GALLERY: The 11 Coolest Cars From the Detroit Auto Show.

K.C. JOHNSON: Shame On Kirsten Gillibrand.

Apart from Claire McCaskill, no senator has more aggressively advocated weakening due process protections for students accused of sexual assault than New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand. She continued her anti-due process crusade in two high-profile moves this week. First, Gillibrand invited Columbia student Emma Sulkowicz as her special guest for the State of the Union address. Sulkowicz has attracted international media attention for her “performance art” project of carrying a mattress around campus to protest what she considers Columbia’s insufficient response to a student she claims sexually assaulted her. No evidence exists that the student did, in fact, sexually assault her: even under Columbia’s extraordinarily imbalanced sexual assault policy, which tilts nearly all procedures in the advantage of the accusing student, the disciplinary panel didn’t find Sulkowicz’s allegation credible. Why Gillibrand came to believe Sulkowicz remains unclear. . . .

Even more troubling, however, was a Huffington Post essay penned by Gillibrand to accompany her invitation. The New York senator explained that she reached out to Sulkowicz to show solidarity with a student who “carries her mattress everywhere she goes to symbolize the burden she carries every single day as long as her rapist is still on campus.” Note the senator’s remarkable word choice. Gillibrand didn’t say “as long as her alleged rapist is still on campus.” Or “as long as the person she says raped her is still on campus.” No: Gillibrand, a sitting U.S. senator, has described a Columbia student as a “rapist”—that is, someone guilty of a criminal act—based solely on an allegation from a single person. And not merely a generic type of allegation, but one that even Columbia didn’t deem credible and the police did not pursue. As FIRE’s Ari Cohn has pointed out, with this statement Gillibrand laid “bare her disregard for rights of the accused.” For the senator, “allegations of rape = guilty of rape.”

Imagine the reaction of the Times editorial page if a New York senator on virtually any other criminal justice issue described as guilty of a criminal act a resident of the state who (a) hadn’t even been criminally charged and (b) had been deemed non-culpable of any criminal activity by an internal inquiry.

Yes, but men don’t have feelings, and don’t really matter anyway. Because fairness and equality!

IT’S COVERUPS ALL THE WAY DOWN: Whistleblower: Pelosi Covered Up Role In Crisis. “We’ve long suspected the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission wasn’t honest in examining events before the meltdown. But an ex-commissioner says the probe was actually a full-blown political cover-up. In a just-released book, former FCIC member Peter Wallison says that a Democratic Congress worked with the commission’s Democratic chairman to whitewash the government’s central role in the mortgage debacle.”

The book is Peter Wallison’s Hidden in Plain Sight: What Really Caused the World’s Worst Financial Crisis and Why It Could Happen Again

UPDATE: From the comments:

The pattern of reviews on Amazon for Wallison’s book hint at a coordinated attack on a book and a subject which is a sacred cow to liberals. He criticized the Dodd-Frank act. He dares to skewer the holiest of holys, the no-down-payment-low-interest subprime loan as being a major factor in the meltdown.

Interesting to note: The praise for the book comes from those who are noted as having made a “verified purchase.” The disgruntled reviewers blatantly parrot one another in talking point fashion in an effort to discourage anyone from buying / reading this book.

How about that?

PAUL RAHE: A Revolution Of Sorts In New York.

Silver’s indictment is big news. If he was on the take for fifteen or more years — to the tune of $6 million — then we can be confident that everyone else associated with him was also on the take. The government of the state of New York is that sort of polity. If Mr. Big is receiving, everyone else is getting some sort of cut.

This would explain why, in March 2014, Andrew Cuomo, the current Governor of New York, suddenly shut down the Moreland Commission, which he had set up in 2013 — no doubt, in anticipation of a presidential run — ostensibly for the purpose of cleaning up politics in New York. That commission was apparently turning up evidence that impinged on people close to the Governor himself, and it had to go.

Well, Cuomo is a threat to some powerful Democrats outside of New York.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 624.

CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS: How NPR cooked the books, misrepresented the Laura Dunn case, and created a national panic over campus rape.

CHEAP GAS PROBABLY WON’T LAST:

No one knows exactly what factors are causing prices to fall so far, so fast, but there is a strong suspicion that Saudi Arabia, which you can think of as the central banker of OPEC, is letting prices fall in the hopes of killing off the competition from U.S. and Canadian shale oil. The question, then, is: Who will blink first?

At first blush, you might think that Middle Eastern oil producers have the upper hand. Their oil requires relatively little investment to get out of the ground; it’s not quite as simple as sticking a straw in the desert and sucking out the black stuff, but it sure looks like that compared to the complexity of a fracking operation. And fracking wells dry up fairly quickly, requiring even more investment just to stay in place.

But the shale oil producers also have some advantages. First of all, the Saudis need high prices to support their government spending — the IMF estimates that they require a price of about $90 a barrel just to pay the bills. That means they can’t keep up a price war forever. Second of all, upstart industries tend to improve pretty quickly in their first years or decades of operation, and fracking is no exception; my Bloomberg News colleagues report that the break-even point for many operations is $70 or less, which is lower than OPEC nations can sustain.

Even if they manage to push U.S. and Canadian fracking operations offline temporarily, the technology and expertise still exist. It took less than 10 years from the time when prices started soaring to the point where the U.S. was producing more oil than most OPEC members. If oil prices soared again, it would take even less time to get up and running again.

Stay tuned.

2014 CALLED AND IT WANTS ITS HYSTERICAL OVERREACTIONS BACK: ‘Yes means yes’ law could be coming to Arizona. Just another front in Democratic politicians’ war on men.

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WHY DO BAD THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO HER? Kirchner: Argentine prosecutor was killed to discredit me.

ANDREW STILES: Hillary Is George Costanza: Every decision she’s ever made in her entire life has been wrong.

YEMEN: Sure sign of an Obama foreign-policy success: the evac. Helicopters on the Embassy roof: To some, they’re a fond memory.

YOU KNEW THIS WAS COMING: TurboTax Apologizes for Bait-and-Switch, Provides $25 Refunds to Customers. The reputational damage is more expensive than the refunds.

KING ABDULLAH’S friends at the New York Times. I’m not so sure even about the notion that the Saudis are America’s allies. . . .

FLYING COVER: Major media mostly ignoring four potential Democratic Hillary 2016 rivals.

A search of U.S. publications in Lexis Nexis for “Jim Webb” since Nov. 20, 2014 — the day the former Democratic senator and Reagan administration official announced he was considering a run for president — produces only 93 results.

Results for potential Republican 2016 candidate Mike Huckabee (“Huckabee”) since just three weeks ago, when he gave up his Fox News program and signaled a probable run: 227.

Though there are presently at least five Democrats who say they’re seriously considering bids for the White House — a sizable number — major media news coverage has disproportionately focused on the GOP side, which has at least nine potential candidates, and on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Many of the potential 2016 candidates are barely known to the public, but lack of visibility two years out isn’t the handicap it once was. Clinton has a commanding lead in the 2016 contest, but a Jan. 6, 2007, poll found that 61 percent of the respondents said they didn’t know enough about then-Sen. Barack Obama to have an opinion of him. He went on to defeat Clinton in the Democratic primary and win the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.

Hillary’s inevitable, just like she was last time.

RICHARD LANDES: We’ll Always Have Paris, Won’t We? “For fifteen years now, there has been a consistent stream of powerful evidence for all the trends that now, in this latest jihadi assault, so rudely shocked all of France. Those of us who have been tracking these trends for the last fifteen years are astonished that so many really didn’t see this coming. In part, the ignorance came, alas, from the brilliant choice by the jihadis to target Jews first. For many reasons, none of them particularly admirable, many among the French journalistic and political elites preferred not to talk about or acknowledge this assault on the Jews.”

YOUR TAX DOLLARS NOT WORKING: HHS Inspector General Details How Feds Botched the Obamacare Exchange Planning Process.

SCRATCHING OUT THE EYES OF FOREIGN OBSERVERS: China harassing and imprisoning Chinese working for foreign news outlets.

Zhang Miao has now been in prison for almost four months.

She is a Chinese researcher for a German newspaper in China, and her arrest has sparked fear, outrage and some soul-searching among foreign news organizations in China about the role of their Chinese assistants.

Reporting from China has become increasingly difficult and harrowing in recent years for both Chinese and foreign media, with a sweeping crackdown on press freedom since China’s President Xi Jinping took power.

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, China had more journalists in prison last year than any other country. Most were Chinese citizens.

For years, the most common threat to foreign news outlets has been expulsion. But increasingly, Chinese authorities are attacking news bureaus at their most vulnerable point: their dependence on Chinese citizens who translate and facilitate their coverage.

Just in case you thought the Chinese had gotten nice or something.

BARBARA KAY: Rape culture proofiness feeds moral panic over non-existent epidemic.

“SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS” ON THE JOB: Nearly 200 pictures of Ferguson looters released.

Clearly, they’re concerned about police accountability.

INSTITUTIONALIZING SEXISM: The “Manspreading” Campaign — A Portent Of Things To Come. “It is inconceivable that any other identifiable group would be singled out in such a humiliating fashion for public correction.”

Punch back twice as hard. And never give them credit for being “well-meaning.” Because they don’t mean well.

Meanwhile, I wonder where this whole “manspreading” thing got its start?

DON SURBER: Advice on men’s issues for 2016 Democratic presidential hopefuls.

If Republicans have female problems, Democrats have a problem with men. In the last presidential election, Democrats got 47% of the male vote, Republicans 53%. Then came the 2014 disaster in which Democrats had their biggest butt whupping since 1928. 2016 is less than two years away, and Hillary or Fauxcahontas represent the feminist sense of entitlement that most men dislike. . . .

The presumption of guilt when a woman accuses a man of rape causes resentment among men, and their wives, mothers and sisters. Hostility toward men — particularly young men — brings out the Mama Bear in most women.

Another stat that needs to go to rest is that 77 cents on the dollar that women make. No one believes it except the Democratic core. We know it does not take into account child raising and taking lighter jobs. Men dominate the dangerous jobs — lumberjacking and commercial fishing — and deserve more due to their risks.

Here is a statistic that needs a political home: men are 9 times as likely to go to prison. The same crime often gets women a lighter sentence. Female privilege anyone?

Read the whole thing.

THE LOLITA EXPRESS? “Flight logs on pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet puts Bill Clinton sharing a ride with a pornstar, as well as a woman who procured underage hookers for the billionaire.”

More here: “Other MRG films include Deviant Desires and Carnal Confessions; the company has since been purchased by Larry Flynt. Exposed, appropriately enough, was directed by a pseudonymous auteur who went by the name of Clinton J. Williams.”

WHITE PEOPLE WORRIES: Was Chandler Bing A Homophobe? “Indeed, of all the aspects of Friends that seem trapped in the past, Chandler Bing is the most agonizingly obsolete. Once he may have seemed coolly sarcastic, the gang’s designated ‘funny one.’ But through the eyes of a 2015 viewer even vaguely cognizant of modern gender politics, he’s also the cringe-worthy one.”