ANDREW KLAVAN: Progressives Want the U.S. to Imitate a Dying Europe:

For those of us who love comedy, one of the most delightful ironies of progressivism is how regressive it is, how mired in the past. While conservatives gather to discuss fresh reformist ideas on how to fight poverty and keep a free society afloat, all progressives ever do is reach into their Magic Box of Tomorrow and draw out the same sclerotic socialism that’s been poisoning the lives of nations since at least the 19th century.

How old and out of date is that, you ask. Well, whenever you point out to these seers of the future that not only is socialism a regressive notion, but it is also a notion that has failed utterly everywhere and every time it’s been tried, they immediately respond by pointing proudly to Europe.

Europe! Oh, sure! Where the Future is Born!

And where it’s been going to die since 1913. Read the whole thing.

Related: Responding to the “Progressive” version of Whig history, where all bike paths lead to the crossroads of Belgium and Berkley, Michel Gurfinkiel notes “The West’s Great Folly: Believing Old Empires Had Gone ‘Progressive,’ Too.”

EVEN HARVARD: “One of the nation’s most elite law schools is taking in more transfer students from competitors. One theory: The new applicant pool isn’t strong enough.”

FASTER, PLEASE: Non-Invasive Nerve Stimulator Tamps Down Brainwaves That Cause Migraines. “Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) raised the level of resistance to electrochemically triggered CSD threefold, according to the scientists. But the speed with which VNS acted is likely to give it a real advantage over today’s pharmaceuticals. CSD were suppressed a mere 30 minutes after stimulation, a ‘strikingly rapid onset of action compared to prophylactic agents, such as topiramate and valproate,’ Dr. Cenk Ayata, the assistant professor of neurology and neuroscience at Massachusetts General who led the research, said in a press release. Those drugs typically take several weeks to achieve comparable results. Ayata and colleagues published their findings in the journal Pain.”

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Molecular arm grabs, transports, releases molecular cargo.

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A FORETASTE OF SELF-DRIVING CARS? Department of Transportation: Pilots Are Forgetting How to Fly Manually. “Relying too heavily on automation systems may hinder a pilot’s ability to manually fly the aircraft during unexpected events.”

IT’S COME TO THIS: Ashe Schow: Marco Rubio Should Follow Bernie Sanders’ Lead On Campus Sexual Assault.

I’ve never considered myself a single-issue voter. In fact, I’ve always despised the idea that someone would choose a candidate based on a single issue – especially if it was a wedge issue unlikely to be a major concern for a politician.

That said, it was difficult when I realized that on the issue I write most about, campus sexual assault, Socialist (excuse me, Independent) Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was more in line with my views than Republican Sen. Marco Rubio.

On Monday, Sanders told an audience at the Black and Brown Presidential Forum in Iowa that rape accusations on college campuses should be handled by law enforcement and not administrative bureaucracies, a sentiment I share. “Rape and assault is rape or assault whether it takes place on a campus or a dark street,” Sanders said. “If a student rapes another student it has got to be understood as a very serious crime, it has to get outside of the school and have a police investigation and that has to take place.” . . .

Rubio is the only GOP candidate that has seemingly taken a stance on this issue – and it is a bad one. He has co-sponsored a bill that codifies into law the overreach of the Education Department and ensures that accused students will not have a fair hearing. After the Campus Accountability and Safety Act was introduced in 2014, I sent questions to the sponsors of the bill asking about due process protections for accused students.

Rubio’s office was one of the few that responded. His spokesman told me: “This bill does not address this issue” when asked about due process.

Snookered by Schumer on immigration. Snookered by Gillibrand and McCaskill on the rights of college men. Or, worse — not snookered, but actually believing in this stuff.

IS IT THE CONSTITUTION THAT’S EVOLVING? Or is it Judge Posner?

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Hit The Road, Jeb: Bush moneybags couldn’t compensate for failure to address voter concerns.

ASHLEY OLSEN KILLER ARRESTED: “He was identified as Tidiane Cheik Diaw, who is in his mid-20s and arrived in Italy illegally a few months ago.”

DONALD TRUMP: You’re Damn Right I’m Angry, And You Should Be Too. Well, that’s basically his whole appeal, right? So calling him “angry” seems like a poor line of attack. Addressing his supporters’ concerns would seem to be a better one, but nobody seems to be picking up on that approach.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 980.

PEOPLE REALLY JUST DON’T LIKE HER: Ed Morrissey: The Sanders Surge Threatens a Replay of 2008 for Clinton.

RAPE CULTURE: Cologne Sexual Assault Victim Called a Racist and Harassed After Identifying Her Attackers.

PARTY OF THE RICH: The New New Republic And The Plutocratic Left.

There was an irony at the heart of Chris Hughes’ brief stewardship of the New Republic, which, the Facebook mogul announced yesterday, is now up for sale again. Hughes appeared to have two goals at the magazine: First, push the once center-left opinion journal further to the hard left, especially on issues of identity politics. (The cover story of the first issue after the mass departure of the magazine’s longtime staff was an extended denunciation of the “old” New Republic‘s coverage of racial issues). The second goal was to turn the 100-year-old magazine, once understood by its owners and writers as a kind of “public trust,” into a ruthlessly profitable corporation—or, in an editor’s now infamous words, a “vertically integrated digital media company.”

We usually don’t associate left-wing politics with this kind of corporatism and consultant-speak. And yet, this is the outlook that increasingly characterizes America’s new class of left-leaning plutocrats, who are quite left-leaning on social issues, but also deeply immersed in the world of startups, “brands,” and “disruption.”

This tension between the magazine’s political outlook and its business strategy clearly wasn’t the only source of its failure—but it probably wasn’t irrelevant, either.

Also, Hughes is young and ignorant, and rich mostly because he was Mark Zuckerberg’s roommate at Harvard. Basically, an Ivy League lottery winner.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS. Family camping holidays: Is a week in a tent together worth the strife?

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO WEINER: “A female Rio Rancho High School teacher is out of a job, accused of sending naked pictures to one of her students.”

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VIDEO: Phil Robertson locks down the south for Ted Cruz.

Related: David Brooks does his part as well to help Cruz nail down conservative votes.

GEE, THAT ONLY TOOK 132 YEARS: Germany’s buzzword of the year takes political correctness to task:

A jury of linguists, journalists and authors in Darmstadt have selected a term each year since 1991 which is omniscient in the press and often ungainly or unwelcome.

“Gutmensch” was selected because, in connection with the current refugee crisis in Germany, it defames “tolerance and helpfulness as naïve, dumb and worldly innocent, as having a helper syndrome or as moral imperialism,” the jury president, linguist Nina Janich, told the press.

* * * * * * * *

Last year’s non-word of the year was “Lügenpresse,” or “liar press.” The expression was popular at the time among supporters of the German anti-Islamization movement “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West,” or PEGIDA. PEGIDA used the term in its weekly rallies that started in October 2014, asserting that the mainstream media were liars and biased in their reporting about PEGIDA and issues that concern the movement.

Related: Western Elites’ Terminal Radical Islam Denial Syndrome.

QUAGMIRE WATCH: President loathed by half the country, who made questionable foreign policy decisions, oversaw an unprecedented expansion of government powers, and threatened to sic the IRS on his enemies decides to soften his image by declaring a war on cancer…

…In 1971: Why The War On Cancer Hasn’t Been Won.

(Via Walter Olson.)

AS WELL AS REDUCING ACCOUNTABILITY: Not naming sex assault accusers contributes to stigma, says expert.

Geneva Overholser, who edited the Des Moines Register when the paper won a 1991 Pulitzer Prize for a series on rape, told the Washington Post that not naming accusers undermines attempts to remove the stigma of rape.

“[Withholding the accuser’s name] is a particular slice of silence that I believe has consistently undermined society’s attempts to deal effectively with rape,” Overholser said. “Nothing affects public opinion like real stories with real faces and names attached. Attribution brings accountability, a climate within which both empathy and credibility flourish.”

Overholser also said that not publishing the names of accusers hasn’t led to more reporting of sexual assault or a reduction in retaliation against accusers.

Sex crimes are the only crimes in which the victim/accuser’s name is withheld unless they give permission. Because of this — and the current media trend of dragging an accused person’s name through the mud before any evidence is presented — I would like to see no one’s name printed in these situations.

Time and time again, those whose accusations make the front page are vindicated — but not before their reputations are destroyed. Duke Lacrosse and Rolling Stone are just the most glaring examples of this, but there are other stories — both at colleges and in the broader public — where the accusation didn’t hold up to even slight scrutiny.

Speaking of Rolling Stone, it was in an article about that story in which Overholser made her comments. The Washington Post asked why the media haven’t named Jackie, the woman who told the magazine she was gang-raped at a fraternity party. Every aspect of her story was proven false, yet she is still known only as Jackie.

Indeed.

THIS EXPLAINS A LOT ABOUT THE SNAFU OTHERWISE KNOWN AS “THE DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS:” The government’s master agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees favors union bureaucrats over veterans in hiring. And when the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak “scraped” thousands of current VA job opening announcements, he found the reason why when vets are hired at VA they typically get mops, not management duties.

ROGER SIMON ON TONIGHT’S DEBATE: And Then There Were Seven…

This is, as Eliza Doolittle told Freddie, “no time for a chat.”  We don’t need elegant words, Republican John Kerry’s slavering all over us with diplospeak.  We need action.  And if that means there is blood on the tracks, so be it. From Paris to San Bernardino, 2015 was no normal year and with Cologne and now Djakarta, 2016 promises to be the same and more so.  Let’s have a vigorous debate. Name-calling is even okay. I’ll be tuning in to watch the Indians fall.  Next time there may only be three.

As Roger asks, “Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Carson, Christie, Bush, Kasich. Who will be left for next time?” Leave your thoughts as to the next to fall in the comments.