J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Media Silence on Lena Dunham Rape Questions. “In Manhattan’s publishing industry, where magazines like Glamour, Vogue, and Marie Claire treat Dunham as some sickening combination of Madonna and Rosa Parks, there is probably hardly a soul aware that Nolte has wrecked Dunham’s story. Even if a few are aware, truth and falsehood in those quarters comes by the identity of the speaker. If conservative new media wrecks Dunham’s veracity, it will take weeks for the New York publishing world to acknowledge it, if then.”

Well, Sabo is on it. But he’s not exactly Glamour. . . .

REVIEW: Sharp Aquos Crystal: A $240 smartphone that out-designs most flagships.

DON’T TELL IT THAT WHILE IT WAS ASLEEP, PLUTO CEASED TO BE A PLANET. IT MIGHT LOSE HEART. NASA’s Pluto-Bound Spacecraft Has Awakened: Launched in 2006, New Horizons will awaken this weekend and approach Pluto in the spring and summer of 2015.

ROLLING STONE MANAGING EDITOR IN 2006: “I want to do stuff that’s biased.” Mission accomplished!

READER BOOK PLUG: From reader Parker Garlitz, The Cult of Yex Saga – Part I: Second Cataclysm.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Notre Dame ‘white privilege’ class promises ‘personal transformation.’

WHEN ART SPEAKS TRUTH TO POWER: Street Artist Sabo Blasts Lena Dunham, Bill Clinton in Fake Rolling Stone Covers.

Here’s the image, via Twitter:

FASTER, PLEASE: Yale joins with leader in 3D organ printing to transform transplants.

BRANNON DENNING: One Toke Over the (State) Line: Constitutional Limits On “Pot Tourism” Restrictions.

MORE ON COLLEGE RAPE HYSTERIA: Emily Yoffe has a long, detailed piece. Here’s my favorite bit:

Assertions of injustice by young men are infuriating to some. Caroline Heldman, an associate professor of politics at Occidental College and co-founder of End Rape on Campus, said of the men who are turning to the courts, “These lawsuits are an incredible display of entitlement, the same entitlement that drove them to rape.”

You want to know what “privilege” looks like? It looks like Caroline Heldman.

Related: Susan Goldberg: Does Contemporary Feminism Need Campus Rape to Survive?

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 578.

ASHE SCHOW: Ayaan Hirsi Ali fights radical Islam’s real war on women.

YEAH, DON’T GET COCKY KIDS. OBAMA HAD STORIES LIKE THIS AFTER 2012. Inside Conservatives’ 7 Million-Strong ‘Digital Army.’

The digital army sprung to life with a click of a mouse in a nondescript office park in Alexandria. Less than 10 miles away, at the White House, the phones began to light up. One call came into the switchboard and then another. Thousands of people flooded the phone lines.

It was early August 2014, and the callers were conservatives lambasting President Obama for promising what they described as “executive amnesty.” The deluge of angry activists was not the work of a heavily coordinated national campaign, a pricey phone-banking operation, or really an exhaustive effort of any kind.

It resulted from a single post on Facebook.

The volume of calls was so high that, within hours, the White House complained it was a “security issue,” according to an email from the phone vendor hired to connect callers to the switchboard. More than 9,000 calls had been made before they pulled the plug. At the headquarters of ForAmerica, the conservative group that had launched the telephone broadside, the White House’s reaction was seen more as victory than defeat.

“We got our point across,” said David Bozell, ForAmerica’s executive director.

In the last four years, ForAmerica has quietly amassed what it likes to call a “digital army” on Facebook—a force that that now numbers more than 7 million. The group’s spectacular growth can be explained in part by the paid acquisition of its members through targeted advertising. But thanks to a daily stream of savvy and snackable red-meat messaging, these mercenaries have become loyal conservative digital soldiers whose engagement is attracting new recruits. These days, a routine post on ForAmerica’s page reaches more than 2 million people, achieves more than 100,000 “likes,” and has tens of thousands of people repost and comment.

Who’ll be ahead in 2016?

POLITIFACT SAYS YES: Has President Obama ‘lost’ more Democratic seats in Congress than other modern presidents? The story looks worse if you add governorships and state legislatures. . . .

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GIVEN THAT THEIR WAR OF LEAKS AGAINST BUSH HELPED GET OBAMA ELECTED, MY SYMPATHY IS LIMITED: CIA Employees Feel That They’re Being “Thrown Under The Bus.”

ACTIVISTS WORRY: Will Rolling Stone Debacle Hurt Campus Sexual Assault Programs? My own suggestion: With rape rates already plummeting over the past 20 years, maybe the best thing to do is not much.

Plus, from the comments: “In this article, I see quotes from a bunch of people trying to cover their tails. Like the Duke case a few years ago, we see a university mob attack a small group of what now appears to be innocent students. It was not just one or two wrong details.” The more people talk about compassion, the less compassion they have for people who stand in the way of their ideological program.

UPDATE: Howard Kurtz: Rolling Stone’s Rape Story – A Bigger Journalistic Train Wreck Than We Thought.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Friend of UVA/Rolling Stone rape accuser: It’s not a hoax. This appears to be grist for the “something happened, just not what Rolling Stone reported” theory.

Related: Mollie Hemingway: Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Old Stories Sure Read Like Bad Lifetime Movies.

Plus: Two key figures in UVa story: Rolling Stone didn’t talk to us.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Fall 2015 Law School Applicants Are Down 8.5%.

TO QUOTE MICKEY IN THE VERDICT: “They gave you the money. That means you won.” Chicago coughs up legal fees in a Second Amendment Foundation victory.

ROGER SIMON: Explaining Hillary’s Sympathy For The Devil.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Francis Wilkinson: America Is Coming Apart At The Seams.

BLOOMBERG POLL: Race Relations Have Worsened Under Obama.

In the Dec. 3-5 poll of 1,001 adults, 53 percent said race relations had gotten worse since Obama, the nation’s first black president, took office in 2009. That figure included 56 percent of white respondents and 45 percent of black respondents.

Only 9 percent of respondents said race relations had gotten better under Obama, including just 3 percent who said they had gotten a lot better. Thirty-six percent said relations had stayed about the same.

He ran as a post-racial uniter, but he’s been a race-baiting divider in office.

LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: A worsening morale crisis: After 13 years of war, troops feel burned out and without a sense of mission. More doubt their leaders and their job security.

MARGARET TALBOT ON THE RESPONSE TO Rolling Stone’s UVA Rape-Tale Debacle:

There are people who will argue that if Jackie was assaulted at a fraternity that night, it doesn’t matter if the specific details are wrong, or uncertain. Erdely herself seemed to be gravitating toward that point when she said, on Slate’s DoubleX podcast, “Given the degree of her trauma, there’s no doubt in my mind that something happened to her that night. What exactly happened—I don’t know. I wasn’t in that room. I don’t know.” As Rosin and Benedikt point out, that’s the nature of reporting: the reporter is almost never in the room. But the specific details of an accusation do matter. Erdely must have chosen this case, among all the other campus sexual assaults she could have reported, precisely because its details were so horrible that she knew it would get our attention. . . .

That isn’t exactly journalistic due diligence in a case where such extreme allegations are being made.

Plus, a key point:

More than a decade ago, I wrote about the McMartin preschool case, and other satanic ritual child abuse accusations that turned out to be false. Back then, the slogan many supporters of the accusations brandished was, “Believe the Children.” It was an antidote to skepticism about real claims of child abuse, just as today, “Believe the Victims” is a reaction to a long history of callous oversight of rape accusations. “Believe the Victims” makes sense as a starting presumption, but a presumption of belief should never preclude questions. It’s not wrong or disrespectful for reporters to ask for corroboration, or for editors to insist on it. Truth-seeking won’t undermine efforts to prevent campus sexual assault and protect its victims; it should make them stronger and more effective.

Yes. And if people don’t want the truth, I am suspicious of whatever else they do want.