STEVEN CROWDER: #FreeCommunityCollege – Why You Morons Can’t Afford It!

WHY THE SILK ROAD TRIAL matters.

WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY: Your Own Private Two-Person Submersible Is Here. “The Deepflight Super Falcon Mark II is 19 feet long, 9 feet wide, and can be fully integrated with your yacht. (You have a yacht, right?)”

NO DUMBER THAN A LOT OF HIGHWAY-SAFETY SCHEMES HERE: Wait, What? To Increase Road Safety, Russia Bans Transsexuals and Others with “Sexual Disorders” from Driving. Which is to say, completely dumb.

READER BOOK PLUG: From Glenna Mason, Mr. Darcy & The Lady With The Fine Eyes.

LARRY WEBSTER: The secret racing test tunnel no one wants to talk about: Lost in rural Pennsylvania, hidden from prying eyes, there is a tunnel.

NURSE AMBER VINSON SHOULD HAVE STAYED HOME: Ohio bridal dress shop closes after being stigmatized by Ebola. “Coming Attractions Bridal & Formal was visited by Dallas nurse Amber Vinson days before she was diagnosed with Ebola. The store temporarily closed and cleaned before reopening in November but has lost significant business, prompting the decision to close.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 611.

AL JAZEERA, REVEALED: Leaked Newsroom Emails Reveal Al Jazeera Fury over Global Support for Charlie Hebdo.

ANTISEMITISM IN FRANCE: The Exodus Has Begun.

Related: ‘Every single French Jew I know has left Paris’: Editor of Britain’s Jewish Chronicle claims people are fleeing terror-hit French capital.

Jim Bennett emails: “Hang on to the West Bank, Israel, you’re going to need the room . . . . They will also be subject to terrorist attacks in Israel, but there they can have a gun and shoot back. I hope they all leave. They can’t do any good there, the French can’t protect them and won’t let them protect themselves, but in their new countries they can be a hard-core element to stiffen resistance. It’s time for triage and France is in the walking-dead category, although they might have a miracle revival. However that France wouldn’t be a nice place for Jews either, if somebody like Le Pen is in charge.”

Hmm. Modern history suggests that when the Jews are fleeing your country, bad things are going to happen, probably self-inflicted.

HOPEY-CHANGEY: Latest Tax Season Headache? Obamacare.

The new year has brought a new sort of commercial to our televisions: ads urging people to check with tax preparers about the potential consequences of Obamacare. H&R Block is offering free Obamacare consultations tomorrow. I’ve written before that the big Obamacare event of this year will not be the exchange enrollments, but tax season, when people who got too much in subsidies find out how much money they owe the government (and been told by a tax preparer that it was even worse than I thought). Tax preparers, to judge from my Twitter feed, have been panicking for months. But now they face the Herculean job of communicating that panic to the public.

There’s been a lot of talk about the “hidden taxes” in the Affordable Care Act, but here’s one I hadn’t thought of before or seen mentioned anywhere: the sudden need for folks with simple tax returns to avail themselves of the services of a paid professional. If you have no income outside a modest salary, and not much in the way of potential deductions such as huge mortgage interest or state tax bills, then there was really no reason to use a tax preparer. Even the mathematically challenged should, with the aid of a calculator, be able to fill out their 1040EZ forms just fine. But Obamacare has introduced a significant level of complexity into the taxes of lower-middle-class wage earners. More of them are going to need an accountant to negotiate the process — or risk owing the government hundreds of dollars because they didn’t fill out the forms correctly.

The money doesn’t go to the government, of course, but in many ways this looks like a tax: Suddenly, people with simple incomes are going to need to pay a significant sum to keep themselves out of trouble with the IRS. This tax will be extremely regressive, because the people most likely to be hit by it are people whose incomes are (or have been) low enough to qualify for subsidies.

Yeah, a flat tax or fair tax would fix this.

AMERICA’S stupidest college professor? Well, I dunno, but he’s a contender. “I had somehow gotten the impression that the publication in question was an exclusively anti-Muslim one, devotedly solely to insulting and marginalizing Muslims.” Of course, that still wouldn’t justify murder.

Plus: “If you read between the apology lines: ‘I thought they were wingnuts; I learned they were marxists, oops; I like.'”

ALL YOUR TAX NEEDS IN ONE LOCATION, at Amazon’s Tax Central.

Plus, Super Bowl party essentials delivered to your door!

And, today only: Rowenta HU5120 Intense Aqua Control Ultrasonic Warm Mist 360 Humidifier with Unique Baby Mode, $99.99 (64% off).

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Islam Is a Tarnished Brand in the West: Here’s How It Can Recover.

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME: U.Va. fraternities accept punishment based on false accusation.

Even though Rolling Stone’s sensational story about a brutal gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity has fallen apart, the Inter-Fraternity Council has accepted new terms in order to resume social activities on campus.

Members of Phi Kappa Psi were accused of gang raping a freshman girl named Jackie, whose story fell apart when her friends told the Washington Post and CNN that she told them a different story and made up a story about having a date the night of the alleged incident.

Despite that, U.Va. President Teresa Sullivan banned social activities for fraternities until Jan. 9 (fraternities had previously agreed to suspend activities for the weekend after the Rolling Stone story was published). Sullivan kept that ban in place even after the story fell apart.

And now, in order to resume social activities, fraternities (and sororities, although their new rules are far less strict) will have to sign agreements pledging to change their partying ways.

Fraternities, of course, take the brunt of the punishment.

UVA President Teresa Sullivan is channeling Aunt Polly.

VIRGINIA HALE: Intel’s $300m ‘diversity drive’ is discriminatory and wrongheaded.

LEGAL EDUCATION NEWS: Harvard Law School Prevails in Defamation Lawsuit by 2009 Grad Over Plagiarism Reprimand.

ED DRISCOLL: Confirmed: Gray Lady Regresses to Infantilism.

SULTAN KNISH: Let’s Laugh at Islam.

D.C. MCALLISTER: Real Women Don’t Want A Feminist Boyfriend: Feminism has promised equality with men, but has delivered women who feel uncomfortable with their feminine natures, preferring masculine power over feminine vulnerability.

A SMALL VICTORY FOR FREEDOM: Can Texas force hair-braiders to jump through hoops? Nope, says judge.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “As many as 64 Dartmouth College students — including some athletes — could face suspension or other disciplinary measures for cheating in an ethics class this past fall.” I love that it was an ethics class. . . .

FROM MIKE MOLLENHOUR, A SUGGESTED HASHTAG: #JESUISCHARLIEMARTEL.

ROGER SIMON: 2016 And Paris: It’s The Jihad, Stupid! “Under the watch of the man who masquerades under the moniker of president of the United States, someone who can barely muster a dopey three-minute speech filled with banalities about the killings in France, radical Islam has metastasized across the world in a manner only dreamed of on 9/11.”