SONY BACKS DOWN FROM ITS BACKDOWN: Sony to release ‘The Interview’ after all. “Sony Pictures has approved limited Christmas Day screenings of ‘The Interview,’ reversing course after taking heat for canceling its planned release after threats from hackers.”

WHAT FERRIS BUELLER CAN TEACH US about who counts as “the media.”

CHICKS DIG JERKS: J.K. Rowling Is ‘Unnerved’ by Everyone’s Crushes on Draco Malfoy.

UPDATE: Given the surprisingly detailed Harry Potter discussion in the comments, let me once again recommend my colleague Ben Barton’s Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy, an explanation of how the series is a libertarian manifesto for the world’s youth. “This partial list of activities brings home just how bleak Rowling’s portrait of government is. The critique is even more devastating because the governmental actors and actions in the book look and feel so authentic and familiar. . . . Lastly, Rowling even eliminates the free press as a check on government power. The wizarding newspaper, The Daily Prophet, is depicted as a puppet to the whims of the Ministry of Magic.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: From the comments: “So college girls today live in constant fear of being raped. While daydreaming about Draco in leather pants and reading the S&M fantasy 50 Shades of Grey. What would Freud say was their problem?”

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EBOLA: C.D.C. Head Says Fight on Ebola Will Be Long.

NO SURPRISE: Children Are Leading The Cord-Cutting Revolution. “The cable industry has long pretended that the cord cutting phenomenon either isn’t real or that the only people cutting the cord are aging losers living in their parents’ basement. Of course when you actually look at the data, while cord cutting remains a slow but growing phenomenon, most of the cord cutters are young, highly educated, employed, and make a good amount of money. As it turns out, you’ll be surprised to note these folks are having children — and these children are also starting to prefer on demand, a la carte services like Netflix instead of traditional cable.”

A NICE STOCKING-STUFFER: The Photon Keychain LED Light. I have one of these and it’s very handy.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Tech groups send Miss. AG a “friendly reminder” about how bad SOPA was. “Trade groups that represent the industry’s biggest companies along with several public interest groups sent a letter to Hood this afternoon reminding him about how widely unpopular SOPA was. Attached are several other letters from prominent persons and groups who fought against SOPA back in 2011.”

AT AMAZON, last-minute markdowns on Kindle readers.

SPOILER: YOU CAN’T SEE THROUGH IT. Here’s What The Sun Looks Like In X-Ray.

UNLESS YOU HUG SOMEONE WHO HAS A COLD, I GUESS: A Hug A Day Keeps The Cold Virus At Bay.

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Also: Bacon-Flavored Toothpicks.

SHOCKER: De Blasio Taking NYC Back To 1970, Just As Republicans Warned.

LIFE IN DEBLASIO’S NEW YORK: 911 operators made ‘anti-police’ remarks, causing quarrel with FDNY dispatchers as 2 NYPD cops were dying, sources say. “The war of words occurred when news broke that NYPD cops Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were shot Saturday. One dispatcher allegedly said the cops ‘deserved it,’ said a law enforcement source.” Incredible.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS UP: We Need A House Of Repeal To Prune Back Overgrown Laws.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 593.

RAPE HOAX FALLOUT: A Joint Letter From Civil Rights Attorneys To UVA President Teresa Sullivan About UVA’s Illegal Sexual Assault Policies. This reads like the outline for a lawsuit under Title IX and Section 1983.

Related: U.Va. board chair blasts Rolling Stone for damage to university’s reputation. “During a meeting held by the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, Rector George K. Martin called Rolling Stone’s treatment of the university ‘drive-by journalism’ and denounced the damage done to the university’ reputation. Martin opened the meeting by expressing the board’s ‘collective sorrow’ for the students, faculty, fraternities and others on campus who had been ‘wrongly maligned and traumatized’ by Rolling Stone’s now disputed article alleging a gang rape and massive cover up by U.Va.”

You know, UVA President Teresa Sullivan has been remarkably supine in the face of Rolling Stone’s libel since, false or not, it advanced her preferred campus agenda. But the Board may feel differently.

OF COURSE, AN AWFUL LOT OF THESE STORIES TURNED OUT TO BE LIES: Why the Personal Became Political for Women in 2014: Women have discovered the power of going public with deeply intimate stories.

Lena Dunham, who shot to fame in no small part for her emotional and corporeal honesty, waited almost a decade to speak publicly about her experience with college sexual assault. “Speaking out was never about exposing the man who assaulted me,” she would later explain of the decision to go public. “Rather, it was about exposing my shame, letting it dry out in the sun.” In many ways, Dunham has made the political connections to her work explicit, as when she teamed up with Planned Parenthood and EMILY’s List on her book tour. Dunham has also continued work on her critically acclaimed, albeit controversial, TV show Girls, a fiction that for many feels uncomfortably real.

You’d think that National Journal’s Lucia Graves would mention that Dunham’s story about being raped by a top campus Republican named “Barry” was exploded, and that Dunham and her publisher have admitted that there was no “Barry.” (Her story about abusing her infant sister, on the other hand, which Graves unaccountably ignores, appears to be true.)

The, of course, there’s the UVA rape hoax, and the 1-in-5 campus sexual assault figure that Kirsten Gillibrand — prominently mentioned in the article — has backed away from, something that Graves also doesn’t mention. And Gillibrand’s own fat-shaming story — like Dunham’s, suspiciously non-specific, and eventually tied to a conveniently dead Democrat — seems just a little too convenient.

So when we talk about “personal stories,” maybe the emphasis here is on the “stories” part (stories as in “fiction”), rather than the personal. But Graves is right about one thing: It’s all about power.

EXPULSION IS SILLY, BUT A CONSERVATIVE STUDENT WHO MADE SIMILAR RACIST TWEETS WOULD BE IN TROUBLE NOWADAYS: At Brandeis, Outrage Over Student’s Tweets. I’d like to go back to the idea that campuses are places that prize free speech, but under current rules I think lefties should suffer just as much blowback as anyone else.

THE STORY OF A COLUMBIA STUDENT falsely accused of rape.

He says that he is innocent and that the same university that found him “not responsible” has now abdicated its own responsibility, letting mob justice overrule its official procedures. The mattress project is not an act of free expression, he adds; it is an act of bullying, a very public, very personal, and very painful attack designed to hound him out of Columbia. And it is being conducted with the university’s active support.

“There is a member of the faculty that is supervising this,” he said. “This is part of her graduation requirement.”

Most of the lynch-mob justice on campuses is actively facilitated by faculty and staff. This is why, as I say, Congress needs to look at holding universities responsible for this kind of bullying.

ED MORRISSEY: Five Resolutions for Republicans in 2015.

TOM MAGUIRE TO TA-NEHISI COATES & CONOR FRIEDERSDORF: Send Better Arguments. “All too often when our friends on the left stage a protest it turns violent. At which point, we hear explanations about how it was hijacked by a radical fringe and we are all supposed to be surprised. Maybe one day these leaders on the left will achieve a better understanding of their base.”

UPDATE: From the comments: “Maybe they should hire the Tea Party folks to help train their minions on how to protest without violence or destruction of property.”

Heh. But (barely) deniable violence for purposes of intimidation is all part of the scheme. That’s what “no justice, no peace” means. As Richard Fernandez has written: “It is impossible to understand the politics of the Left without grasping that it is all about deniable intimidation.” That’s why they don’t want you to own guns, and that’s why they’re so panicked at groups, like the Tea Party, that aren’t intimidated.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS UP: We Need A House Of Repeal To Prune Back Overgrown Laws.