OUR GRADUATES ARE GREAT: UT Law Ranks 15th On Super Lawyers List. “The University of Tennessee College of Law is one of the top fifteen law schools producing the most “Super Lawyers,” according to a new ranking released by The National Jurist. UT Law ranks fifteenth among all law schools in the nation, with 14.9 percent of the college’s alumni named Super Lawyers. Among the public law schools on the list, UT Law ranks seventh.”

We’re also 7th on the list of schools whose graduates have the least debt.

THERE’S NO SUBSTITUTE FOR CUBIC INCHES: The Ten Largest Displacement Car Engines You Can Buy Today.

HEY, REMEMBER WHEN BILL CLINTON CLAIMED “WE’RE EISENHOWER REPUBLICANS HERE?” New Email: Podesta Rips Axelrod For ‘Totally Caving in to Right Wing Economics.’

If only that was true — both Obama and the nation would be doing better.

Speaking of which, Citibank warns of US recession next year:

As the U.S. economy enters its seventh year of expansion following the 2008-09 crisis, the probability of recession will reach 65 percent, Citi’s rates strategists wrote in their 2016 outlook published late on Tuesday. A rapid flattening of the bond yield curve towards inversion would be an key warning sign.

“The cumulative probability of U.S. recession reaches 65 percent next year,” Citi’s rates strategists wrote in their 2016 outlook published late on Tuesday. “Curve inversion will likely come more quickly than the consensus thinks.”

Unexpectedly, in other words. But have the last six years felt like a real economic recovery — “Morning in America,” to a coin a phrase — to you?

JOHN MANCHIP WHITE, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Researchers hope to drill through crust to the Mantle at the crust’s thinnest point.

CAPITALISM WITHOUT CASH? “We are so screwed,” Steve Green writes:

One obvious side effect of negative rates is that people would withdraw money from their banks and hold cash. That practical problem means that it is very difficult for banks to push a “real” interest rate on consumers past about -0.5%. Once the negative penalty starts to bite, people just hold bank notes which don’t cost fees.

So how could banks force people to spend hard cash? Ken Rogoff of Harvard University has suggested banning cash altogether. According to the Economist:

Ken Rogoff of Harvard University calculates that there is $4,000 of currency in circulation for every person in America. Much of it is used to hide transactions from tax authorities or the police. Abolishing it would curb such activities, as well as helping central bankers.

Alternatively, Gregory Mankiw, also of Harvard, has made a tongue in cheek suggestion that the Fed hold a lottery in which it periodically declares that notes with serial numbers ending in a given number from 0-9 suddenly be declared worthless. In that scenario, the expect return of holding any notes would be -10%.

What could go wrong?

PERHAPS NANOTECHNOLOGY WILL SOLVE THIS. OR PERHAPS WE’RE ENTERING VERNOR VINGE’S “AGE OF FAILED DREAMS.” Moore’s Law CPU Power Doubling Rate Slowing.

WANNA GET AWAY? Mayor of liberal utopian paradise Chicago headed to socialist utopian paradise Cuba for secret vacation?

Rahm Emanuel “now furious at Mike Allen [of Politico] for revealing that his family will be vacationing in Cuba.”

Rahm’s always seemed to be such a likable guy. Why is everyone conspiring against him to reveal such inconvenient truths?

WORRIED ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE AND FISH SWIMMING IN THE STREETS OF MIAMI? Tax The Blue Zones!

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: The U.S. Air Force Is Using Civilians to Fly Drones in Combat Theaters. Civilians fly “combat air patrols” but aren’t “combatants.” “It’s an important differentiation because the use of civilians in combat operations is technically illegal.”

BECAUSE HE KNOWS TOO MUCH: Why aren’t President Obama and Hillary Clinton demanding Rahm Emanuel’s head? “For the the in­teg­rity of the only party that rep­res­ents a vast ma­jor­ity of black voters, Demo­crat­ic lead­ers every­where need to send the Chica­go may­or a mes­sage: You’re dead to us.” Too late!

THE ABOLITION OF MAN: How C. S. Lewis Predicted Today’s College Campus Craziness—in 1944.

CHICAGO AND RAHM EMANUEL: PARTNERS IN CORRUPTION, Kevin D. Williamson writes:

Emanuel may very well end up losing his job. Ill-tempered, accustomed to getting his way, and arrogant as Pharaoh himself, he’s not much of a patron to begin with. But the model of public life he stands for will survive him. It may even get worse. People in Chicago may be unhappy with their schools, their police, their public finances, their roads and sidewalks, and the 2,700-and-counting shootings in their streets, but they are not victims of corruption at city hall: They are partners in that corruption. And they’re getting what’s coming to them.

CNN Law Enforcement Analyst Harry Houck has a simple two-step plan for reform: Chicago Should Impeach Rahm Emanuel, Elect GOP Mayor. And not just Chicago — as Kevin noted in a previous article, “There is no city in the United States larger than San Diego with a Republican mayor,” something that must change, if only to save the cities from these crime and corruption-ridden municipalities’ worst parasitic instincts.

Beyond the individual cities themselves, there’s another implication for “Rahm Emanuel’s Disaster for Dems,” Noah Rothman posits at Commentary. “A smart Republican office seeker could make hay of this moment and drive a wedge in between Democrats and their most loyal voters. For a politician auditioning to serve as the president of all Americans, this would be a smart course of action. It would also be a politically beneficial one.”

Is there anyone in the Stupid Party smart enough to step up?

SORRY, BUT THAT APPROACH OFFERS INSUFFICIENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRAFT: The Free Market Way to Help the Poor.

PANTS AT HALF-STAFF: Report: Sandy Berger, who plead guilty to removing classified documents in 2005, dead at age 70.

LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES: Hamilton College edition. Steven Hayward at Power Line exposes a mind-boggling list of 83 demands presented by progressive infants students at Hamilton College, a small private college in New York:

We, the Students of Hamilton College, demand the end of the inevitable tokenization of all marginalized bodies at Hamilton College. Hamilton College cannot continue to overwhelmingly perpetuate narratives that center whiteness, able-bodied individuals, colonization, heteronormativity, and cisnormativity.  The faculty, administration, staff, and student body at Hamilton College almost ubiquitously encompass a single population that continues the exclusion of historically underrepresented communities.

This syndrome produces a methodically unfair system that inhibits these underrepresented bodies from thriving. . . .

We, the Students of Hamilton College, demand that the Office of the President releases an official statement without clause acknowledging that Black Lives Matter. . . .

We, the Students of Hamilton College, demand for questions aimed at the prospective President-Elects to center systematic oppression and Hamilton Colleges’ accountability with institutional racism. We demand a President of Color for the twentieth President of Hamilton College. . . .

We, the Students of Hamilton College demand that President Joan Hinde Stewart issues a formal apology to all Faculty, Students, Staff, and Administrators of Color, as well as their allies, neither of whom were provided a safe space for them to thrive while at Hamilton College.

We demand an immediate increase in Faculty of Color on campus. We also demand an increase in tenure track hires for Faculty of Color. In order to retain Faculty of Color, we demand an increase in mentorship for tenure track Faculty of Color. We demand the prioritization of Faculty of Color in new hires. We demand the representation of all students by fostering diversity within our classrooms. We demand the active recruitment of Indigenous Faculty, Gender Nonconforming and Transgender identifying Faculty, and an increase of all Faculty of Color in the STEM fields. We, the Students of Hamilton College, demand Black Faculty to make up thirteen percent of Faculty before 2025. This number must exclude members of the Africana Studies Department .

We, the Students of Hamilton College demand mandatory yearly diversity and inclusion workshops for all Faculty and Staff with optional workshops being offered consistently throughout the academic year. . . .

We, the Students of Hamilton College, demand the immediate an increase in the recruitment of undocumented students to the college. We demand for the endowment of various scholarship programs to benefit these students presence on our campus. Hampshire College of Massachusetts executes an effective model. These undocumented students would be admitted under the Dream Act.

We, the Students of Hamilton College, demand the immediate institution of free tuition for all Indigenous peoples. . . .

Translated: We, the students of Hamilton College, hate whitey. We are racist and vile infants. We want what we want–now!–or we will sit here and throw a tantrum.

Yeah, this affirmative action thing is really working out well.  I hope les infants terribles get everything they want. It would serve them right. Because an expensive degree from THAT new and shiny “safe space” college (current tuition is almost $50,000 per year) would be utterly worthless.

HAS THE PRESIDENT LOST HIS ABILITY TO DISCHARGE THE POWERS AND DUTIES OF OFFICE? “Is it now time to invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment?” Those are the questions that Charles Hurt of the Washington Times asks:

Anyone who listened to President Obama speak to reporters in Paris on Tuesday would reasonably conclude it is high time to start drawing up the papers to transmit to Congress for his removal.

If you are one of the millions and millions of literate Americans out there who have simply tuned this president out the past three or four years, that is certainly understandable. But if you tuned in to the long, rambling, empty press conference, you would have been truly alarmed.

Without the use of the teleprompter, his speech can be described only as “halting.” It was impossible to count the number of times he seized up, able to deaden the silence with only a drawn-out “uh,” “um” or “ahhh.”

The White House dutifully scrubbed all the halts and stutters from the official transcript, and it was impossible to count them in real time. But a sample of his incoherent word salad found him stuttering about every 15 words, which comes to more than 330 “uh-um-ahhs” in a single appearance.

This is not the same soaring speaker who inspired so many in 2008. This is a broken-down man who has lost the only gift he ever had.

Teleprompter XD-235?

Seriously though, Hurt’s article’s packs an extra punch, coming on the heels of Obama’s fellow Democrats Stuart Rothenberg comparing Obama to Dubya, another president who had difficulty on the podium, and Richard Cohen similarly realizing the tremendous mistakes he made in 2008 and ’12. But as Iowahawk’s video from late September of 2008 highlights, well, we tried to warn you.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 937.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Which Colleges Are Actually Diverse?

“Diversity” is in many ways the organizing principle of elite American higher education. Colleges tout their commitment to diversity in promotional materials and saturate their campuses with diversity centers. U.S. News publishes an annual ranking of colleges by their level of diversity. Of course, in all these instances, diversity refers to racial and ethnic diversity—not diversity of viewpoint. You won’t find political diversity statistics in any college brochures or popular rankings.

But that may be about to change: Heterodox Academy, a new, reform-minded organization we’ve written about before, is in the process of creating a “systematic assessment of viewpoint diversity at America’s most prestigious colleges and universities.” Jon Shields, a contributor to the site and professor of government at Claremont McKenna, just came out with a post highlighting some preliminary findings . . .

Click through to Shields’ original post to read which other schools are high on the list. Racial diversity is important, but so is viewpoint diversity. It’s hard to see how a student could get a well-rounded education in fields related to politics, history, and international affairs from an ideologically homogenous faculty. At a time when campuses are cementing their reputations as some of the most ideologically monolithic institutions in the country, prospective students and parents should be very interested in the kind of data Heterodox Academy is producing.

Agreed.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER FAKE HATE CRIME: Protester at Kean U. Fabricated Threats Against Black Students, Police Say. “Online threats to “kill every black male and female” at Kean University were fabricated by a former student and activist, a New Jersey county prosecutor, Grace H. Park, announced on Tuesday. The Star-Ledger reports that Kayla-Simone McKelvey, who is black, was charged with a third-degree count of creating a false public alarm.”

So we have black students in Chicago posting fake threats against white students, and black students at Kean posting fake threats against black students. All because of white privilege, or something.

AT AMAZON, fresh deals for Cyber Monday Deals Week. Browse and save!

YESTERDAY’S GIANTS, TODAY’S DWARVES: Victor Davis Hanson explores “The Left’s highly selective application of today’s standards to yesterday’s heroes:”

How strange that students in the lounges of the Ivy League, their surroundings replete with gyms and movie theaters, condemn those who died in droves in covered wagons as sexist. Does anyone ponder that the supposed ogres of yesterday spent a vastly smaller percentage of their waking hours devoted to contemplating how morally inferior were their ancestors, and a far greater proportion dealing with pain, illness, and back-breaking work — just trying to live one more day?

In the past, did those suffering from inoperable tumors, 20-400 eyesight, or rickets have time to worry about micro-aggressions, safe spaces, and trigger warnings? We of the 21st century, who have nearly conquered nature, now blast as illiberal and insensitive all those of past centuries who did not enjoy our margins of error. Before I am going to blast my grandfather for being a sexist, I’m going to try to imagine what it was like to have one’s lungs eaten out by mustard gas in the dank trenches of World War I.

Read the whole thing.

IMMIGRATION: “All You Americans Are Fired.” Note that the victims here are mostly black.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Rights group sends letter to Ed Dept. opposing affirmative consent.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has sent a letter to the Education Department formally opposing affirmative consent, or “yes means yes,” policies at colleges and universities.

FIRE has written against the use of yes-means-yes policies previously, as the rules define nearly all sex as rape and provide little recourse for accused students to prove their innocence.

“Given [the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights’] repeated acknowledgment that colleges’ and universities’ implementation of Title IX should not impinge on students’ due process rights, the agency should clearly and publicly censure any consent standard — including the ‘affirmative consent’ standard — that seriously undermines an accused student’s ability to defend himself or herself in a fair hearing,” wrote FIRE’s senior program officer, Susan Kruth.

Kruth pointed to an “insufficient notice of what behavior is prohibited or required” as one of the problems with affirmative consent. Kruth notes the court case Grayned v. City of Rockford, in which the Supreme Court wrote that laws must “give a person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, so that he may act accordingly.”

Affirmative consent standards, Kruth argues, do not provide such an opportunity. She wrote that the policies “suffer from being both overly broad and vague,” and that the policies themselves are disputed even among supporters.

FIRE is doing great, and much-needed work. If you’re planning any year-end charitable contributions, you ought to consider donating to them.

DEMS IN DISARRAY: Democrat Warns Obama’s Incompetence Could Drag Us into ‘Devastating Nuclear War.’