CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL ON INCENDIARY CORRECTNESS:

People who have so far been patient with Merkel are beginning to worry that the crazy scenes in front of the Cologne cathedral will soon be repeated countrywide. Ten percent now tell pollsters that they would vote for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party if elections were held today.

It is dangerous to constrict the range of things voters can say about government policies, especially when those policies are — like Merkel’s migration policy — irregular, and likely to change the country at its core.

No doubt there is a danger of incendiary reactions when people hear of mobs of Muslim foreigners groping young women in front of the country’s most recognizable Christian landmark. But any government attempt to minimize or ignore such events would be a terrible mistake. It would be more likely to whip tempers up than to calm them down.

Read the whole thing.

Speaking of minimizing the Islamic immigrant assault on Cologne’s women, “Germany’s largest TV station is apologizing for not reporting the mass sexual assaults on women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve,” Betsy Newmark writes. “It is not enough to apologize. They should have to answer why they didn’t run the story and if anyone from either the local or national government tried to keep them from reporting on the story. More than 100 women reported that they had been sexually assaulted and two said they had been raped.”

Later her in post, Betsy adds, “The authorities don’t seem to have much confidence that they can successfully prosecute anyone” involved in the assault.

If anything can make this disaster even worse, that would do it.

HBO* PREPS DOCUDRAMA ON ANITA HILL: “A far more timely tale of sexual harassment could, in theory, catch HBO’s eye. It involves former President Bill Clinton, currently stumping for his wife, Hillary Clinton. Not only was he able to dodge the fallout from numerous accusations but his team savaged the women involved in these cases.”

* The entertainment wing of Time-Warner-CNN, which brought you Thursday’s anti-Second Amendment Obama infomercial, and whose “news” anchors dub the NRA a “terrorist organization.”

TRIGGER WARNING: ISLAMOPHOBIA AHEAD. In Your Heart, You Know He’s Right: Trump and Muslim Immigration, as explored by Roger Simon.

REFUGEES: Nothing To Worry About!

BERNIE SANDERS ACOLYTES HAVE FOUND A NEW PASTIME — DISRUPTING DONALD TRUMP CAMPAIGN EVENTS:

The radicals who gave us the “Occupy Wall Street” movement have mostly graduated and gone on to “you want fries with that?” kinds of jobs. The “Black Lives Matter” movement has not fully petered out but it now includes in its agenda regular assaults on all of the presidential campaigns.

And now, many of our upper crust university students who may not be specifically connected to the Black Lives Matter protesters and who are, and who always will be, driven by existential ennui (cf. F. Nietzsche, the will to power) have decided once again to re-imagine “democracy” to mean something like this.

They attend public events where literally thousands of people have come to hear what one man in particular has to say about the issues of the day and, at key, coordinated moments in the speech, they stand up and start shouting about what they themselves think of those issues and what they think of the man who is talking.

And Trump makes them look like fools: “Trump, Annoyed by Frequent Coordinated Disruptions at Burlington, Vermont Rally, Tells Guards to Turn One Disruptor Out Into the Ten Degree Chill and ‘Confiscate His Coat.’”

Brilliantly played.

Related: Trump Is Winning the War on Political Correctness.

JONAH GOLDBERG: THE BILL COMES DUE ON THAT ’90s SHOW:

Fast forward to two weeks ago. Hillary is as close as she’s ever been to finally fulfilling her destiny. Everyone — at least everyone who matters — is finally “Ready for Hillary.” The tireless effort by her minions to make Bill’s behavior a trivial and private issue seemed to have paid off. Bill is popular, very popular. Despite the fact that pretty much no one thinks he mended his ways after he left office, all of the sophisticated people think criticizing his “personal” behavior is boorish and deranged. At the same time, feminists have finally completed their restoration project. The last stones have been mounted atop the wall of Zero Tolerance 2.0.

And then, as Jeffrey Epstein’s flight attendant once said, Bill Clinton comes out of nowhere to bite her on the ass.

Whereas Bill was supposed to be Hillary’s “not-so secret weapon,” he’s now a liability. It’s schadenfreudetastic to watch liberals forced to choose between the Scylla of the Hillary campaign and the Charybdis of the feminist project.

Of course, liberals are mad at#…#conservatives (and Donald Trump) for pointing it out. I particularly love the subhead on this Slate piece. “The right hopes to turn the feminist consensus on rape against the Clintons.” Ah yes, those terrible conservatives, how dare they take feminists seriously!

Read the whole thing.

TEN YEARS LATER, ESPN To Air Documentary On Duke Lacrosse Rape Hoax:

It has been nearly 10 years since a group of Duke lacrosse players hosted a party that would end up getting them accused of gang-raping a stripper. On the 10th anniversary, ESPN will air a documentary about the case.

The accusation centered around Crystal Mangum, who in a bid to avoid being detained for intoxication, told police that members of the Duke lacrosse team had raped her at a party. Her accusations snowballed, and with his election coming up, District Attorney Mike Nifong pressured her to identify the alleged rapists. One of the men she identified wasn’t even at the party at the time the rape was supposed to have occurred. Mangum’s story also changed several times. (She was never punished for her false accusation, although later she was convicted of a separate murder and is currently in prison.)

But the case went forward anyway. Duke University administrators and professors maligned the lacrosse players as racists and rapists, since Mangum is African-American. The lacrosse season was cancelled, and the team’s coach was forced to resign before the students even had their day in court.

The travesty of the case eventually led to Nifong’s disbarment for “dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.” The accused students sued, but as is often the case for falsely accused young men, they received no monetary compensation.

Two writers who helped expose the fraud were history professor K.C. Johnson and Stuart Taylor, who co-wrote a book on the case. Johnson was interviewed for the ESPN documentary, and told the Washington Examiner that to this day, he is still amazed by the “utter lack of accountability.”

“Ten years out, we as a society have learned nothing about the importance of due process in sexual assault allegations. (Indeed, the situation now is much worse than it was in 2006),” Johnson wrote in an email. “The leadership at Duke that so botched the case remains in place; the faculty who rushed to judgment remain firmly entrenched; and the key figures in the media, especially the New York Times, that so badly failed in covering Duke continue to fail in covering this issue.”

Taylor, too, brought up the lack of accountability for anyone involved in the case (with the exception of Nifong), and explained how the school and the media worked to frame these students even as the case began to fall apart.

It’s as if universities are fomenting — quite deliberately — hostile educational environments for male students.

THE… DOG:  I know many of us have wondered who was in charge of the Obama administration, but the dog seems rather a long shot.  Not impossible, mind, but unlikely.  And yet, he was the object of this plot. Man in alleged plot to kidnap Obama’s dog arrested on weapons charge.

AND THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: Obama DIA Head Flynn: ‘Not Proud’ Of Refugee Screening Process, People In System ‘Frustrated’ With Limitations.

DUH: Ancient Romans Were Riddled With Parasites, Despite Sanitation Innovations.

FROM MY FRIEND AMANDA S. GREEN: Nocturnal Challenge (Nocturnal Lives Book 4).

INDEED: We won’t see a Slutwalk in Cologne anytime soon.

A LIVER FOR A HEART: I love love love…

HAVE I MENTIONED MY SHOCKED FACE? Hillary Clinton is running the most sexist campaign ever.

FROM MY FRIEND JEFF DUNTEMANN: The Cunning Blood.

PERHAPS THEY SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED TO PULL UP THEIR PANTS INSTEAD: U California System Encouraging Students to Formally Report ‘Unwanted Jokes’.

AT THIS TIME, IN THIS PLACE: This could backfire spectacularly.  Hint, they call it The Miracle In Philadelphia, not “the perfectly ordinary occurrence in Philadelphia”. Texas Governor Greg Abbott Calls for Convention of the States to Reclaim Power Wrongfully Assumed by Federal Government.

LEADING FROM AN ENTIRELY IMAGINARY POSITION: A Most Unserious War.

NEW FROM MY FRIEND: And comrade-at-arms Dave Freer Changeling’s Island.