I DON’T THINK THAT HELPS: Muslim in Face The Nation focus group: If Trump keeps talking, number of Muslim terrorists in America “will skyrocket. . . . He’s driving and fueling anger.” Starts about 2:10. Most of the others, I should note, disagree with him.

SO THIS CRUZ AD CAME OUT YESTERDAY, and already has over 700,000 views on YouTube.

UPDATE: Oops — wrong link. Fixed now. Sorry! Now up to 720,000. (Bumped.)

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 955.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: President Pangloss and the Refugee Crisis.

There should be no mistake about this: If some kind of world order isn’t restored and, therefore, the refugee crisis isn’t brought to an end, pressure to prevent migration into the West will only grow. The West’s own geopolitical failures of nerve and execution, that is, are the cause of its deteriorating ability to live up to its values when it comes to the treatment of the victims of war. President Obama and the hand wringers generally think that the solution to the migrant crisis is to scold people for being unwilling to absorb ever growing numbers of refugees escaping from ever more disastrous failures of foreign policy. But this is a dead end. You can’t have an orderly world without a world order, and a world order can’t exist unless somebody is willing to do what it takes to defend it. President Obama’s Jeffersonian decision to let the Middle East burn without launching any American response is the direct cause of the flare-up in nativism, Islamophobia, and anti-refugee sentiment in both Europe and the United States.

That doesn’t mean the U.S. should be sending ground troops into every conflict zone on planet Earth. Our foreign needs to be politically and economically sustainable for the long term. We need allies, we need a prudent awareness about limits and costs, and we need a strategic approach to international politics that allows us to focus our resources and attention on the things that matter most.

But as one ex-Obama official after another has made clear, we haven’t been doing that over the last seven years—and one of the consequences is the weakening hold of exactly the values that President Obama cares most about over public opinion across the West.

America chose the form of its Destructor in 2008.

THIS ISN’T UNHEARD OF: ‘Human chimera’: Man fails paternity test because genes in his saliva are different to those in sperm.

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AS ED NOTES, Roger Simon wasn’t impressed with the Democrats’ debate.

There was a time when I made joking references to Hillary Clinton as the most uncompromising wartime president in U.S. history. But that was before I saw this photo.

To be fair, she was uncompromising about the length of her bathroom break, schedules be damned.

ROGER SIMON ON LAST NIGHT’S DEBATE: The Democratic Candidates Do Their Best to Preserve ISIS:

But talk of passing the buck, Hillary, during the debate, accused Donald Trump of being ISIS’s best recruiter, specifically that they had already used him in a propaganda video.  That turned out not to be true.  You will be amazed to hear that Hillary lied.

Inconceivable!

GEORGE WILL: “Higher education is increasingly a house divided. In the sciences and even the humanities, actual scholars maintain the high standards of their noble calling. But in the humanities, especially, and elsewhere, faux scholars representing specious disciplines exploit academia as a jobs program for otherwise unemployable propagandists hostile to freedom of expression.”

THE BEST 2016 CAMPAIGN BOOK IS ABOUT 1988: “The best way to understand the 2016 presidential campaign is to read ‘What It Takes,’ Richard Ben Cramer’s 1992 masterpiece on the 1988 presidential primary. If you don’t have time to read its 1,047 pages, here are some of its most important insights.”

THIS ISN’T THE 21st CENTURY THAT TELEVISION ONCE PROMISED ME: Company selling ‘fake hymens’ to Muslim women in Germany — which burst with fake blood to trick husbands into thinking they are virgins – sees sales surge as migrant influx spikes.

SWEDEN DESCENDS INTO ANARCHY:

Once upon a time, there was a safe welfare state called Sweden, where people rarely locked their doors.

Now, this country is a night-watchman state — each man is on his own. When the Minister of Justice, Morgan Johansson, encourages breaking the law, it means opening the gates to anarchy. Mr. and Mrs. Swede have every reason to be worried, with the influx of 190,000 unskilled and unemployed migrants expected this year — equivalent to 2% of Sweden’s current population. The number is as if 6.4 million penniless migrants who did not speak English arrived in U.S. in one year, or 1.3 million in Britain.

And speaking of Britain, as Michael Walsh writes, “Things Getting Ugly at the Chunnel as ‘Migrants’ Attack.”

NAHH. THIS CALLS FOR DEFCON 10: Al Gore demands we go to Defcon 5 to fight global warming!

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT LAST WEEK, Frank Cagle’s Must-Read Column On The GOP and Trump:

What I don’t understand about the Republican establishment these days is that they fail to recognize that Trump uses outrageous statements to garner attention, but he taps into issues of real concern to the American people. But if you want to stop Trump, don’t attack him; appeal to the people who support him. Offer sensible solutions to problems he has identified, rather than his half-baked, unrealistic rhetoric.

For example, when the Syrian refugee controversy erupted Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz suggested that maybe we could take only Christian refugees from the Middle East. They were excoriated for the idea. President Barack Obama stood in the Oval Office and said America could not have a religious test for admission and it was un-American. He should know better.

The 1965 immigration reform act, which still governs, has specific criteria for the admission of refugees: people fleeing religious persecution. Who is facing more religious persecution than the Christians in Syria and other areas controlled by ISIS? Beheading, buried alive, machine gunned. Any country has the right to decide who can be admitted and who cannot. Until 1965 Third World immigration was prohibited. There are Christian relief agencies in the Middle East that could help vet refugees facing persecution and help them resettle here.

Did Bush double down, make the case and provide an alternative to Trump’s bellicosity? No, he just attacked Trump’s idea to stop Muslim immigration temporarily, instead of making the issue his own. Trump’s plan? How would that work? Offer anybody getting on the plane a ham sandwich and bar anybody who didn’t eat it? His half-baked idea is about as practical as his plan to have Mexico pay for the border wall.

I think a Trump presidency would be a disaster. While he talks a good game, he has no practical way to carry out his promises. Like Cas, he will say anything to grab attention, get a headline and get on television. But his success should be a warning to the political establishment. The American people are fed up with political correctness, and if you do not provide sensible solutions to the issues Trump has raised, don’t be surprised when he stand on the podium as the GOP nominee.

Jeb’s not the guy to do this, it appears.

PAUL MIRENGOFF: “It’s not always easy these days to tell which party controls the Senate Judiciary Committee. That’s never a problem when the Democrats have a majority in the Senate.”

SOMETIMES INQUIRING MINDS DON’T WANT TO KNOW: CNN “media reporter” doesn’t see NYT deleting Obama’s ‘revealing’ comment as a big deal.

Some things never change; shades of Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings circling the wagons to publicly defend Dan Rather in October of 2004.

GOVERNMENT IS JUST A WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: Right name, wrong man: Knoxville veterinarian can’t get off no-fly list.

Dr. Patrick Stephen Hackett is a veterinarian — not a terrorist.

Try explaining that in the airport security line.

Hackett, a lifelong resident of the Knoxville-Oak Ridge area, was named Outstanding Practitioner of the Year in 1992 by the Tennessee Veterinary Medical Association. He serves as president of the Humane Society of the Tennessee Valley.

He’s on the no-fly list.

Hackett has never been arrested and never traveled to the Middle East or other centers of terrorist activity, but he found out more than a decade ago he’s on the federal watch list because he shares the same name as notorious Irish Republican Army terrorist Patrick Joseph Hackett, who was jailed in the 1970s for planting bombs in Britain.

The difference should be easy to spot. The terrorist is missing an arm and a leg — blown off when a bomb exploded prematurely — while the Knoxville veterinarian has all his limbs intact.

“I don’t know how I got on the list, and I don’t know how to get off the list,” Hackett said.

And nobody will ever pay a price for what’s happened to him.

INSOMNIA THEATER (WE CAN’T LIVE ON LOVE EDITION): This week’s video highlights all the great work FIRE has been doing this year, and why you should take Glenn’s advice (thanks, Glenn!) and donate to FIRE.

As we say in the video, it’s been quite a year for FIRE. We’ve seen the percentage of schools with ‘red light’ speech policies fall below the 50 percent mark for the first time, continued our 100% litigation success rate, and scored a high profile cover story for The Atlantic, to name just a few highlights.

But we’ve also faced a lot of struggles too. Between increasing student illiberalism and overreach from the Department of Education, the fight for free speech on campus is far from over.

The fight is bigger than I’ve ever seen, so FIRE needs your help now more than ever.

EVEN IN JAPAN, communists are losers who can’t get women.

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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Law School Enrollment Slumps 5 Percent.

Enrollment in the nation’s law schools dropped nearly 5 percent in 2015, including a slump by 2.2 percent in first-year class sizes, according to data provided by the American Bar Association. …

Although total enrollment for juris doctor degrees is down by nearly 6,000 to 113,900 this year, total first-year matriculation is more of a mixed bag. Ninety-seven schools reported same or increased first-year classes compared with last year’s 69 schools, while 107 schools reported decreased first-year enrollment compared to 127 last year.

The overall first-year numbers, however, continue a downward trajectory. This year, first-year students totaled 37,058 students, compared with last year’s tally of 37,894, marking a nearly 30 percent drop in first-year enrollment since 2010’s high-water mark of 52,488 students.

At the University of Tennessee College of Law, our enrollment is up. Tennessee increased its 1L class by 20% with no decline in quality (median 158 LSAT, 3.64 GPA).

But we’re not the biggest news: “William Mitchell College of Law’s 320 first years in 2015 is almost double 2014’s matriculation figure thanks to the school’s January launch of a hybrid online/on-campus program that brought in a vastly increased part-time student population.” Gosh, who could have predicted that that might work?

HISTORY: Hitler really did have just one ball: historian. “After Hitler’s arrest in 1923 following his failed Beer Hall Putsch, the future Führer underwent a medical exam, according to documents found in a Bavarian archive by University of Erlangen history Professor Peter Fleischmann. At the Landsberg prison, Hitler was examined by Dr Josef Brinsteiner, who found that he suffered from ‘right-side chryptorchidism’, or an undescended right testicle, Fleischmann told Bild.”

GOOD NEWS: Global poverty has fallen below 10% for the first time ever.

Related: 2015: The Best Year In History For The Average Human Being.

RUN, BERNIE, RUN! Maybe The Wrong Guy Is Threatening To Run Third Party: “Sanders has leverage in this situation, though he clearly won’t use it. He could be making threats to run third party just the way Donald Trump has. Given his passionate fan base, a Sanders third-party run would all but guarantee a Clinton loss.”