HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, UNIVERSITIES TAKE SIDES EDITION: University Bullied Students to Change ‘America’ Theme Party Because Trump Won: America party ‘provides an opportunity for students to dress or behave in a way that offends or oppresses others.’

Best part: “Administrative efforts failed: the party took place as planned on November 18.” Stick it to the Man!

But this is just sad: “Emails sent to student government representatives were provided to TheDC on condition of anonymity. Multiple student government representatives confirmed the emails’ authenticity on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the administration.”

“Fear of retaliation?” That says terrible things about Loyola Maryland.

Cost of attending Loyola University Maryland: $62,750 per year.

TWITCHY: Check out why Obama’s DOJ fined Denver Sheriff Dept.

No spoilers, but apparently following Federal law is more than the D.O.J. can accept from a sheriff’s department.

WELL, THAT’S GOOD: U.S. Dementia Rates Are Dropping Even as Population Ages.

THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES? Where Bernie-nomics Goes to Die.

DEALS GALORE: Shop Amazon – Black Friday Deals in Home.

THAT WOULD BE GOOD: Graphene Solar Absorber Could Enable Cheap Thermal Desalination.

ANY WORD FROM OBAMA? Family of slain San Antonio Police officer says Donald Trump called to offer condolences.

ISRAELI AMBASSADOR: Iran is smuggling weapons to Hezbollah on commercial flights.

UN Ambassador Danny Danon sent an urgent letter to the Security Council members in which he revealed the smuggling route from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to Hezbollah: “The Iranian Al-Quds Force packs weapons, ammunition and missile technology to Hezbollah in suitcases and puts them on Mahan Air flights.”

Danon added that “these planes fly directly to the airport in Lebanon or Damascus and from there the weapons are transferred on the ground to Hezbollah.”

The UN envoy wrote that “Iran continues to violate Security Council resolutions, including Resolutions 1701 and 2231.” Iran arms terrorist organizations in the Middle East and works to undermine stability in the entire region, he added.

You’d think this is the kind of thing which might have come up in President Obama’s years-long negotiations with the mullah’s regime.

SO WE’RE TOLD: Nope, That Weird Blue Sphere In Space Isn’t Aliens.

CHARLIE MARTIN: The Hysterical Left Is Making NeverTrumpers Reconsider.

I’ve got to say: if you’re trying to make a case against Trump via trying to reverse the election by mob rule, by threats of violence against electors, and by openly planning an insurrection — er, “disruption”?

Then you’re making one hell of a good case that Trump is less of a threat to democracy than his opponents.

Yes.

EVERY ASTRONAUT SINCE 1969 LANDINGS HAS SEEN STRANGE “FLASHING LIGHTS” WHILE APPROACHING THE MOON.

I’m not saying it’s aliens, but still, just to be on the safe side, if anyone would dust off our ambitious Apollo-era plans to build an armed base on the moon staffed by women in silver miniskirts and purple wigs, President-Elect Trump is the man for the job!

MAD DUCK: Obama Education Secretary John B. King Calls for End to Paddling in Schools.

POSTURING VS. POLITICS: Number of Hamilton stars haven’t voted in YEARS despite clash with vice president-elect Mike Pence over his political persuasions.

WELL, YOU CAN SEE WHERE THEY’D GET THAT IDEA: WaPo: Rust Belt Dems broke for Trump because they thought Clinton cared more about bathrooms than jobs.

TAX IT, AND THEY WILL LEAVE: Boulder passed the nation’s steepest soda tax; now, to implement it.

Haddock said the city hasn’t begun sorting through the various nuances and challenges of administering the tax.

But one scenario she and other Boulder staffers know they’ll have to prepare for involves business owners heading out of city limits to exploit what could be a loophole in the plan.

It seems like an easy way to skirt the rules: If a restaurant owner wants to avoid paying more to a distributor for a delivery of, say, sugar-sweetened lemonade, why not drive to Louisville or Longmont and buy the product there, where the tax is not in effect?

“I don’t know if that person does become a distributor or not, or how we would implement it,” Haddock said. “That’s one of those real-life examples where we’ll be thinking about how’s the appropriate way to treat them.”

Soda tax shirkers will not be tolerated in the People’s Republic.

THE HILL: Presidential electors planning to undermine Electoral College.

Some electors are lobbying their Republican counterparts to vote for someone other than Trump in an attempt to deny him the 270 votes required to elect him, according to the news outlet.
They are also contemplating whether to cast their votes for someone other than Hillary Clinton, like Mitt Romney or Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio).

With at least six electors already vowing to become “faithless,” the defection could be the most significant since 1808, when six Democratic-Republican electors refused to vote for James Madison, choosing vice presidential candidate George Clinton instead.

The electors acknowledge that it is unlikely that they will be able to block Trump from gaining office, Politico reported, but they are optimistic that their effort will raise enough questions about the Electoral College to reform or abolish it.

How did people who despise the Electoral College become Electors?

Or did they not come to despise it until after their candidate lost?

THE HUFFINGTON POST: Nearly Half Of Trump Voters Think Whites Face A Lot Of Discrimination.

Their source was the Huffington Post.

IT MAY BE NEEDLESS, BUT IT’S OFFERED EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRAFT: California’s Needless Housing Crisis.

DEFENSE: Fighter Pilots Aren’t Flying Enough to Hone the Skills of Full-Spectrum War.

How did it come to this? Fighter force readiness has been declining since 2003, but it took a big dive in fiscal 2013, when funding cuts forced the Air Force to temporarily ground half of its active-duty, combat-coded squadrons and reduce overall flying hours by 18 percent.

It got worse. In 2014, additional cuts led to shortages of spare parts and aircraft maintenance workers. Fighter pilots, who once averaged over 200 flying hours a year, struggled to get 120 hours that year.

Last year, the average rose to 150 hours with a slight uptick in funding and by rolling in the surge of flying time accumulated during combat deployments. Flying in a combat environment may sound like an incredible opportunity to employ and refine high-end skillsets, but it isn’t. The vast majority of a fighter pilot’s time in a cockpit over Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria is spent holding (loitering), waiting to be employed in that low-threat environment. While they fly much more frequently, the opportunity to actually drop munitions comes infrequently. And after they return home, those pilots often average less than one sortie a week.

The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.

ROGER KIMBALL: Trumping The Media.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1293.

PROMISES, PROMISES: Trump’s Potential Homeland Security Director ‘Leaks’ DHS Plan for First 365 Days.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach inadvertently “leaked” to the press a copy of his “Strategic Plan for the First 365 Days” to improve the Department of Homeland Security’s illegal immigration policies — including a plan to rapidly build a 1,989-mile wall on the southern border, just as candidate Donald Trump promised. Kobach briefly posed for photographs with the president-elect before they both went into the clubhouse at the Trump National Golf Clubhouse in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Sunday. Kobach — an immigration hardliner who causes liberal heads to explode on a regular basis — is a top contender for the position of DHS secretary.

An AP photographer managed to get a close-up of the stack of papers and binder Kobach was clutching before he went inside, and part of “the Kobach doctrine” was revealed.

There are leaks, and leaks. This is the latter.

SPENGLER: WHY I WON’T SEE HAMILTON. What Is Poetry, and What Does It Do?

MEDIA MOGULS COMPLAIN ABOUT MEETING WITH TRUMP, GET SPANKED BY . . . GLENN GREENWALD? Media Stars Agree to Off-The-Record Meeting with Trump, Break Agreement, Whine About Mistreatment.

They all agreed that the discussions would be “off-the-record”: meaning they would conceal from their viewers what they discussed. Shortly after the meeting ended, several of the stars violated the agreement they made, running to The New York Post and David Remnick of the New Yorker to whine about Trump’s mean behavior. “The participants all shook Trump’s hand at the start of the session and congratulated him,” Remnick reported, “but things went south from there.” It’s difficult to identify the shabbiest and sorriest aspect of this spectacle, but let’s nonetheless try, as it sheds important light on our nation’s beloved media corps and their posture heading into a Trump presidency.

To begin with, why would journalistic organizations agree to keep their meeting with Donald Trump off-the-record? If you’re a journalist, what is the point of speaking with a powerful politician if you agree in advance that it’s all going to be kept secret? Do they not care what appearance this creates: the most powerful media organizations meeting high atop Trump Tower with the country’s most powerful political official, with everyone agreeing to keep it all a big secret from the public? Whether or not it actually is collusion, whether or not it actually is subservient ring-kissing in exchange for access, it certainly appears to be that. As the Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone put it: “By agreeing to such conditions, journalists expected to deliver the news to the public must withhold details of a newsworthy meeting with the president-elect.” . . .

More to the point, nobody really believes that a discussion that takes place in a room filled with a couple dozen TV stars and their media bosses is going to be kept private, so the “off-the-record” agreement does not actually foster candor. It’s instead designed to achieve nothing other than creating a cozy atmosphere where – just as they do at the sleazy, Versailles-like White House Correspondents’ Dinner and on so many other occasions – media stars get to feel like they’re colleagues and friends with the President rather than his adversaries.

And, as was completely predictable, some of the TV stars immediately breached the off-the-record commitment they made – not by bravely reporting what occurred but by slinking around in the dark to anonymously whisper and gossip about what Trump said to them. Which is worse: agreeing to an off-the-record meeting with Trump, or then unethically violating the agreement by disclosing exactly what you promised in advance you would not disclose? (This is not the first time journalists have dubiously promised Trump off-the-record privileges and then violated their own commitments.)

As I said earlier, in the post-World War II era, the press has enjoyed certain institutional privileges based on two assumptions: (1) That it’s very powerful; and (2) That it will exercise that power responsibly, for the most part. Both assumptions have been proven false in this election cycle. Like many of the postwar institutional accommodations, this one will be renegotiated under Trump, who yesterday showed what he thought about the correlation of forces by publishing his transition progress report on YouTube.