PAUL RAHE: A Strange New Respect For The Right? Part One.

BUT OF COURSE: Microsoft’s New Ad Features Only Left-Wing Causes.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1313.

GOVERNMENT MEDICAL CARE: VA Hospital Left Body In Shower Room For 9 Hours.

Staff at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Florida left the body of a veteran in a shower for nine hours after the veteran died and proper pickup procedures to the morgue weren’t followed.

The Tampa Bay Times on Sunday (http://bit.ly/2goW2NK ) reported that an internal investigation concluded that staff at the Bay Pines VA Healthcare System failed to provide appropriate post-mortem care to the veteran’s body.

The investigative report said that leaving the body unattended for so long increased the chance of decomposition.

The unnamed veteran died in February after spending time in hospice care. The hospital’s Administrative Investigation Board ordered retraining for staff.

Hospital spokesman Jason Dangel said hospital officials view what happened as unacceptable but have implemented changes to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

We keep hearing promises like that from VA officials, but enough promises and excuses already. Abolish the VA and give vets vouchers for the private medical coverage of their choice.

(Hat tip, Weasel Zippers.)

SAY WHAT YOU LIKE ABOUT THE MULLAHS, BUT AT LEAST THEY MADE THE PLANES RUN ON TIME: Boeing Seals Nearly $17 Billion Iran Deal.

WHY DEMOCRATS ARE SO AFRAID: How Trump Can Build A Powerful Political Machine.

Donald Trump, who has been underestimated by his opponents for the last 18 months, has a strategy to build the most powerful political machine America has seen in decades while gaining popularity with voters. His critics could be blindsided again.

The strategy depends on the construction and repair of $1 trillion worth of infrastructure. To understand how Trump plans to accomplish such an ambitious task, look no further than the new LaGuardia Airport, which Governing magazine reports could be a model project for Trump’s administration . . . .

Trump’s plans, from what we know, will rely on this kind of public-private partnership (called a P3). It’s not a new idea. In Europe—hardly a bastion of laissez-faire governance—many major infrastructure assets are owned and operated by private firms, including mass transit, high-speed rail, and airports. America’s preference for government-owned and operated infrastructure is in fact rather exceptional, driven more by ideology (and special interests like unions and consultants) than rigorous policy analysis. An asset like LaGuardia Airport, which is run by the notoriously corrupt and inefficient Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, will almost certainly be more efficiently rebuilt by a private company that can’t afford to take a loss.

Read the whole thing. But the short version is that Dems didn’t like Trump because he campaigned like a Democrat, and they’re afraid of him in office because he’ll use the government like a Democrat.

WE MAY NEVER KNOW THE TRUTH:

In the past two weeks, Obama has done interviews with:

– Rolling Stone
– Fareed Zakaria
– Daily Show

How did #FakeNews become a problem?

— Andrew Kugle (@AndrewJKugle) December 12, 2016

THAT’S NOT FUNNY! Chicago’s Famed Second City Comedy Theatre Issues Strict New ‘Safe Space’ Rules.

Signs at the famed Chicago’s Second City comedy theater, which produced such greats as John Belushi, Dan Akroyd, Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert (and some not-so-greats, like your humble reporter), is issuing rules for audience participation in its famous improvisation shows until its audience knows how to behave.

Or, at least, how to keep Second City, where supposedly no joke is off limits, a “safe space” from Trumpism.

Over the weekend, signs went up on Second City’s doors warning that the company “has a zero-tolerance policy and does not allow hate speech of any kind whether it’s directed toward our artists, employees or patrons,” and that anyone “verbalizing any homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic, racist or prejudiced comments will be asked to leave.”

A taped message before Second City’s e.t.c. stage shows now tells audience members, “If you have to yell something like that, go home, shout it into your pillow and suffocate yourself with it.”

Good grief.

Second City used to take on anyone, from journalistic icons like Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley, all the way down to your local TV station lightnight movie host. Now it would seem their targets — and their appeal — have become more selective.

JOHN FUND: What’s Behind Trump’s Move To The Right? “He owes nothing to the old guard, he sees a window for bold reforms, and he knows who his enemies are.”

SORRY, GUYS, YOU LET HILLARY DOWN. How A Free Press Became “Fake.” Just a reminder, the reviled Citizens United case was about Hillary wanting people who criticized her punished.

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NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: The Two Largest Land Armies in Europe on the Edge of War.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, TRUMP MELTDOWN EDITION: Babson backs off; apology sought.

The lawyer for one of two Babson College students investigated on unsubstantiated racism allegations stemming from their celebration of Donald Trump’s election is demanding an apology and threatening a defamation lawsuit after the school lifted its campus ban on the pair yesterday.

Babson Dean of Students Lawrence Ward informed students Parker Rand-Ricciardi and Edward Tomasso by letter yesterday that the school is “removing any interim restrictions on your access to campus.” The letter cites the “formal conclusion of the investigation phase of the College’s Community Standards process” as the reason for the lifting of a ban imposed shortly after the Nov. 9 incident.

Rand-Ricciardi and Tomasso were accused in social media posts of shouting racial and homophobic slurs while driving in a Chevy Silverado flying a Trump flag through the Wellesley College campus on the day after the election, which were unsupported by Babson’s investigation, according to a letter by Rand-Ricciardi’s lawyer.

Attorney Jeffrey Robbins wrote to Babson’s lawyers yesterday saying the college’s handling of the incident “badly defamed” his client, and that Babson is “liable to Parker for the tort of defamation and, it would appear, for violations of the Massachusetts Civil Rights statute under the common law, for the intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.”

Robbins is calling for the college to retract statements its officials made impugning the pair, offer a public apology and withdraw internal charges of harassment and disorderly conduct.

Robbins’ letter cites excerpts from Babson and Wellesley campus police reviews that found the pair yelled only “Trump 2016” and “Make America Great Again” from a truck they drove onto the Wellesley campus, but no witnesses corroborated the claims that they spit at two students, uttered slurs or purposefully drove to a building popular with black students.

Um, “purposefully drove to a building popular with black students?” Anyway, note the lesson here: Lawyer up, and punch back twice as hard. Also, the parents must be wondering why they sent their sons to Babson if this is the kind of treatment they face. Because you know the school would have given women or minorities the benefit of the doubt.

Alumni, parents, and students need to push back against this sort of behavior — as does the Department of Education once the Trump Administration is in place.

Annual cost of attending Babson College: $58,692.

Related: Trend seen in colleges muzzling political speech.

“We see over and over campuses doing a terrible job of investigating supposed offenses, and we also repeatedly see them investigating things that don’t sound like offenses at all,” said Robert L. Shibley, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which advocates for free-speech rights and due process for students accused by colleges of civil rights violations.

FIRE has successfully advocated for students at odds with campus disciplinary boards, including helping a Texas student sue and reach a settlement with Blinn College this year after she was told she needed special permission to display a gun rights sign and collect signatures for her student group on campus.

“I think they are concerned about the school’s public relations,” Shibley said about overzealous college administrators. “I think they are concerned about looking like they care about all of their students. Which is good, but that also means they have to care about the students who are being accused. That doesn’t go in only one direction.”

You know, if you’re looking for a year-end charitable donation, donating to FIRE is a good idea.

FORGET IT, THEY’RE ROLLING:

If Dems treat everything Trump as equally outrageous, they'll have harder time convincing persuadables anything he's doing is outrageous

— David M. Drucker (@DavidMDrucker) December 12, 2016

NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY: The Politicization of Libraries. “The librarians seem torn between their desire to show how useful they can be (presumably so they won’t lose public funding) and how disgusted they are by the people who get to vote on that funding.”

It’s weird that as institutions become more vulnerable to technological and market change — as with libraries and universities — they tend to go more, not less, into hard-line lefty politics that alienate much of their base.

SELECTED NOT ELECTED NOMINATED: DNC candidates defer to unity commission on eliminating superdelegates.

New York Assemblyman Michael Blake, also at the forum and running for DNC vice chair, said he agreed with Harrison and Ellison but cautioned about a system that did not include superdelegates at all. He said that if Republicans had had superdelegates, President-elect Donald Trump probably wouldn’t have won the Republican primary.

“There needs to be changes, no doubt about it. Think about on the other side, that if there would have been a superdelegate process, probably less a likelihood of Trump getting the nomination,” Blake said. “Sometimes we just have to figure out how to make the system better and what I want to make sure is regardless of what’s happening here, we’ll take the recommendations of the unity commission. Well let’s make sure, let’s figure out how to improve the process first rather than dramatically change it. Because what we don’t want to do as Democrats is dramatically change things and hurt ourselves in the long run.”

Buckley, weighing in last, said there “absolutely” had to be some kind of reform to the superdelegate system but he, like the others, refrained from saying whether that meant reducing their power or cutting them from the Democratic primary process altogether.

It sounds like leading Democrats want the appearance of change to appease their angry constituents, while each harboring the desire to be able to someday take advantage of the superdelegate system for themselves.

CHOCOLATE RATION INCREASED FROM 30 GRAMS TO 20: Inflation-Hit Venezuela Is Pulling Its Largest Bill From Circulation.

The surprise move, announced by Maduro during an hours-long speech, is likely to worsen a cash crunch in Venezuela. Maduro said the 100-bolivar bill will be taken out of circulation on Wednesday and Venezuelans will have 10 days after that to exchange those notes at the central bank.

Critics slammed the move, which Maduro said was needed to combat contraband of the bills at the volatile Colombia-Venezuela border, as economically nonsensical, adding there would be no way to swap all the 100-bolivar bills in circulation in the time the president has allotted.

Mayb