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.