NORMAN J. ORNSTEIN PROVIDES the Washington Establishment’s take on the rise of Trump.

SHOCKER: “North Carolina did not respond to a public records request from USA TODAY Sports submitted in early July.”

BE KILLED BY MUSLIMS, BLAME ALL RELIGION: “I’m just guessing the cartoonist meant to attack religion in general and to be very obviously not about Islam.”

Violence works. Which is why I think we should respond violently to savagery.

AG LORETTA LYNCH CLARIFIES OBAMA GUN RULE. SUMMARY: “I suspect President Obama is hoping for ignorant crap like this from the media to make it look like he’s really doing something.”

What actually happened: “This has always been the law if you have a Federal Firearms License, and it’s always been illegal to be selling guns for “livelihood or profit” without first obtaining an FFL. The new EOs change nothing in that regard. But we do have some guidance from the Attorney General that indicates the Administration may indeed try to prosecute marginal cases it previously would not have. . . . So this is not to be part of any rule change, but merely a policy decision to prosecute ‘gun dealers, hobbyists and collectors,’ under the ‘new guidance.’ Rather than change the rule, they will use the current vague rule to send ‘hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.’ Though, in this case, it’s not mere harassment, but an intent to imprison. They know if they don’t put the dampers on the growing gun culture, their dream of destroying the Second Amendment will never be realized.”

“WELL, YEAH, BETTER TO AVOID A DEMOCRAT PARTY, JANET RENO-STYLE MASSACRE” — So Far, Local, State, and Federal Authorities Have Taken Low-Key Approach to Malheur Occupation.

In addition to not repeating the disasters of the Clinton-era,* isn’t a low-key response towards those occupying government property Eric Holder, Mike Bloomberg, and Jean Quan (the former mayor of Oakland) approved?

* Which should be everyone’s goal for 2016.

NO WONDER HILLARY GETS SUCH A SWEET DEAL ON THOSE DEBATES! Turns out the former Secretary of State and presumptive 2016 Democratic presidential nominee has a special arrangement with the Democratic National Committee. Essentially, it’s an incentive for hyper-dollar donors to max out to Hillary and give extra-generously to the DNC. Hillary scratches Debbie’s back, Debbie scratches Hillary’s back, while Bernie and Marty get screwed. The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak quotes several campaign finance experts who say it’s unprecedented.

LUKE GITTOS: The whispers about Cosby have chilling echoes of Salem. Well, the whole country’s beset by a curious breed of godless puritanism.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): A teacher invited a teen to her home for pizza, but his mom walked in on something less than wholesome.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY:

When The New York Times tells the rubes that it’s time to hand in their guns, when The Washington Post suggests that Jesus is ashamed of them for not welcoming Syrian refugees the week after a terrorist attack, people react not because they love guns or hate Syrians, but because their natural urge to being told by coastal liberals that they’re awful people and that they should just obey and shut up is to issue a certain Anglo-Saxon verb and pronoun combination with all the vigor they can muster. And if they can’t say it themselves, they’ll find someone who will, even if it’s a crude jerk from Queens who can’t make a point without raising his pinky like a Mafia goon explaining the vig to you after you’ve had a bad day at the track.

—“How the P.C. Police Propelled Donald Trump,” Tom Nichols, the Daily Beast.

Nichols’ editor at the Daily Beast certainly did his part.

JUST ONE PROBLEM: WHAT IF 2017 WILL BE EVEN WORSE? The Top 10 Reasons to Take a Pill and Sleep Through 2016.

HiberNol, take me away!

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? THE MAN’S A CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLAR* AFTER ALL: Obama ‘Confident’ Gun Executive Actions are ‘Entirely Consistent’ with Second Amendment.

* No really — just ask him!

Related: “Obama criticized George W. Bush for using the urgency of the immediate post-9/11 environment to expand the president’s powers, but he only built upon that ballooning authority when he occupied the Oval Office. The next president is equally likely to cite Obama’s dubious example to pursue unilaterally the agenda preferred by his or her core supporters” — On the flip-side however, “From halting the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, to the sprawling scope of the EPA’s regulatory authority, to the implementation of a dangerous nuclear détente with Iran, to the normalization of relations with Cuba; these liberal policy achievements can be unraveled with the stroke of a pen once Barack Obama is out of office.”

Let’s hope so.

NO. NEXT QUESTION?: Can Jeb Bush Make a Comeback? Joe Rago at the Wall Street Journal interviews Jeb! to ascertain the answer to a question that answers itself:

Contra Mr. Trump, Mr. Bush is medium energy, if graded on the overly amped-up curve of his competitors. That isn’t meant as a put-down. Part of Mr. Bush’s appeal—an acquired taste, apparently—is his analytic thoughtfulness and sometimes ironic detachment. A more deliberative debate might underscore his strengths. His challenge will be to translate the exclamation mark on his “Jeb!” logo, which he told Stephen Colbert “connotes excitement,” into the genuine article. . . .

Yet one obstacle to a Bush comeback is that, at minus 25.8 points, the spread between his favorable-unfavorable polls in the Real Clear Politics average—27.5% to 53.3%—is the highest of any candidate, including Mrs. Clinton at minus 8.5. Mr. Trump, the runner-up, has net favorability at minus 23.3. The difference is that the businessman is disliked by Democrats, while Mr. Bush is not well liked among Republicans. In a Dec. 22 Quinnipiac poll, 30% of registered GOP voters viewed Mr. Trump unfavorably, versus 52% for Mr. Bush.

Mr. Bush broke with one faction of the political right on immigration and education standards—but it’s hard to imagine any specific policy apostasy that could rationalize this level of dislike. Not in an election where Mr. Trump, a lifelong Democrat who in 1999 proposed a one-time 14.25% tax on wealth, is feted as a conservative luminary. . . .

The problem with Jeb! is that he fails to exude strength and leadership at a time when Americans are desperately yearning for it. His personality reminds one of a geeky, boring history professor who drones on and on about details, when at this particular moment of history, Americans seem to want a larger-than-life hero who may be short on details, but long on courage.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Hold Onto Your Astro-Butts, 2016 Will Be a Big Year for Space.

THIS REPORT MAY NOT BE TRUE, BUT SOONER OR LATER ONE PROBABLY WILL: There’s Cougars In Them Thar Hills.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: What flight attendants really think of you.

ON #OREGONUNDERATTACK AND #YALLQAEDA: Stop Calling Everyone a Terrorist.

Related: Both the Bundy Occupation and ‘Black Lives Matter’ Are Revolts, Not Protests.

But only the latter is DNC-MSM approved.

EMERGENCY GUILT RESERVES: “If you live a life powered by guilt, it can be a hard thing to sustain. . . . Never fear, HuffPo to the rescue!”

BILL’S FEMALE ‘FANCLUB’ BACKFIRES: As Hillary Clinton’s husband hits stump for the first time the women on stage behind him scowl, grimace and look like they’d rather be ANYWHERE else.

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HUCKABEE CALLS 2016 CYCLE ‘BEWILDERING:’

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee called the 2016 election cycle perplexing Sunday due to voters shying away from candidates with past political experience.

“This has been, of all the election cycles I’ve been involved in, this has been one of the most bewildering, because it’s almost as if the more experience, the more preparation one has had for this job, it’s almost like it’s a detriment than it is an asset,” Huckabee told a crowd in Urbandale [Iowa].

I’m not at all sure what’s so bewildering about it — if there’s one thing the DNC-MSM told me about presidential elections in 2008, experience simply doesn’t matter when someone with overwhelming charisma has entered the race. Why shouldn’t that be true for both parties?

I HOPE NEWSBUSTERS HAS THEIR TiVOs PROGRAMMED FOR TONIGHT: I’ll be curious to read which of the late night talkers mocks Hillary’s UFO statement — or if Hillary’s palace guard even mentions it at all.

ATTENTION, CHATTANOOGANS: My former research assistant — now a hard-boiled Chattanooga criminal lawyer — has started her own law firm. She’s smart and good.

I THINK THAT’S HOW OBAMA’S BETTING: Don Surber: House of Saud About To Collapse. On the one hand, it deserves to. On the other hand, I doubt the replacement regime will be any better. And this is likely true: “President 45 is going to have to deal with this, and President 44 is going to leave him with a weakened military, adversaries who mock us, and allies who no longer trust us.”

Related thoughts from Richard Fernandez. “An administration which based its foreign policy strategy on simultaneouly befriending rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran finds that instead of dampening the competition the effect has been to heighten their conflict to a critical point. . . . ‘Nothing has gone right for Riyadh.’ To be fair, nothing has gone right for anybody at all — except ISIS — ever since the power vacuum created by Obama’s ‘leadership from behind’ imploded Syria and Iraq.”

DOES EUROPE HAVE A FUTURE? “Europeans are now faced with questions they have hitherto preferred to dodge. Are Europeans ready to fight for Europe? What is the place of Islam in a post-Christian Europe? Or, to look at it from the jihadist point of view, what is the place of Europe in a fast-expanding and globalized Islam? Is 21st-century Europe still the heart of Western civilization, or is it changing out of all recognition?”, Daniel Johnson, the founder of the British monthly Standpoint, writes at Mosaic.

“However one answers those questions, a brave new world seems to be emerging in which Europe becomes the theater where the clash of civilizations is played out. So far, the signs are that this encounter will be no more peaceful than it has been in the Middle East.”

At the moment, Mark Steyn’s question a decade ago seems rather prescient: “The hyper-rationalism of post-Christian Europe turns out to be wholly irrational: what’s the point of creating a secular utopia if it’s only for one generation?”

Related: Robert Spencer: “The Western world has moved forward since the days of fire and brimstone, but the Middle East is turning backward toward it.” That’ll play out well for all concerned in Europe.

DON SURBER: Austin Discovers Garbage In, Debt Up. “Austin, Texas, thought it was going to become rich off its recycling program. Instead, it spent more than $3 for every $2 it brought in. Demand for garbage is low, which is why people throw it away. So what is Austin’s solution to lagging prices? Increase supply.”

SO ON A READER RECOMMENDATION, I’ve stuck some of these motion-sensor LED lights around my yard and they seem to work quite well.

TWO CNNs IN ONE!

● Face it, Oregon building takeover is terrorism.

—CNN, today.

● Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don’t get it.

—CNN, October 5, 2011.

As John Podhoretz tweeted yesterday, “So it’s OK to occupy a park near Wall Street but not an empty office building in the middle of Oregon? I’m against both. How about you?” Adding, “Admit it. You like people who have your politics and you make allowances, and you want people whose politics you hate to be arrested.”

This is CNN.

UPDATE: Five Times CNN Whipped Up Violence In Baltimore.

BILL CLINTON FLUSTERED WHEN ASKED WHETHER PAST IS FAIR GAME (VIDEO): “An ABC News reporter asked Bill Clinton whether his past is fair game in the 2016 presidential election. Clinton appeared flustered and unsure what to say.”

Hey, the past is only fair game when it’s a Republican. Mitt Romney teasing a student when he was a high school senior – unfit for the presidency. Obama doing drugs and Clinton abusing women in their younger days?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ABOUT TIME: Mainstream Media Finally Takes Interest in Massive Discrepancy Between Hillary Clinton and the Benghazi Families.

WHO’S SHE KIDDING? Hillary Clinton Promises She’ll Investigate Area 51, UFOs.

Just another case of a Clinton covering up an affair.

WE SHOULD PROBABLY FIND A WAY TO BAN THIS, SINCE INCOME INEQUALITY IS OUR GREATEST PROBLEM, EXCEPT MAYBE FOR GLOBAL WARMING: The Marriages of Power Couples Reinforce Income Inequality. “These days, an investment banker may marry another investment banker rather than a high school sweetheart, or a lawyer will marry another lawyer, or a prestigious client, rather than a secretary. Whether measured in terms of income or education, there are more so-called power couples today than in the past, one manifestation of a phenomenon known as assortative mating, or more generally the pairing of like with like. These matches are great for those individuals who can build prosperous and happy family alliances, but they also propagate inequality across the generations. Of all the causes behind growing income inequality, in the longer run this development may prove one of the most significant and also one of the hardest to counter.”

Well, I’ve offered some reform proposals that would help.

21ST CENTURY WARFARE: Russia and China’s “Enhanced Human Operations” Terrify the Pentagon.

U.S. adversaries are already working on something America is reluctant to: Enhanced Human Operations (EHO).

EHOs entail modifying the body and the brain itself, creating what some have called “super soldiers.” At a press conference laying the Defense Department’s future research and development strategy on Monday, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work warned that America would soon lose its military competitive advantage if it does not pursue technologies such employing artificial intelligence.

“Now our adversaries, quite frankly, are pursuing enhanced human operations, and it scares the crap out of us,” Work said.

Altering human beings from the inside to more effectively fight in combat presents ethical dilemmas for American scientists and military planners. Work says those ethical concerns typically don’t apply to authoritarian governments like Russia’s or China’s, but their lack of hesitation in developing EHOs may force America’s hand.

That’s usually how these things work.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Be A Moderately Successful Person.

“CAMPUS FREE SPEECH HAS BEEN IN TROUBLE FOR A LONG TIME”: I’m pleased to announce that the Cato Institute has just released my new essay as the lead essay in its January 2016 issue of Cato Unbound.

Here’s a little info about Cato Unbound, in case you aren’t familiar with it:

Each month, Cato Unbound will present an essay on a big-picture topic by an important thinker. The ideas in that essay will then be tested by the comments and criticism of equally eminent thinkers, each of whom will respond to the month’s lead essay and then to one another. The idea is to create a hub for wide-ranging, open-ended conversation, where ideas will be advanced, challenged, and refined in public view.

My essay gives a brief overview of the history of campus free speech over the last few decades and examines the recent cases of speech suppression on college campuses that have captured the media’s attention. It is live now on Cato Unbound’s website.

Replies from law professors Eric Posner and Catherine J. Ross are to come, and discussion will follow through the end of the month.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Man Infuriates Ex-Girlfriends By Putting Them All Into A Group Chat. Hilarity ensues, and one of them sets up a date with him.

JACOB SULLUM: The Absurdly Harsh Penalties That Sparked the Oregon Rancher Protest: A federal judge rejected mandatory minimums for Dwight and Steven Hammond as unconstitutional; an appeals court disagreed.

NOBODY RESPECTS A “MALE FEMINIST” ANYMORE, NOT EVEN FEMALE FEMINISTS: Planned Parenthood to male allies: You suck.

Actually, it’s probably especially female feminists.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: A Starfish-Killing, Artificially Intelligent Robot Is Set to Patrol the Great Barrier Reef.

GOOD: University of Missouri’s Efforts To Placate Protesters Have Created Backlash. “Kurt Bahr, a Republican state representative, says some of his constituents have told him that they regret attending Mizzou and do not want their children to go there, because they do not trust the new leadership of the university. One of his constituents even said that he feared for the safety of his daughter on campus thanks to the ‘instability’ there.”

Plus, this disturbing bit: “Yet the First Amendment does not give people a free pass to go round saying hateful things, points out Mr Henson.”

Um, yes, actually, it does. Perhaps lawprof Henson was misquoted by The Economist, which seems a bit weak on the First Amendment generally these days. But given what’s happened at Mizzou this year, it’s distressingly likely that he actually said this.

INSIDE THE GREAT BRITISH RECORDING STUDIOS: I have a review of veteran music journalist Howard Massey’s excellent, heavily-illustrated new book at the PJ Lifestyle blog.

(And no, that’s not my Telefunken U47 — but I wish it was!)

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Chicago Sings The Blue-Model Blues: Mayor Rahm Emanuel desperately seeks a way out of the government union trap.

IN THE MAIL: The Year’s Best Military SF and Space Opera (BAEN).

Plus, today only at Amazon: 40-70% off Lilly Pulitzer Women’s Clothing.

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Plus: 77% off the Alien Anthology and Prometheus Bundle.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 970.

ERIC S. RAYMOND: Why I Joined The NRA.

After 20 years of evading joining the NRA, I finally did it last week.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the NRA because, despite the fearsome extremist image the mainstream media tries to hang on it, the NRA is actually rather squishy about gun rights. A major symptom of this is its lack of interest in pursuing Second Amendment court cases. Alan Gura, the civil-rights warrior who fought Heller vs. DC and several other key cases to a successful conclusion, was funded not by the NRA but by the Second Amendment Foundation. Also, in the past, the NRA has been too willing to acquiesce to unconstitutional legislation like the 1986 ban on sales of new automatic weapons to civilians.

So, you might well ask: why am I joining an organization I’m dubious about now, when the gun-rights cause seems to be winning? Popular support for Second Amendment rights is at record highs in the polls, a record seven states now have constitutional carry (no permit requirement), Texas just became the 45th state to legalize open carry last week…why am I joining an organization I’ve characterized as squishy?

I joined because the state-worshiping thugs on the other side are doubling down, and they still own most of the media and the machinery of the Federal government. After decades of pretending that they only wanted soi-disant “common-sense” legislation aimed at specific problems around the edges of gun policy, the Democratic Party is now openly talking of outright gun confiscation. The usual suspects in the national press are obediently amplifying their propaganda.

Some things you do for substantive effect – giving money to the SAF so Alan Gura can win another case is like that. Some things you do less for effect than as as a signal of pushback intended to create political momentum and demoralize the other side; joining the NRA is like that.

Yep. I went life-member this fall for the same reason.

SHOT: What grocery shopping in the USSR was like (video).

Chaser:

It was September 16, 1989 and Yeltsin, then newly elected to the new Soviet parliament and the Supreme Soviet, had just visited Johnson Space Center.

At JSC, Yeltsin visited mission control and a mock-up of a space station. According to Houston Chronicle reporter Stefanie Asin, it wasn’t all the screens, dials, and wonder at NASA that blew up his skirt, it was the unscheduled trip inside a nearby Randall’s location.

Yeltsin, then 58, “roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement,” wrote Asin. He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, “there would be a revolution.”

* * * * * * *

“When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people,” Yeltsin wrote. “That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it.”

—“When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Clear Lake,” the Houston Chronicle, April 7, 2014.

Incidentally, just compare the photos atop the two articles to understand Yeltsin’s amazement.

BILL IS BACK: What ‘buy one, get one free’ really means with the Clintons. “When Paula Jones, an Arkansas state worker, and Kathleen Willey, a Democratic volunteer at the White House, accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment, minions of the Clintons systematically set out to discredit them. Ditto with Juanita Broaddrick, the owner of an Arkansas nursing home, who said Bill Clinton raped her when he was Arkansas attorney general in 1978. Indeed, Errol Louis of the New York Daily News stunned a CNN interviewer last week by noting that 14 women have accused Bill Clinton of some form of sexual abuse. That’s not up to the numbers of women accusing comedian Bill Cosby of abuse, but Bill Clinton does get his own Wikipedia page listing his accusers. . . . To the extent that Hillary Clinton accuses Republicans of waging a ‘war on women,’ the history of her husband’s record with women will blunt the effectiveness of her attack. Voters may have extended sympathy to Hillary as a wronged spouse back in the 1990s, but the one-third of voters who don’t remember the impeachment of Bill Clinton well may be surprised to learn just how big Hillary’s role in discrediting Bill Clinton’s accusers has been.”

IT’S AS IF MODERN LEFTISM IS ACTUALLY ABOUT RE-CREATING THE OLD ARISTOCRATIC CLASS: The dangerous separation of the American upper middle class. “For many, the most attractive class dividing line is the one between those at the very, very top and everybody else. It is true that the top 1 percent is pulling away very dramatically from the bottom 99 percent. But the top 1 percent is by definition a small group. It is not plausible to claim that the individual or family in the 95th or 99th percentile are in any way part of mainstream America, even if many of them think so: over a third of the demonstrators on the May Day ‘Occupy’ march in 2011 had annual earnings of more than $100,000.”

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Chicago Sings The Blue-Model Blues: Mayor Rahm Emanuel desperately seeks a way out of the government union trap.

KARMA: LA Renters Rat Out Airbnb Users, Get Evicted Instead. “This doesn’t quite rise to the level of seriousness evinced by, say, The Lives of Others, the German film about ubiquitous spying in the old GDR. But there’s a level of irony here that seems lost not just on Phyllis Murphy but the [L.A.] Times‘ reporter, too.”

HOWARD WOLOWITZ, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Willy do it? Man with bionic penis to finally lose his virginity at 43:

Mohammed Abad will pop his cherry in the next few days with sex worker Charlotte Rose after a dinner date.

Mo, who lost his penis when he was six in a car accident, said: “I have waited long enough for this — it’ll be a great start to the new year. My penis is working perfectly now so I just want to do it. I’m really excited. I can’t wait for it to finally happen.”

Mo first had surgery to fit the eight-inch bionic penis in 2012, but it has only been fully functional for a few months.

It has two tubes running along its length which inflate when he presses a button on his testicle.

Charlotte, 35, will not be charging Mo when they meet up in London.

It’s too bad Bob Guccione isn’t alive to read this story, which reads like the long-awaited convergence of articles from his old publications Penthouse Forum and Omni.

OSWALD SPENGLER, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Our spoiled, emasculated, de‑spiritualised societies in the West are in terminal decline.

DANIEL MITCHELL: Brazil and Mitchell’s Theorem of Societal Collapse. “A nation is doomed when people think it’s okay to steal from their neighbors using the government as a middleman.”

FLASHBACK: 2007: Australian PM Howard Warns of Obama Danger:

Prime Minister John Howard has launched a broadside against US presidential hopeful Barack Obama, warning his victory could destroy Iraq and prospects for peace in the Middle East.

Mr Howard’s stinging attack against the popular Democrat, who formally launched his bid for the Democratic candidacy overnight, also appears to commit Australian troops to staying in Iraq well into 2008.

Only days after saying Australia’s alliance with the US was about more than his personal friendship with US President George Bush, Mr Howard warned that an Obama victory would be a boost for the terrorists. . . .

“I think that would just encourage those who wanted completely to destabilise and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for (an) Obama victory,” Mr Howard told the Nine Network.

“If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats.”

Well, he nailed that one.

ROGER KIMBALL: Why I Like Antonin Scalia (Part 1 of 678).

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON OFFERS POLITICALLY INCORRECT NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS:

We live in an expanding culture of victimhood fueled by identity politics. Americans are supposedly saved from themselves by a new hipster generation of Silicon Valley zillionaires, socially aware techies, progressive government bureaucrats, crusading liberal journalists, and cranky, mostly irrelevant academics. So why do they not address the need for politically correct self-policing? Here are five examples of how postmodern do-gooders could help the nation in 2016.

Read the whole thing.

SO IS THIS TRUER POST-COSBY? Flashback: The Jeffrey Epstein Affair Imperils Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Prospects. “Exactly how tight is the friendship between former President and potential future first gentleman Bill Clinton and Mr. Epstein, who owns a private island in Florida and is now accused of having sex with girls as young as 12 and procuring young girls for sex with other friends of his? What was Bill Clinton doing on the island with Mr. Epstein on multiple occasions and why did he fly overseas on Mr. Epstein’s plane at least 10 times?”

IT’S OFFICIAL: THE LEFT HAS THROWN RAHM EMANUEL OVERBOARD. “Meanwhile, The New Yorker explains that the real problem was that Rahmbo was too conservative.”

Be careful what you wish for in Chicago, lefties:

Rahm’s last opponent, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, was caught posing with Latin Kings gang leaders who had been arrested after working on a political campaign. His son was arrested for threatening police officers as a member of the Two Six gang. Garcia’s protégé, Ricardo Muñoz, benefited from an election in which the Latin Kings turned out to vote for him on pain of being beaten up by other gang members.

Garcia was the “progressive” choice in that election. His plan was to raise more taxes including income taxes and sales taxes, along with a mysterious proposal for “something bold, something that we’ve never considered before in terms of figuring out the revenue side of things.”

Considering that he was running against a man who had tried to tax Netflix, there was no telling what unexplored taxation territory he wanted to exploit. And Garcia won 34 percent of the vote.

No matter what happens, Chicago is screwed.

In 2012, Chicago magazine could run columns exploring “Why Chicago Isn’t Detroit.”

Not yet at least — but the Venn diagram separating the two cities’ differences is certainly merging fast:

Taken together, these passages suggest that the only way for Emanuel to regain the support he’ll need to govern is to back off of his reformist agenda — e.g., stabilizing finances and pensions, education reform, and economic development downtown — and kowtow to the ruinous demands of “black leaders.” In short, to make Chicago more like Detroit.

At a minimum, Emanuel will have to kowtow when it comes to policing, a process that has already started according to the Post. This raises the prospect that crime will increase due to less effective policing, as it seems to have done in Baltimore for example.

This would be a terrible outcome for a city where gun violence is already out of control. Indeed, Emanuel himself has blamed increased crime in Chicago on police officers becoming “fetal” out of concern they will get in trouble for actions during arrests — i.e., the Ferguson effect.

Well, I had a good time visiting Chicago last year — not least of which, being happy to have survived the experience.

FLASHBACK: As college student, Eric Holder participated in ‘armed’ takeover of former Columbia University ROTC office. “As a freshman at Columbia University in 1970, future Attorney General Eric Holder participated in a five-day occupation of an abandoned Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) headquarters with a group of black students later described by the university’s Black Students’ Organization as “armed,” The Daily Caller has learned. Department of Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler has not responded to questions from The Daily Caller about whether Holder himself was armed — and if so, with what sort of weapon.”

JOHN HINDERAKER: Dean Minow, How’s That Investigation Going? “Since then, there has been radio silence on the investigation. This is, perhaps, because a group of students set up a web site called Royall Asses that argued, highly persuasively, that ‘anti-racist’ social justice warriors perpetrated the alleged hate crime as a hoax.”

If it weren’t for hate crimes by “anti-racist” social justice warriors, how many hate crimes would there be?

FLASHBACK: Clinton Reaches Deal to Avoid Indictment and to Give Up Law License.

On his final full day in office, President Clinton has reached an arrangement with a special prosecutor to avoid being prosecuted after he leaves office in connection with the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Mr. Clinton accepted a five-year suspension of his law license, agreed to pay a fine of $25,000 to cover counsel fees arising from the case and acknowledged that he had committed a breach of professional conduct because of testimony he gave in the sexual-harassment suit brought against him by Paula Jones.

“I have apologized for my conduct, and I have done my best to atone for it with my family, my administration, and the American people,” Mr. Clinton said in a statement released this afternoon. “I have paid a high price for it, which I accept because it caused so much pain to so many people. I hope my actions today will bring hope and closure and finality to these matters.”

Just, in Bernie Sanders’ words, something about “Bill Clinton’s sex life.”

JOEL KOTKIN: How Liberals Are The New Autocrats: Progressives may preach the joys of localism, but the trend in government is all the other way in everything from climate change to the economic complexion of your neighborhood.

This could be how our experiment with grassroots democracy finally ends. World leaders—the super-rich, their pet non-profits, their media boosters, and their allies in the global apparat—gather in Paris to hammer out a deal to transform the planet, and our lives. No one asks much about what the states and the communities, the electorate, or even Congress, thinks of the arrangement. The executive now presumes to rule on these issues.

For many of the world’s leading countries—China, Russia, Saudi Arabia—such top down edicts are fine and dandy, particularly since their supreme leaders won’t have to adhere to them if inconvenienced. But the desire for centralized control is also spreading among the shrinking remnant of actual democracies, where political give and take is baked into the system.

The will to power is unmistakable. California Governor Jerry Brown, now posturing as the aged philosopher-prince fresh from Paris, hails the “coercive power of the state” to make people live properly by his lights. California’s high electricity prices, regulation driven spikes in home values, and the highest energy prices in the continental United States may be a bane for middle and working class families, but are sold as a wonderful achievement among our presumptive masters.

Under President Obama, rule by decree has become commonplace, with federal edicts dictating policies on everything from immigration and labor laws to climate change. No modern leader since Nixon has been so bold in trying to consolidate power. But the current president is also building on a trend: Since 1910 the federal government has doubled its share of government spending to 60 percent. Its share of GDP has now grown to the highest level since World War II.

Today climate change has become the killer app for expanding state control, for example, helping Jerry Brown find his inner Duce. But the authoritarian urge is hardly limited to climate-related issues. It can be seen on college campuses, where uniformity of belief is increasingly mandated. In Europe, the other democratic bastion, the continental bureaucracy now controls ever more of daily life on the continent. You don’t want thousands of Syrian refugees in your town, but the EU knows better. You will take them and like it, or be labeled a racist.

This will not end well.

THE ONION, AMERICA’S PAPER OF RECORD: Study Finds College Still More Worthwhile Than Spending 4 Years Chained To Radiator.  Barely.

HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLOSION 2015 IN SUMMARY: The 13 Most Ridiculously PC Moments on College Campuses in 2015.

BUT IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION THIS DOESN’T EVEN STAND OUT: Flashback 2013: “Climate Change” Expert Jailed for Conning EPA out of $900K.

AND NOW LET’S PUSH OFF THE ROCK, SHALL WE: The Artist Who Helped Invent Space Travel.

I THINK IT’S DEMENTIA: “You know, if we put the money into Alzheimer’s that we otherwise would put into some additional military asset, just think of the lives it would save,” Clinton said…

THE RIGHT TO BE OFFENSIVE: Charlie Hebdo editor: Censorship must not win. Paid for in blood. Are we at absolute moral authority yet?

AT THIS POINT, REALLY, IT SHOULD MAKE A LOT OF DIFFERENCE: Here’s the bottom line of the Hillary e-mail dump.

MAD DUCK: President Obama’s lame-duck drive for disastrous ‘success’.

THIS IS NOT NEWS TO ANY PARENTS OF BOYS WHO HAVE BEEN AWAKE THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS: And personally it p*sses ME off. Campus Turmoil Begins in High School. Oh, and we’re not doing girls any favors either.  You want to know why women fail at life and become unhappy adults?  Look to the mollycoddling of girls in most schools.

EVENTUALLY HE’LL REALIZE IT’S JUST DIFFERENT, NOT WORSE: The Web We Have to Save. The rich, diverse, free web that I loved — and spent years in an Iranian jail for — is dying. Why is nobody stopping it?

I FOR ONE WELCOME: Erica, the ‘most beautiful and intelligent’ android, leads Japan’s robot revolution.

FASCINATING (AND SAD) STORY: An 18th-century outrage. Lèse humanité.

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: It’s just like a Michelangelo! Epic New Year’s Eve photo of drunken carnage on the streets of Manchester spawns a string of ‘artistic’ memes.

Reminder: Theodore Dalrymple’s essays on life in 21st century England are warnings, not how-to guides.

(Via Maetenloch at Ace of Spades.)

DON SURBER: Boston Globe Sets Its Minimum Wage At $0.00 an hour.

DAVID AXELROD REMINDS EVERYONE HOW BIG A LOSER HILLARY CLINTON WAS EIGHT YEARS AGO TONIGHT.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Babysitter who forced boy, 13, to perform sex acts on her is spared jail.

SPENGLER: Saudi Arabia Stews In Policy Hell. “Last week’s mass executions in Saudi Arabia suggest panic at the highest level of the monarchy. The action is without precedent, even by the grim standards of Saudi repression.”

RACISM, SEXISM, AGEISM, AND ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC: Gun-controller Mark Kelly: ‘Middle-Aged White Men’ with Decreased Life Expectancy Cling to Guns.

FLASHBACK: Kurt Schlichter: Liberals May Regret Their New Rules. “That photo is me about ten years ago, standing in the ruins of a land where people rejected the rule of law in favor of the rule of force. I think a lot about my year-long deployment to Kosovo these days. I think a lot about people today who, for short term political points, cavalierly disregard the rules, laws and norms that made America what it is. I think a lot about how liberals, especially those who boo God, should pray to Him that those rules, laws and norms are restored. . . . Which brings us to America in 2015. It’s becoming a nation where an elite that is certain of its power and its moral rightness is waging a cultural war on a despised minority. Except it’s not actually a minority – it only seems that way because it is marginalized by the coastal elitist liberals who run the mainstream media.”

Related: Yugoslavia’s Warning To America.

Also: “God protects fools, drunks, and the United States of America. Of course we were a much more devout nation when (Otto von) Bismarck made that observation.”

PRETTY SURE THAT WAS THE INTENT: Donald Trump’s provocative first TV ad raises the temperature of GOP race.

Donald Trump’s ad begins with a shot of President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Then comes a U.S. battleship launching a cruise-missile strike. From there it moves swiftly through an explosive montage: The suspects in the recent California terrorist attack. Shadowy figures racing across the U.S.-Mexico border. Islamic State militants.

The narrator, a deep-voiced man, speaks ominously: “That’s why he’s calling for a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, until we can figure out what’s going on. He’ll quickly cut the head off ISIS and take their oil. And he’ll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for.”

The spot closes with the image of Trump thundering at one of his rallies, “We will make America great again!”

Wonder what the next one will be. . . .

A VERY COOL tornado photo.

OOPS: “Who needs feminists to destroy our sense of manhood when we have Christian conservatives?”

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Chicago Sings The Blue-Model Blues: Mayor Rahm Emanuel desperately seeks a way out of the government union trap.

DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: State congresswoman who asks Hillary about Bill’s past labeled a ‘heckler’ and ‘disrupter’ by the Washington Post.

Related: President Obama to hold town hall on guns with Kathy Griffin sidekick.

THE ART OF THE DEAL: Trump: Iran deal was so bad it’s suspicious.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Whatever Happened To Latino Political Power? “Sure enough, in 2008 and 2012 about two-thirds of the Hispanic electorate backed the candidate who promised a path to citizenship. But Barack Obama did not deliver, even when his party controlled both houses of Congress, and then he earned the title “deporter in chief” by hustling nearly two million unauthorized immigrants back across the border. . . . More oddly still, the most prominent Latinos on the political stage are conservative Republicans who take a hard line on immigration enforcement. Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida challenge what it means to be a Latino leader by promoting policies at odds with a majority of Latino voters, but nonetheless they are the sons of Latin American immigrants. To label them ‘traitors,’ as some activists have done, renders the term ‘Latino’ a political affiliation based on a litmus test, not an ethnicity that can claim the power of census numbers.”

To be fair, that’s what it is.

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT LITTLE ROCK PROFESSOR FILES FOIA ACTION TO GET LAW SCHOOL ADMISSIONS DATA, COLLEAGUES RETALIATE BY CHARGING HIM WITH RACISM: “After two professors emailed complaints about Steinbuch’s lawsuit — questioning his grading practices and whether he is biased against minority-group students given his research conclusions that the school has lower admissions standards for black students — an investigation into his grading and the bias complaint has begun.”

Sounds like something the legislature should look into. And it’s a debacle for the law school, particularly as people will tend to assume that whatever they’re hiding must be awfully bad — not just affirmative action admissions disparities, which most schools have, but something more serious, like false numbers reported to the ABA and bar examiners, or maybe Texas-style political admissions. Sooner or later, the truth will come out, of course, but in the meantime the speculation is likely to be intense, and bad for the school.

Meanwhile, this is bad enough, and if there’s racism here, it’s not Prof. Steinbuch’s:

Steinbuch is researching race-based admissions at the school.

His research shows the law school admitted black students with significantly lower admissions scores than white students over the 6-year period studied and that those students failed the bar exam at a rate twice as high as white students’, he said.

The school never informed students with low entrance scores of their lower likelihood of bar passage, and as a result certain students continued to enroll at the school “to their own financial detriment,” the lawsuit states.

Ouch.

FROM GARDEN & GUN: Cold Weather Cocktails.

SNAKE PLISSKEN, CALL YOUR OFFICE:  Escape from Chicago, the mess that Democrats made.

SAUDI ARABIA SEVERS DIPLOMATIC TIES WITH IRAN AFTER EMBASSY ATTACK.

Insert Kissinger Iran-Iraq War quip here.

And speaking of quips, Brad Thor tweets, “Can someone PLEASE get this important news into tomorrow’s paper so Barack Obama sees it & can figure out what 2 do?”

LEFT DEMANDS MEDIA START CALLING BUNDY GROUP ‘TERRORISTS.’

Related: “Did anybody ask Dems about this re Wisconsin?”

NIGERIA UNVEILS Africa’s Biggest Jesus Statue.

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JONATHAN HAIDT: Campus Turmoil Begins In High School.

A CHEERFUL NOTE: The Many Things That Could Go Badly Wrong for Europe in 2016. “It may not be a 1914-style powder-keg, but the continent is going to have to work harder than ever to defend—let alone build on—its achievements of the last 60 years.” May not be.

SAVE A SAMPLE OF HER DNA FOR ANTI-AGING RESEARCH: Elle Macpherson at 51.