HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: ASU offers course in “The Problem with Whiteness.”

SULTAN KNISH: The Hollywood Jihad Against American Sniper.

American Sniper broke box office records that had been set by blockbusters like Avatar, Passion and Hangover Part II by refusing to demonize American soldiers or to spin conspiracy tales about the war. Instead of pandering to coastal progressives, it aimed at the patriotic heartland.

In a sentence you no longer expected to hear from a Hollywood exec, the Warner Brothers distribution chief said, “This is about patriotism and all the things people say the country is lacking these days.”

The backlash to that patriotism and the things the country is lacking these days didn’t take very long to form and it goes a lot deeper than snide tweets from Michael Moore and Seth Rogen. Academy members were reportedly passing around an article from the New Republic, whose author had not actually seen the movie, but still denounced it for not showing Chris Kyle as a bigoted murderer.

Hollywood progressives are both threatened and angered by American Sniper. And with good reason.

There’s a real opportunity for a new studio that focuses on making films like this. Will some rich guy put some money into that instead of funding some lame Karl Rove initiative? It would do more good. . . .

SO OVER ON TWITTER, INEZ FELTSCHER IS ARGUING THAT Congress’s abortion bill is unconstitutional because it’s outside Congress’s enumerated powers. I think that’s probably right, and in fact argued just that in a law review article written with Dave Kopel over a decade ago. That said, however, under Sebelius Congress could presumably place a stiff federal tax on abortion. And given that the ObamaCare penalty/tax wasn’t excessive, a similar tax on abortion presumably wouldn’t be either. . . .

NEWS FROM EUROPE: Greek radical left wins election, threatening market turmoil.

Related: Euro, stocks fall as anti-austerity party wins Greek election.

YEAH, WELL, SO WHAT? Group says ‘American Sniper’ film spurs threats against Muslims. Maybe you guys need to start work on your image at home before you engage in media critiques and warning of the anti-Muslim “backlash” that somehow exists only in the media.

And when you complain about “threats,” a few Twitter posts that aren’t even actually, you know, threats don’t count.

SO THE INSTA-DAUGHTER COOKS MOST OF HER OWN FOOD AT COLLEGE, and one of the things she likes is this spiralizer, which she got for Christmas. She wrote that last night she used it to make this recipe and that it turned out really well. She also used this cast-iron skillet, which my sister gave her for Christmas. She’s becoming quite the foodie.

SO THERE’S HOPE FOR AMERICA, POST-OBAMA, AFTER ALL: Scientists Figure Out How to Unboil an Egg.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN FOR TOMORROW: Obama Goes Where The Money Is: Middle Class Savings Like Blood In The Water.

IS THE GREXIT SLOUCHING TOWARD BRUSSELS? Eurozone braced for ‘catastrophe’ as Greek PM concedes defeat in crucial election with radical left-wing anti-austerity party on brink of historic victory.

PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS HAS BEEN GOOD FOR WALL STREET, BUT NOT FOR ORDINARY AMERICANS. EVEN MIDDLE-CLASS BLACKS ARE SUFFERING.

African Americans for decades flocked to Prince George’s County to be part of a phenomenon that has been rare in American history: a community that grew more upscale as it became more black.

The county became a national symbol of the American Dream with a black twist. Families moved into expansive new homes, with rolling lawns, nearby golf courses and, most of all, neighbors who looked like them. In the early 2000s, home prices soared — some well beyond $1 million — allowing many African Americans to build the kind of wealth their elders could only imagine.

But today, the nation’s highest-income majority-black county stands out for a different reason — its residents have lost far more wealth than families in neighboring, majority-white suburbs. And while every one of these surrounding counties is enjoying a strong rebound in housing prices and their economies, Prince George’s is lagging far behind, and local economists say a full recovery appears unlikely anytime soon.

The same reversal of fortune is playing out across the country as black families who worked painstakingly to climb into the middle class are seeing their financial foundation for future generations collapse. Although African Americans have made once-unthinkable political and social gains since the civil rights era, the severe and continuing damage wrought by the downturn — an entire generation of wealth was wiped out — has raised a vexing question: Why don’t black middle-class families enjoy the same level of economic security as their white counterparts?

Hopey-changey!

DARWIN AWARD, HONORABLE MENTION: Woman injured while trying to pet black bear.

YEAH, WE’RE PRETTY MUCH LIVING IN THE END TIMES NOW: YouTube’s Highest Paid Star Is A Mysterious Woman Who Unwraps Disney Presents.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN FOR TOMORROW: Obama Goes Where The Money Is: Middle Class Savings Like Blood In The Water.

ED DRISCOLL: Is the Britain—or America—of 2015 Capable of Producing Another Churchill?

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100 YEARS AGO TODAY: The First Transcontinental Call.

FLASHBACK: My thoughts on blackout preparedness. How are we doing? Well, I put in a generator earlier this year. . . .

SORRY, OBAMACARE DOESN’T COVER YOUR CANCER THERAPY. Have some LSD.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 626.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: Davos’s Destructive Elites. “The stories add up: Jeff Greene brings multiple nannies on his private jet to Davos, and the rest of the guys gathered to talk past each other about the plight of the working man scarf down couture hot-dogs that cost forty bucks. Bill Clinton makes the case for wealth-redistribution while sporting a $60,000 platinum Rolex.”

Related: Flying Around on Private Jets to Save the Planet. America has the worst political class in history, but the rest of the world isn’t doing a whole lot better.

UPDATE: Davos Is A Corporatist Racket. “All right, you say, but surely it’s useful for powerful people to exchange ideas and learn from each other’s mistakes. Well, yes; but this lot rarely seem to learn. Whatever the problem, their preferred solution is always to establish a global bureaucracy staffed by people like themselves. Obviously, they don’t put it like that. . . . If only these men really were as clever as they thought. Or, to be more precise, if only their cleverness translated into making good decisions. In fact, Davos Man consistently gets the big calls wrong.”

SO MAYBE REPUBLICANS SHOULD ACTUALLY PASS THESE OBAMA TAX PROPOSALS:

Americans like to hear that rich people are going to be forced to pay their “fair share.” They would probably be considerably less excited to hear that Obama wants to tax the earnings on educational savings accounts, or that any assets they inherit from their parents would be subject to a capital gains tax. To be fair, there are generous exemptions. But there are a lot of affluent-but-hardly-wealthy folks in blue states who would be very unhappy to hear that that nice Westchester home Mom and Dad bought for $15,000 in 1952 is going to be subject to a capital gains tax — at the same time as they’re suddenly paying income taxes on the capital gains and dividends in little Sally’s college account. . . .

Taxing the earnings on college savings accounts is even stranger, both because this hits the middle class, and because if you tax the earnings, there’s not all that much point to having the account; essentially, Obama is taxing college savings accounts in order to fund universal community college. This is scraping the bottom of the barrel, and what it tells you is that Obama has already run through most of the practical and politically palatable ways to tax the affluent.

Add to this, since Obama wants more taxes on “the rich,” a cap on the mortgage interest deduction at, say, $200,000, and an end to the deductibility of state income and property taxes. Yeah, this will hurt Blue State types harder, but hey, they voted for Obama. This is a win-win: He gets the blame, or he vetoes it.

Also, repeal the Hollywood tax cuts!

BOB DYLAN TO AARP: The Government’s Not Going To Create Jobs.

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