FLASHBACK TO 2008: A Vote For Obama Is A Vote For Civility.

WE NEED PHAGES OR NEW ANTIBIOTICS OR SOMETHING: ‘Superbugs’ Kill India’s Babies and Pose an Overseas Threat.

THE CAYENNE’S MINI-ME: The 2015 Porsche Macan Turbo: A 400-horsepower Porsche for the Starbucks drive-thru. “There is an artificiality to the Macan Turbo’s handling, bolstered as it is by physics-defying technology. The torque-vectoring differential and adaptive suspension make it seem smaller and lighter during cornering, at least until it eventually succumbs to understeer.”

AN INTERVIEW WITH SCIENCE FICTION WRITER Tim Powers. I quite enjoyed his Declare.

VIDEO: Watch a guy do a 5-mile wheelie: Helmet-cam captures freestyle motocross rider Jeremy “Twitch” Stenberg’s seemingly endless motorcycle wheelie.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: How Nanobot Swarms Will Hunt Down Cancer Cells. Faster, please.

THE INSTA-WIFE: UVA, The War On Fraternities, And The Fight For Male Space.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 576.

POLICING AS A NUMBERS-DRIVEN SHAKEDOWN SCHEME:

No, it’s not a race thing. It’s a Ray Kelly thing. That man singlehandedly ruined this department. When I came up as a rookie, you were assigned an older cop who had been around and knew what they were doing. We were taught that you catch more flies with honey. Basically, if you let the small things go — like the guy selling loosies or weed or whatever on the corner — then when the big shit happens, like homicide or burglary, those are the same guys who will tell you all about it. If they hate you, they won’t tell you shit. . . .

Nowadays, since Kelly’s Operation Impact, rookies are taught one thing: Write tickets, do searches, make money. They’ll have a quota they have to fill. They’re not supposed to, but they do. They come up not knowing their asses from their elbows. These rookies don’t understand how to let the small stuff go. They’ll be on your back for a bag of grass. So then when things happen, they overreact.

Plus: “It’s just that people don’t hear our side. When you’ve been on this job for a while, you see some awful shit. There was a little girl who died once — anyway, you just numb-out to a certain extent. When you see those same things over and over, you just lose some part of yourself.”

LIKE JENJIS KHAN! John Kerry Is Trying to Stall the Release of the CIA Torture Report.

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WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Media Furious With Rolling Stone’s Mishandling Of UVA Rape Story. Or, as it seems to be, “non-rape story.”

Reaction to Rolling Stone’s admission was both swift and furious from across the ideological spectrum.

“Rape on college campuses remains a huge problem,” the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein tweeted. “Tragedy of the story is it will distract from that/cast doubt on future incidents.”

Similarly, Breitbart News’ Mary Chastain called it “a complete disgrace to actual rape victims.” And the Washington Free Beacon’s Lachlan Markay said “Rolling Stone is really screwing over other victims who will now face even greater skepticism in reporting campus rape.”

Some journalists who defended the article, even after its many inconstancies came to light, blasted Rolling Stone for failing to vet the story properly.

“This is really, really bad. It means, of course, that when I dismissed Richard Bradley and Robby Soave’s doubts about the story and called them ‘idiots’ for picking apart [the story], I was dead f**king wrong, and for that I sincerely apologize,” Jezebel’s Anna Merlan wrote.

“It means that my conviction that [Rolling Stone] had fact-checked [the] story in ways that were not visible to the public was also wrong. It’s bad, bad, bad all around,” she added.

“Welp. Turns out many of us, myself included, were wrong to trust the story,” Slate’s Jamelle Bouie tweeted.

The apologies are nice, but other backers of the story also need to apologize for calling anyone who questioned it “rape apologists.”

ROLL CALL: Three Things To Know About The Louisiana Runoff. “Landrieu is known for snatching victories from the jaws of defeat. But this year, the national environment that sunk many of her colleagues seems likely to overwhelm her as well. President Barack Obama is incredibly unpopular in Louisiana, and Cassidy has taken full advantage of that fact.”

OH, HELL NO — PUT THE CHAIRS EXTRA-CLOSE TOGETHER: HHS asks GOP: Keep us away from Gruber.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is asking lawmakers not to seat ObamaCare consultant Jonathan Gruber next to Medicare’s top official when the two testify on Capitol Hill next week.

HHS Assistant Secretary for Legislation Jim Esquea wrote to the House Oversight Committee with the request, stating that government witnesses are “almost always afforded an opportunity” to sit alone or with other federal officials.

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“The accommodation of separate panels for government witnesses reflects important comity in congressional-executive relations,” Esquea wrote. “The relatively few exceptions to this practice reinforce the seriousness of this accommodation.”

The Oversight panel, led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), is preparing to grill Gruber over his comments that the “stupidity of the American voter” and a “lack of transparency” helped ObamaCare pass in 2010.

“The request is currently before Chairman Issa but at past hearings, government officials have testified alongside other non-administration witnesses,” said Becca Watkins, a spokeswoman for the committee.

While he has apologized, Gruber’s remarks have become their own flashpoint in debates over ObamaCare. Republicans say the comments confirm their view that the law was not passed in an open process.

Democrats have sought to distance themselves from Gruber. The Esquea letter is the clearest example related to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, who will serve as a witness at the same hearing.

Having the two seated together — with all the resulting photos — would be a public relations nightmare for the administration.

Which it should be, and the GOP would be crazy not to make it happen.

WORTH READING AGAIN: Petty Offenses and Police-Community Relations in Ferguson.

THE UVA FAKE-RAPE SCANDAL REMINDS ME OF THE Hofstra fake-rape scandal. And also of this fake-rape case. Plus, not just one, but two, posts on college as a hostile environment for male students, going back to 2002.

TOM MAGUIRE: “I am delighted to see Phi Kappa Psi cleared; I am having a harder time believing that nothing of consequence happened to Jackie.” It may or may not have, and if it did, it may or may not bear any relationship to the story she told Rolling Stone.

Related: 4 discrepancies surrounding the U.Va. gang rape allegation.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl: “Rolling Stone’s on record source served on TWO WH task forces?? What are the chances??”

WHO POLICES PROSECUTORS WHO ABUSE THEIR AUTHORITY? Usually Nobody.

ACCOUNTABILITY: Don Surber: Suspend UVA’s President, Teresa Sullivan:

On November 22, University of Virginia President Teresa A. Sullivan unilaterally suspended all activities by fraternities based on a report on an alleged gang-rape reported by the Rolling Stone.

Today, Rolling Stone for all intents and purposes retracted that story.

UVa.’s board should suspend Teresa A. Sullivan immediately. Her decision was arbitrary, rash and wrong. Even Delta House got some semblance of a trial in the movie, “Animal House.”

Even if the Rolling Stone story had been true, her response was unfair, prejudiced, and a sign of lousy judgment and poor leadership. But she could have asked simple questions — was there a party on September 28? do they have pledges in the Fall? — herself. Instead, UVA knew about this claim but did nothing until it was in Rolling Stone, and then she responded in a knee-jerk, hateful, PR-oriented way, one that punished the innocent but not the guilty in order to provide the appearance of firmness. That was a betrayal of her responsibility to the University of Virginia’s student body, every one of whom has the right to expect a President who will deal fairly, honestly, and sensibly with whatever comes up.

Meanwhile, I expect the members of the Board of Visitors who — briefly — fired her a couple of years ago feel their judgment was vindicated this week.

YOUR RAPE: Is It Clickbait? Does It Pop? “She was rape shopping: going from campus to campus auditioning rape victims, contacting advocacy groups and asking for introductions. But the rapes she found at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Penn didn’t have the right narrative feel. They were just rapes, and she needed a cover-worthy rape. So she kept shopping until she found someone who would tell her a version of the story she had already decided to tell. . . . Get better rapes, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Penn. Let’s face it: For magazine journalism, yours just aren’t colorful enough.”

Related thoughts from Tom Maguire.

THE WAPO’S ERIK WEMPLE: Rolling Stone’s disastrous U-Va. story: A case of real media bias. “Under the scenario cited by Erdely, the Phi Kappa Psi members are not just criminal sexual-assault offenders, they’re criminal sexual-assault conspiracists, planners, long-range schemers. If this allegation alone hadn’t triggered an all-out scramble at Rolling Stone for more corroboration, nothing would have. Anyone who touched this story — save newsstand personnel — should lose their job.” And the newsstand personnel should wash their hands.

CLIMATE SKEPTIC/BLOGGER ANTHONY WATTS is asking for help.

YOU KNOW, I MIGHT JUST HAVE A LITTLE DRINK LATER TONIGHT: Today is the 81st anniversary of the repeal of prohibition. Of course, what’s sad is that we didn’t learn our lesson with that debacle.

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