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NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: US to keep 1,000 more troops than planned in Afghanistan.

Hagel, speaking at a joint news conference with President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan, said the reason for the extra troops was that U.S. allies had been slower to help out with a planned NATO mission next year than originally thought. The defense secretary insisted that troops weren’t staying longer because of a recent increase in Taliban attacks.

The president, Hagel said “has provided U.S. military commanders the flexibility to manage any temporary force shortfall that we might experience for a few months as we allow for coalition troops to arrive in theater.

Hmm.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: SMU plans layoffs, other changes to cut $35 million.

Southern Methodist University is expected to cut up to $35 million in annual operating expenses through layoffs and administrative changes in an effort to curb rising costs, even as the school continues its billion-dollar capital campaign.

The decision to rein in finances, which came as a surprise to many, follows a series of high-dollar expenditures in fiscal 2013 that included the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library, a change in the school’s athletic conference, consulting fees for a branding study to boost the school’s national reputation and 3 percent salary increases, according to a recent ratings update from Moody’s Investors Service.

Moody’s notes that the university has reached its debt capacity under its current rating and has “very thin liquidity” compared with similar universities, but it gives it a stable outlook. SMU has an Aa3 rating from Moody’s, the fourth-highest credit rating, and lags behind similar universities such as Vanderbilt, Emory and Notre Dame.

Hmm.

IT’S AS IF HE WAS JUST BROUGHT IN AS A DISTRACTION: Ebola czar Ron Klain returning to private sector.

Ron Klain, the man brought on by President Obama to run the administration’s response to the Ebola virus, will return to the private sector in 2015.

Klain, a former Fannie Mae and Cigna lobbyist, plans to return to his job with former AOL executive Steve Case by March 1, Fortune reported Friday.

“He has no intention of staying on in any other capacity here at the White House,” an administration official told Fortune. “Ron will do the job for which he was appointed and return to Revolution.”

Klain was appointed in October to oversee the combined response of government agencies after Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who was the first to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., passed away from the virus. Two of his nurses, Nina Pham and Amber Joy Vinson, contracted the virus, but went on to recover.

But hey, it worked. I would be interested, though, in seeing a report of what he actually did in his six-week tenure.

THE INEVITABLE “FAKE BUT ACCURATE” SPIN: “Ultimately, though, from where I sit in Charlottesville, to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake.”

THE REAL FERGUSON PROBLEM: Grand Juries Don’t Work That Way All The Time.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Clarksdale teacher arrested on a charge of sexual battery.

A 23-year-old Clarksdale Municipal School District teacher faces sexual battery charges after allegedly sleeping with a student, according to the Coahoma County Sheriff’s Department.

Kristen Damon was arrested at her home Tuesday and remains in jail on a $25,000 bond.

Employed through the Teach For America Program, Damon taught seventh grade English at Higgins Middle School and coached soccer at Clarksdale High School.

No word on whether the student was male or female.

JOURNALISM: Before Rolling Stone Was Conned By “Jackie” They Fell for “Billy.” (Via Romenesko).

CHARLES C.W. COOKE: Rolling Stone, Rape Apologists. “Worse, it is increasingly clear that Rolling Stone is not only indulging in one of the most high-profile examples of rape apology in recent memory, but that it is also keen to blame the victim. In its retraction, the outfit squarely places the responsibility for the mistake on Jackie herself — a classic move.”

BUT IT’S IN SERVICE OF A PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL CAUSE, SO IT’S OKAY: Michael Brown Protesters Have Shut Down More Traffic Than Chris Christie.

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JOURNALISM: NYTimes Fails to Disclose Clinton Paid for Interviews About Administration.

In a five year span, the William J Clinton Foundation gave five grants totaling $851,250 to the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. One year in particular, 2007, the Clinton gift was specifically marked: “Oral history project of Clinton presidency.”

Well, today the New York Times has a front page feature on the newly relesaed oral history project about the Clinton presidency. The one the Clintons helped pay for. But no where in the 2,600 word piece do Times writers Amy Chozick (who is on the Clinton beat) and Peter Baker (longtime White House reporter) disclose the obvious conflict of interest.

It would only be a conflict of interest if the money came from Republicans.

FORTUNATELY, IT’S GOTTEN MUCH EASIER TO CARRY A GUN: Gallup: In U.S., 37% Do Not Feel Safe Walking at Night Near Home.

ST. LOUIS: Attack on Bosnian woman near Bevo Mill is called a hate crime.

St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson has called in the FBI to help investigate what he is calling a hate crime because a woman assaulted by three black teens is Bosnian.

The Friday morning attack occurred in the Bevo Mill neighborhood where earlier this week a Bosnian man was killed with a hammer by a group of teens.

In Friday’s case, the woman, 26, told police that she was driving in the 4600 block of Lansdowne Avenue about 5:25 a.m. when three men in their late teens to early 20s walked in front of her vehicle.

When the woman attempted to drive around the young men, at least one of them pulled a gun and ordered her to stop.

Note: If someone does this to you, run them down. More:

One of the men asked where the woman was from. She said she was European.

“You’re a (expletive) liar. You’re Bosnian. I should just kill you now,” Dotson said of the woman’s account.

Based on that comment, he said, police are labeling the assault as a hate crime. The woman was pushed to the ground and kicked before the attackers fled. A passer-by told police the woman was found unconscious.

Is there some special anti-Bosnian sentiment among blacks in St. Louis? I know the Bosnian community there is quite large, but is there a history of bad relations?

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE:BYRON YORK: In tough Senate race, pork couldn’t buy Landrieu victory. Neither the Louisiana Purchase nor the Cornhusker Kickback was enough to overcome the toxic effects of voting for ObamaCare. That’s because ObamaCare was that toxic, but perhaps also in some small part because people are less receptive to pork. And so Cassidy countered with the “post pork paradigm.”

So I guess it’s time to bring this flag out one more time.

ED DRISCOLL: The MSM Gang-Raped the Truth This Week.

WELL, THAT WAS FAST: AOSHQDD calls Louisiana for Cassidy, a Landrieu loss. Remember when people thought this runoff might decide control of the Senate? Now it’s 54R, 46D.

MARK RIPPETOE TALKS TRAINING in this interview.

Here’s the iTunes link.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): U.S. Birthrate Declines for Sixth Consecutive Year; Economy Could Be Factor. Huh. What happend six years ago that could have reduced people’s faith in the future?

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MEGAN MCARDLE ON JOURNALISM AND LIES:

As any journalist or cop or lawyer or academic can tell you, reality is usually complicated. Eyewitnesses are unreliable, narratives are cloudy, the data you want is missing or never existed, people seeking money or power have pushed deep into legal gray zones without quite breaking the law. It’s not that clearer stories don’t exist — Bernie Madoff committed a very clear-cut and mediagenic crime. But those stories are hard to find, because the perpetrators are at pains to conceal their actions.

Fabricators can create exactly the sort of story that becomes front-page news: an obvious and sympathetic victim, a clearly identified perpetrator who obviously broke the law, vivid details to hold the listener’s attention. They don’t need to backtrack and say “Oh, wait, no, that happened three weeks earlier” the way that real witnesses often do, or shamefacedly confess, when confronted, that they maybe left out a few parts of the story that didn’t put them in the most flattering light. In other words, they can give us exactly the sort of story that can get us a prize, because they aren’t constrained by the often banal and frequently ambiguous details of anything that actually happened. The very reason people like Stephen Glass and Jack Kelley were so successful was that lies generally make better copy than reality.

I’m not saying that most of the amazing scoops that get printed are false. On the contrary. But it is true that journalists get offered many, many amazing scoops that simply won’t stand up to scrutiny. We keep them out of the news stream by carefully checking the stories for inconsistencies and offering the accused the opportunity to respond. Thankfully, fabrications frequently reveal themselves as questionable when you try to corroborate the details — often because these oft-rehearsed tales are carefully set up to be completely impossible to check, and the source disappears when you press. There’s also a reason that so many of the worst fabrications we know about were created by journalists, who knew exactly what they had to do to get the story through the system.

Unfortunately, reporting by others suggests that Erdely didn’t do one of the basic things that reporters do to try to keep fabrications or exaggerations out of our stories: Check with the other side. It now seems clear that her story has always been essentially a single-source story; she spoke to Jackie, and people who heard the story from Jackie, none of whom turn out to have pressed Jackie for such details as the names of the accused. According to the Washington Post, when Erdely did press, Jackie tried to back out.

Going ahead at that point, in my opinion, pretty much turned Erdely from a victim of fraud into a collaborator in it. When your single source doesn’t want to stand behind the story. . . .

Related thoughts from Hanna Rosin. “One thing we know is that Rolling Stone did a shoddy job reporting, editing, and fact-checking the story and an even shoddier job apologizing.”

Plus: “Fake rape allegations may be very rare but they have a huge impact, especially when they get so much attention.” How do we know that they’re very rare?

VERONIQUE DE RUGY: There Is A Reason We Never Crack Down On Medicare Fraud. Actually, though, it’s a classic case of anarcho-tyranny: Fraud is almost never addressed, but doctors are potentially at risk for prison time even for simple paperwork mistakes, should the authorities want to go after them for some reason.

EUGENE VOLOKH: Libel law and the Rolling Stone / UVA alleged gang rape story.

IT’S A SUCCESS, AND A CAUTIONARY TALE, AT THE SAME TIME: Sexual Misconduct Witch Hunt Recently Concluded at Yale Without a Hanging. It’s not rape just because you later wish you hadn’t slept with them.

A FEW LOUDMOUTHS COMPLAINED: Target And Kmart Pretending To Be Prudes In Australia Over A Vocal Anti-GTA5 Minority.