel was re-elected.

Found via Iowahawk, who posits that Emanuel’s “toast” after this disclosure.  “Emanuel needs to resign,” he adds. “Even though what will follow is the express lane to Detroit.”

If only there was some other option for Chicago voters…

CUE THE JERSEY JOKES NOW: Behind a Shopping Center in New Jersey, Signs of a Mass Extinction.

HMM: Ingenious New Non-Lethal Bullet Burns Propellant Inside the Round.

DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: Cologne New Year sex attacks: Germany’s women are angry, scared – and getting tired of excuses.

When you import people from a genuine “rape culture,” you will get more rape. And it will persist until you either expel them, or punish enough of them, harshly enough, to make them change their worldview. And, by the way, the same is true of the rape-enabling German political class.

Related: Some un-PC events in Cologne. “To me, the attacks themselves are far less surprising than the fact that a paper like the Guardian isn’t pulling its punches. In fact, the actual events are not surprising at all. The minister may call the attacks ‘a completely new dimension of crime,’ but that only reflects the minister’s ignorance of the Lara Logan story at the hands of a mob in Egypt.”

Also related: Huge influx of migrant men will lead to more sex attacks like those in Cologne, says analyst, as it’s revealed Austrian police have ALSO covered up identical gang assaults.

This is your political class, Europe. They’d rather see sexual assaults against European women, than risk anything that might make “migrants” look bad.

ADDRESSING THE ONE-SIDED POLITICIZATION OF CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION: How Law Schools Can Fix The One-Sided Pursuit Of ‘Social Justice’ Through Clinics. “To correct this latter problem, I have a modest proposal. On any controversial matter where clinics will be pursuing social justice, a law school should establish two clinics. Thus, if there is a clinic whose focus is on representing those charged with death penalty, there should be another to represent murder victims to help them make victim impact statements. If there is a clinic representing tenants, there should be another representing small landlords.”

This is a good idea. It’s funny but one of my former colleagues in the UT legal clinic hated doing landlord/tenant because — though she was a big lefty in general — her family had a few properties in the NYC area that they rented out, and they were always getting screwed by deadbeat tenants. This gave her a degree of compassion in that field that was less present elsewhere. Lawyers in particular should know that there are two sides to every story.

At the University of Tennessee College of Law, we follow the above advice to some degree: We have a wide range of clinics, including a Business & Trademark Law Clinic aimed at helping small businesses.

HOW FAR HAS TRUMP MOVED THE OVERTON WINDOW? THIS FAR: Tom Friedman calls for “controlling low-skilled immigration.”

HERE’S WHY HILLARY WILL BE INDICTED: Former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova predicts chaos in a few months when Attorney General Loretta Lynch declines to prosecute Hillary Clinton despite an FBI recommendation to indict the former Secretary of State. Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group interviews of congressional and government ethics insiders suggest an indictment for Hatch Act violations isn’t likely. The outlook is far more ominous for Clinton on an indictment for negligence in handling classified information.

IN THE MAIL: From Esther Vilar, The Manipulated Man.

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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 973.

IN THAT CASE, I’M SURPRISED OBAMA HASN’T PUSHED HARDER ON THIS: Megan McArdle: Closing Tax ‘Loopholes’ Would Choke the Middle Class.

Paying for new spending by “closing the loopholes” is a favorite rallying cry of almost everyone. But rarely are those people picturing giving up their own deductions for mortgage interest, employer-sponsored health insurance, dependent children, or retirement accounts. Why, no! Those aren’t loopholes. Those are just the basics of a decent middle-class life. Loopholes are the deductions used by other, richer people who can afford crooked lawyers.

The sad fact is, however, that almost all of the money lost to “tax expenditures” goes to you, Mr. or Ms. Middle American. It cannot be otherwise; you have most of the money. Oh, I know it doesn’t feel like you have most of the money. Didn’t you just read an article saying that the top 1 percent of Americans collect around 20 percent of national income?

Why, yes, you did. But that means the bottom 99 percent have 80 percent of national income. If we confiscated every dollar the top 1 percent made, that still wouldn’t quite cover our national expenditures. And it is not actually practical to take all of it, since the normal response to 100 percent tax rates would be to move or to stop making money.

Indeed.

IT VARIES. FOR HEALTH-INSURANCE PURPOSES, 27. FOR ABORTION, PUBERTY. FOR SEXUAL CONSENT, IT’S ONCE YOU’RE OUT OF SCHOOL. When Are You Really An Adult?

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Should The Navy Go To A Big Fleet / Small Ships Doctrine?

TODAY IN HISTORY: 17 Years Ago Bill Clinton Faced Senate For Charges Of Perjury (VIDEO).

THE HANGOVER FROM 2009 CONTINUES: Washington Post admits that, no: electric cars were NOT worth it.

Unexpectedly.

DEMOCRAT OPERATIVE WITH A BYLINE SAYS WHAT? Cruz, Rubio Charged with Race Treason by Univision’s Jorge Ramos.

Add this to his hilarious meltdown in August over Donald Trump, and it’s almost as if there’s no Republican that meets Ramos’ impossible standards.

Not to mention that Ramos’ daughter is a Hillary Clinton staffer.

KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON: A depressing campaign, and an election we need.

To put this in context, during the entire slog of the 2012 election, neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney sustained a brand as unfavorable as Clinton or Trump. John McCain, John Kerry and George W. Bush all enjoyed “favorables” of over 50 percent during their presidential campaigns, even though two out of the three were ultimately never elected president.

Today, only one out of four Americans think the country is on the right track. Americans continue to express deep economic anxiety, and the president’s job approval remains low, with particular disapproval for handling of foreign policy.

Given this complete rejection of the status quo, it is astonishing that there’s a chance that voters will be presented with this depressing choice: Hillary Clinton, — symbolic of dynastic elite, entrenched interests, corporate America and politics-as-usual — or someone radical like Trump, whose vision of forward progress is distinctly backward looking, as if to reclaim a bygone era by hitting rewind.

But taking America back to a different time isn’t possible, even if we wanted it to be.

Republicans may pine for the Reagan 1980s, while Democrats pine for the New Deal 1930s. But the makeup of America and the evolution of our economy means that neither is in the cards for us, nor should they be. The pace of demographic and technological change reshaping America means it is impossible to recreate the halcyon days of our own preferred ideological movements.

This sounds like a nice way of saying that we’re screwed.

TRUMP GOING BIRTHER ON CRUZ MAY BACKFIRE:

Was Trump hinting that he might mount a legal challenge to Cruz’s eligibility to serve as president? No doubt Trump considers it an option. If Cruz continues to surge in the polls and then pulls off a few early primary victories, Trump might attempt it — if only to corner media coverage for a few days to slow the Texas senator’s momentum.

But the gambit could backfire on Trump. Republicans across the board would resent Trump bringing a damaging issue like this to the fore of the campaign. Even raising it now, if only to speculate on what a court challenge could mean to the Cruz campaign, is not likely to win him many additional friends in the Republican Party.

And it was just Trump going birther — Rand Paul and even former GOP presidential nominee John McCain (who should know better) are also playing that gambit against Cruz this week, as the primaries loom larger. On the other hand, as John Nolte has been writing on his Twitter feed, getting the birther stuff out of the way somewhat mutes the media using this as a wedge — or worse, the typical DNC-MSM late-October drive-by massacre — if Cruz winds winning the nomination. He can yawn and declare the issue old hat, in much the same way that Obama was able to shake off the birther talk as November of 2008 approached. Cruz won’t have a supine media to help him as Obama did of course, but he can also have fun with a Reagan-esque “well, there you go again” if Hillary herself raises the issue, and point out that this isn’t the first time her presidential campaign helped birth a birther attack.

CALIFORNIA DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY FOLLOWING GAS LEAK THAT HAS BEEN SPEWING NOXIOUS METHANE FUMES INTO THE AIR FOR MORE THAN TWO MONTHS.

The leak has been dubbed “the biggest environmental catastrophe since the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010; and for now, there is no way to stop it.”

But Jerry Brown has a (D) after his name, which is why the network nightly news programs haven’t been running this story in a continuous loop.

JOEL KOTKIN: Where American Families Are Moving.

Much is made, and rightfully so, about the future trends of America’s demographics, notably the rise of racial minorities and singles as a growing part of our population. Yet far less attention is paid to a factor that will also shape future decades: where families are most likely to settle.

However hip and cool San Francisco, Manhattan, Boston or coastal California may seem, they are not where families are moving.

In a new study by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, we found that the best cities for middle-class families tend to be located outside the largest metropolitan areas. This was based on such factors as housing affordability, migration, income growth, commute times, and middle-income jobs. Many of our best-rated cities tend to mid-sized. The three most highly rated were Des Moines, Iowa, Madison, Wis., and Albany, N.Y., all with populations of less than 1 million. Among our top 10 metropolitan areas for families, five are larger than this, but only two—the Washington, D.C. area and Minneapolis-St. Paul—are among the nation’s 20 largest metropolitan areas.

Our bottom 10 includes the media’s favorite two cities, New York and Los Angeles, also the largest metropolitan areas in the nation. Three other large metropolitan areas rank in the bottom 10: Miami, Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif., and Las Vegas. The hipster cities, in other words, are not so amenable to the new generation of young families.

Hipsterville ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it’s expensive as hell. And that’s by design:

America has always had its fancy neighborhoods, often associated also with racial or ethnic exclusion. But increasingly large parts of the country, and this is true in certain cities and suburbs, are evolving into what Dartmouth University’s William Fischel has called “exclusionary regions”—too expensive for middle-class families to access.

Fischel traces much of this development to regulatory policies that restrict housing supply. In 1970, for example, housing affordability in coastal California metropolitan areas was similar to the rest of the country, as measured by the median multiple (the median house price divided by the median household income). Today, due in part to a generation of strict growth controls, home prices in places like San Francisco and Los Angeles are now three or more times higher than in some other metropolitan areas.

This has enriched the rich, at the expense of working families. Democrats supported it. Why don’t Republicans make an issue of it?

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Sanders: Clinton Lacks Courage To Stand Up To Wall Street.

Hillary Clinton hasn’t stood up to Wall Street, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) contended on Wednesday in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning joe.”

“Do I think Hillary Clinton or many other senators have shown the courage that is necessary to stand up the Wall Street power? The answer is no,” Sanders in a response to a question about whether Clinton had provided cover for Wall Street.

“We need a president who now has the courage to stand up to the billionaire class and Wall Street,” he said during the appearance.

When co-host Joe Scarborough interjected a question about whether Clinton has the courage to stand up to the billionaire class, Sanders responded, “Well I’m running for president because I think not.”

Well, her son-in-law runs a hedge fund.

KATHY GRIFFIN’S NEW YEAR’S EVE CO-STAR TO INTERVIEW JERRY SEINFELD’S COMEDIANS IN CARS GETTING COFFEE CO-STAR TONIGHT: “On Thursday, CNN will host a town hall with President Obama as part of his ‘final-year push to make gun control part of his legacy.’ In addition to sitting down with liberal anchor Anderson Cooper, the network says Obama will ‘take questions from the audience,’” Michelle Malkin writes. “Uh-oh. Get out your best pruning shears and trowels. In an age of micromanaged partisan stagecraft and left-wing media enablers, there is no such thing as a spontaneous question. CNN has a long history of allowing political plants to flourish in its public forums.”

Related: CNN Hosts Shocked, SHOCKED, That Anyone Might Believe Obama Wants to Take Guns.

Gee, wait ’til they discover that Piers Morgan fella who used to work for CNN.

2015, THE YEAR THE PC CHICKENS CAME HOME TO ROOST: “The big new development in 2015 is that the left’s culture war came back to attack the very institutions that hatched it,” Robert Tracinski writes at the Federalist. “There are two centuries of chickens coming home to roost, because that’s how long ago academic intellectuals began toying with the idea that ideas don’t matter and everything is just a raw power struggle.”

A struggle that eventually always devours its own. “And that brings us back to a question I started the year with, Tracinski adds. “Have we reached Peak Leftism?”

We’ll, we’ll have one answer to that in November.

BRENDAN O’NEILL: I hate to break it to feminists, but ‘white male privilege’ is a myth.

How’s this for dark irony: throughout 2015, ‘white male privilege’ was the buzzphrase on every rad tweeter and liberal hack’s lips, as they fumed against the easy, pampered lives allegedly enjoyed by human beings who had the fortune to be born with a penis and pale skin. Railing against ‘white men’ and their cushy existences has become the stock-in-trade of many feminists.

Yet towards the end of 2015 it was revealed that there’s a social group in Britain more derided and less successful than pretty much every other social group. Guess who? Yep, young white men. Especially young working-class white men. A large sector of the group that the new identity-politics mob loves to ridicule for sailing through life unmolested and unchallenged is actually having a rough time.

Consider this: 18-year-old women are 35 percent more likely to attend university than 18-year-old men; and where 37 percent of black school-leavers go to university, only 28 percent of white school-leavers do. These stats were unveiled by UCAS in December, leading its chief executive to wonder if it isn’t time to initiate ‘outreach’ projects designed to get more white blokes into college.

Also in December, a YouGov analysis of 48 surveys of public attitudes found that young white men are viewed as ‘the worst ethnic, gender [and] age group’. They are ‘the most derided ethnic group in Britain’. YouGov’s number-crunchers confessed to being surprised by ‘the lousy reputation of young white men’, who are seen as drunken, promiscuous, prone to drug-taking, work-shy and impolite (even as other surveys reveal that today’s yoof actually drink less and do fewer drugs than earlier generations did).

What’s more, young women now earn more than young men: £1,111 a year more, to be precise. Between the ages of 22 and 29, women in general — covering all races — out-earn guys; by the time women hit their thirties, however, their pay falls below men’s. Those young, opinionated new media feminists who get handsome advances to write books spluttering about ‘white male privilege’ are far more privileged than many of the white males they splutter about — especially the ones who empty their bins or sweep their roads. It’s almost Orwellian in its topsy-turviness — the most well-connected, middle-class women denouncing the alleged privileges of some of the most derided people in society.

Indeed.

AMERICA’S PAPER OF RECORD SOUNDS AS UNBELIEVABLE AS THE NYT: North Korea Successfully Harvests Wheat In Show Of Growing Strength.  (Yes, it is the Onion.  Though at this point, what difference does it make?)

THE FLIGHT FROM REASON: Dilbert’s Creator on Trump’s Black Magic.

I’LL BELIEVE IT WHEN I SEE IT: Will the FBI Revolt over Indicting Hillary?

RECALL HOW CARTER GOT HIS NOBEL PRIZE: You can thank Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton for North Korea’s nukes.

THEY WERE AGAINST SPECIAL INTEREST MONEY BEFORE THEY WERE FOR IT: The oddest inversion at the New York Times.

AND HE WEARS AYN RAND T-SHIRTS: So, there’s that.  From Marine Corps to ‘Star Wars’: ‘Force Awakens’ actor Adam Driver savors success.

IT WORKED FOR ME: They got bored, and wrote, and learned to do stuff like cook and play the piano and build stuff. (Though mostly I was writing or reading, not watching TV, but that’s a mater of personal style.)  I am a lazy parent and proud of it.

THEY CAN’T HAVE THEIR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO: Bill Cosby has changed the rules of the game the Clintons used to play, and Trump knows it.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: Congress Passes Obamacare Repeal and Planned Parenthood Defunding: Finally!

IT LOOKS LIKE SOME PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR A BACK DOOR:  We may need to get off the rock.

SHUT UP OR ELSE, THEY THREATENED: Death threats made against HS student who criticized college race protests.

WITHOUT DOUBLE STANDARDS, THEY’D HAVE NO STANDARDS AT ALL: Facebook’s anti-Israel double standard on hate speech.

MR. PRESIDENT, YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF US: Presidents aren’t supposed to just “act” anytime Congress doesn’t agree with their desires.

A PHRASE BOOK FOR TOURISTS IN HELL: Common SJW Phrases Translated into English.

ROGER SIMON: Hillary’s Watergate Looms.

THE COLOGNE SEX ASSAULTS: A Failure By Germany’s Elite.

What is apparent is that, during and since, there has been a widespread failure on the part of German authorities and elite institutions. The police failed to protect its citizens, the press dawdled in holding anyone to account (and see, too, those unanswered questions just above), and at least one politician even now seems to struggle to address the issue without suggesting that young women must somehow accommodate the possibility of assaults and “confusion.”
This all carries echoes of the Rotherham scandal, in which British authorities had for years turned a blind eye to a child abuse ring among Pakistani men in the north of England, seemingly at least in part for fear of looking racist. By the time anyone put a stop to it, an estimated 1,400 kids had been abused, often horrifically. Like the German police and politicians in this case—albeit on a much longer and larger scale—the British authorities may have put the need to appear sensitive over the need to enforce core values and basic human rights.

Western liberal elites see themselves both as feminists and as advocates for refugees, immigrants, and minorities. (As a sign at a protest in Cologne on Wednesday, photographed by Reuters, read, “Gegen Sexismus, Gegen Rassismus”—or, “Against Sexism, Against Racism.”) As principles, all of those are fine sentiments. But in the real world, Europe has just admitted large numbers of young men from cultures with aggressively different attitudes towards women. Authorities in Germany and elsewhere, as well as politicians, feminists, and other elites, are going to have to figure out, fast, how to talk and act about the clash of Western absolutes (the ability of women, dressed as they wish, to walk wherever they wish without fear is not up for debate) with immigrant cultures, or many more problems may lie ahead.

The problem is that these “elites” — not just in Germany, but throughout the West — are, for the most part, horrible human beings who must cover up their horribleness with virtue-signalling. And virtue-signalling is inconsistent with constructive action.

UPDATE: How out of touch are they? This out of touch: Germany springs to action over hate speech against migrants.

AT AMAZON, coupons galore on Household Supplies.

Plus, 50% or more off on Men’s Clothing.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Substitute teacher ‘busted for sex with her children’s 14-year-old friend after his concerned parents found condoms and raunchy Instagram messages.’

DO ANDROID WAITRESSES DREAM OF ELECTRIC SOUVLAKI? N.Y. Restaurant Owners Plead for Mercy as Gov. Cuomo Tightens Screws on Wages.

Related! Protesters Aren’t Going to Like How McDonald’s is Reacting to Their Minimum Wage Concerns.

As William Gibson once said, “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” And Gov. Cuomo is doing his part to make this November 2014 AP photo of robot waitresses serving customers in a China’s Zhejiang province restaurant a reality in New York as well.

UNREALITY ALL THE WAY DOWN: Shaun King tries to salvage Daily News piece based on fake Ammon Bundy tweet.

RIP, FLORENCE KING: “Can a non-believing misanthrope rest in peace? I hope so.”

To be fair, that sounds like it would be far too boring an afterlife for someone like her.

UPDATE: From 2012, the American Thinker’s salute to King: “While Miss King’s political thoughts will be missed, her disgust with a world gone mad will be more so.”

CLAY AALDERS: Blade-wielding bad-ass from history: Lieutenant Colonel John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming “Mad-Jack” Churchill. “Upon coming to a halt onshore, the soldier jumped from the craft, hucked a grenade at the Germans, then drew a full sword and ran screaming into the fray. That maniacally fierce soldier was 35-year-old Lieutenant Colonel John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill, and his stunts at this battle, known as Operation Archery, were hardly the most bizarre and semi-suicidal of his life. Over the course of World War II, ‘Mad Jack,’ as he came to be known, survived multiple explosions, escaped a couple of POW camps, captured more than 40 Germans at sword point in just one raid, and in 1940 scored the last recorded longbow kill in history.”

But today’s not entirely decadent: Woman Uses Knife To Fight Off 3 Home Invaders.

WELL, WE DID IN THE 1970s, BUT WE DIDN’T LIKE IT: Can Americans Accept a Tiny Engine in a Medium Car?