MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Obama right again on P.C. campus speech: As the president said, students shouldn’t try to silence other side but listen, engage and persuade. “And if you’re looking back at the 1960s Civil Rights Era as a model for your social justice crusade, here’s a reminder: The angry mobs trying to shut out speech they didn’t like? They weren’t the good guys there.”

CHARLIE MARTIN: Should We Blame “Intelligence Failures” For Paris?

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON’S STUDENT GOVERNMENT DISCRIMINATES AGAINST STUDENT GROUP HOLDING PRO-GUN RIGHTS EVENT- Wednesday night, the University of Oregon’s student government, the Associated Students of the University of Oregon (ASUO), refused to fund a poker night event hosted by UO’s chapter of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) amid concerns the event’s pro-gun message and prizes “would make students feel uncomfortable.” This is the second time ASUO has denied funding for the event.

The funding YAL requested was intended to cover the cost of pizza and rental fees— YAL promised that no ASUO money would go toward covering the event’s prizes, which would include three firearms donated by local gun dealers. Additionally, YAL pledged that the winners would receive the firearms off campus and in accordance with state and federal law.

As Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) Senior Program Officer Ari Cohn said in our recent press release:

ASUO’s budget is subsidized by mandatory fees paid by students … As a result, ASUO must distribute its funds in a viewpoint-neutral manner. ASUO has clearly failed to adhere to this obligation. Since ASUO is an agent of a public university, the University of Oregon administration is legally and morally required to intervene to rectify the First Amendment violations perpetrated by ASUO.

You can read the full press release over at FIRE’s website. You can also join FIRE in writing to University of Oregon President Michael H. Schill to demand that expressive activity on UO’s campus not be subject to viewpoint-based discrimination, either by university administrators or by ASUO in executing its delegated authority to distribute student activity fees.

MORE OF THE SAME, REALLY: Krauthammer: After Paris, Obama refuses to lead.

[S]ocialist President Francois Hollande has responded furiously to his country’s 9/11 with an intensified air campaign, hundreds of raids on suspected domestic terrorists, a state of emergency, and proposed changes in the constitution to make France less hospitable to jihad.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427362/obama-isis-strategy-failure, Barack Obama, titular head of the free world, has responded to Paris with weariness and annoyance. His news conference in Turkey was marked by a stunning tone of passivity, detachment, and lassitude, compounded by impatience and irritability at the very suggestion that his Syria strategy might be failing. The only time he showed any passion was in denouncing Republicans for hardheartedness toward Muslim refugees. One hundred and twenty-nine innocents lie dead but it takes the GOP to kindle Obama’s ire. . . .

Obama’s priorities lie elsewhere. For example, climate change, which he considers the greatest “threat to our future.” And, of course, closing Guantánamo.

And don’t forget gun control. Of course, the Paris attacks likely would have ended much sooner if someone nearby had been carrying a gun. But hey, never let a good crisis go to waste, right?

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 925.

GLENN LOURY AND JOHN MCWHORTER on campus protests and how administrators should respond.

TRAIN WRECK UPDATE: Obamacare Insurers Are Suffering. That Won’t End Well.

This was part of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news cycle for Obamacare; as ProPublica journalist Charles Ornstein said on Twitter, “Not since 2013 have I seen such a disastrous stream of bad news headlines for Obamacare in one 24-hour stretch.” Stories included not just UnitedHealth’s dire warnings, but also updates in the ongoing saga of higher premiums, higher deductibles and smaller provider networks that have been coming out since open enrollment began.

It now looks pretty clear that insurers are having a very bad experience in these markets. The sizeable premium increases would have been even higher if insurers had not stepped up the deductibles and clamped down on provider networks. The future of Obamacare now looks like more money for less generous coverage than its architects had hoped in the first few years.

But of course, that doesn’t mean insurers need to leave the market. Insurance is priced based on expectations; if you expect to pay out more, you just raise the price. After all, people are required to buy the stuff, on pain of a hefty penalty. How hard can it be to make money in this market?

What UnitedHealth’s action suggests is that the company is not sure it can make money in this market at any price.

It’s as if the whole thing is a scam designed to result in single-payer.

WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THEY’RE BOTH JUST DEMOCRATIC PARTY FRONT GROUPS, THE CONFLICT RESOLVES ITSELF: Matt Welch: Black Lives Matter and Michael Bloomberg’s Gun Control Machine: the oddest couple? “As Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas noted in his blistering concurrence in 2010’s McDonald vs. Chicago, which incorporated the 2nd Amendment as an individual right in all 50 states, explicitly racist gun restrictions and confiscations were a critical tool for pro-slavery whites in the post-Civil War South. . . . We think of stop-and-frisk as a drug or simple harassment measure, but Bloomberg’s legal justification was the need to keep guns off the streets. According to Bloomberg’s logic, cops needed to initiate more than 5 million interactions between 2002 and 2013, 86% of which were with black or Latino residents. . . . There is an always timely lesson in those statistics: Whenever government agents gain more power over citizens, whether to enforce bans on loose cigarettes or raze private property to build a baseball stadium, poor and disadvantaged communities will be on the receiving end first and hardest.”

I had a piece on this recently.

WHY ARE ELITE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS SUCH HOTBEDS OF RACISM?

“In this demonstration of support, we acknowledge that we, too, have experienced and dealt with unsupportive and outright dismissive spaces during our time at Princeton as a result of both covert and overt racism,” a statement signed by “Concerned Black Alums” reads. “While our experiences may not take on the same shape or form, the racial hostility on campus for Black students has over time evolved and its consistent presence must be acknowledged.”

Just further support for my proposal to abolish the Ivy League!

THE ATLANTIC’S CONOR FRIEDERSDORF: The Illiberal Demands Of The Amherst Uprising. “Protestors were trying to punish counter-protests with an extensive, compulsory racial-reeducation program. Perhaps the curriculum could be issued in a little red book.” Sadly, most of them are too historically illiterate to get the reference — and the remainder would probably approve. . . .

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Smith College bars reporters from sit-in, unless they agree “to explicitly state they support[] the movement in their articles.”

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SO IF WE’RE GOING TO BAN WOODROW WILSON BECAUSE HE WAS A HORRIBLE RACIST (AND HE WAS), what about FDR, who segregated bathrooms when Secretary of the Navy, and imprisoned over 100,000 people because of their race?

IF IT SAVES JUST ONE LIFE, IT’S WORTH IT: Rand Paul Wants Guns In DC. “Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday he would introduce a bill that would give District of Columbia residents the ability to get gun permits and visitors from around the U.S. the right to carry concealed weapons while in the nation’s capital. . . . In addition, it would require the nation’s capital to start issuing concealed weapons permits to residents and non-residents, as well as grant reciprocity of permits issued by states. Firearm owners would be allowed to carry in public, non-sensitive areas of federal property.”

MAYBE PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT RACES SHOULD ATTEND SEPARATE SCHOOLS, TO ENSURE SAFE SPACE AT ALL TIMES: U. Vermont Holds Retreat for Students Who ‘Self Identify’ as White. I mean, equal, but separate. Woodrow Wilson would approve!

LEGAL INSURRECTION is hiring a reporter/editor/researcher.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Kindergarten teacher denies Legos to boys in name of ‘gender equity.’

A kindergarten teacher in Bainbridge Island, Wash., actively denies her male students the opportunity to play with Lego blocks in order to encourage her female students to play with them.

Karen Keller bars the boys in her class from playing with the colorful blocks, even going so far as to lie to them about their opportunity to play.

“I always tell the boys, ‘You’re going to have a turn’ — and I’m like, ‘Yeah, when hell freezes over’ in my head,” Keller told the Bainbridge Island Review. “I tell them, ‘You’ll have a turn’ because I don’t want them to feel bad.”

So she’s discriminating against them — and teaching them not to trust women in positions of authority. Nice job, sister.

Plus: “When you have an axe to grind with 5yr old boys, maybe you shouldn’t teach kindergarten.”

UPDATE: See the update at the link. I find her denials less than convincing, but maybe that’s just me.

UN-PERSONED: Princeton President agrees to consult Board of Trustees about removing Woodrow Wilson’s name.

On the one hand, there’s a whiff of Stalinist airbrushing to this. On the other hand, Woodrow Wilson really was a horrible person and President.

HMMMM: On CNN, Why Did Jeb Claim That Bashar Assad Would ‘Execute’ Christians?

IT’S NOT THE CRIME, IT’S THE COVERUP: ‘The Hunting Ground’ crew caught editing Wikipedia to make facts conform to film.

A crew member from “The Hunting Ground,” a one-sided film about campus sexual assault, has been editing Wikipedia articles to make facts conform with the inaccurate representations in the film.

Edward Patrick Alva, who is listed on the film’s IMDB page as part of the camera and electrical department, has been altering Wikipedia entries for months, in violation of the website’s conflict-of-interest guidelines. Alva is the assistant editor and technical supervisor for Chain Camera Pictures, the production company associated with “The Hunting Ground” director Kirby Dick.

Wikipedia guidelines state: “Do not edit Wikipedia in your own interests or in the interests of your external relationships.” As a member of the film’s production team, Alva should not have been editing pages about the film or related to the film.

It’s like these people are liars who just want to promote a political agenda or something.

ROLL CALL: Could National Security Make 2016 Tougher for Women Candidates?

As national security becomes a bigger issue in the wake of the attacks in Paris, some Democratic strategists worry the issue could cause troubles for their Senate candidates in 2016 — and women candidates in particular.

Polling shows voters generally view Republicans stronger on national security issues than Democrats. But some Democratic strategists and pollsters add the issue is especially challenging for women, who do better at the ballot box when the economy and social issues are at the top of voters’ minds.

“Voters do look at gender,” said Celinda Lake, a prominent Democratic pollster. “Women do better when people are focused on domestic issues [rather] than foreign policy, on policies that require empathy and being in touch rather than toughness. So terrorism is tough for women and tough for Democrats.”

More than a half-dozen Democratic Senate candidates this cycle are women, some of whom are considered the top recruit in their respective race. And these female candidates’ successes will be essential to whether Democrats can net the five seats necessary to take control of the Senate.

I can see Carly as a war leader just fine. On the other hand, the days when it was possible to imagine Hillary as the most uncompromising wartime President in United States history are gone, trumped by her miserable performance when confronted with crises.

JONATHAN HAIDT ON CAMPUS CRAZINESS: “It’s Going To Get Much, Much Worse.”

Like all far-left political movements, the new PC has shown a tendency to devour its own. That is, PC crusaders often save their most vindictive attacks for people who were formerly leftists in good standing. The response so far from professors and administrators who come under attack has generally been to fold, apologize, and try to make amends. But history shows that this kind of process can’t go on forever; there must be an endpoint somewhere down the line. PC activists probably imagine the endpoint to be a harmonious world ridded of triggers and unsafe spaces. But this, like Marx’s notion of a dictatorship of a stateless society, is an ideological fantasy. More likely, PC will collapse under the weight of its own excesses. Haidt doesn’t expect this to happen anytime soon, though. . . .

We’ve said before that there are two campus crises—a crisis of political culture, and a crisis of affordability. These crises could converge if high-profile PC incidents make the American public question whether the existing college economic model, complete with its massive diversity bureaucracy, is actually worth it. However, we are less optimistic than Haidt that the upper-middle class parents who send their children to elite schools will be swayed substantially by stories of campus coddling run amok. If PC does generate a backlash that forces the universities to change their ways, it is more likely to come from state governments, which have historically not responded kindly to extreme campus movements. The American people as a whole stand behind their Bill of Rights, even if college students don’t.

I think that universities are going to need a lot more external supervision — from state legislatures, from alumni, from trustees and donors, from Congress, perhaps even from Pres. Cruz’s Department of Education — to ensure that rights are respected and that educational dollars produce education.

If only someone had issued some sort of warning.

YES: How Weak Foreign Policy Abroad Leads To Intrusive Government At Home. “The reason we’re even having this conversation about domestic surveillance, Muslim databases, any of it, is because we failed to contain the infection over there and now it’s spread to here.”

Related: Washington Post: “For much of the past seven years, President Obama has labored to move the United States off a war footing abroad and keep the threat of terrorism in perspective at home. The Paris attacks and their after­math are testing the limits of that approach and the patience of a country that is questioning whether the president truly understands the terror threat.”

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN? Chuck Todd: Notice White House Doesn’t Put Susan Rice on Any Shows.