FOR HILLARY CLINTON, THE QUESTION IS NOT HOW WOULD YOU HANDLE NORTH KOREA BUT HOW DID YOU HANDLE IT?

LAURENCE JARVIK: A Discourse on “Critical Thinking.”

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IT’S A BAD DAY FOR THE CLINTONS WHEN VOX FAIRLY EXPLAINS THE RAPE ALLEGATION AGAINST BILL.

SMOOT-HAWLEY FOR POTUS 2016! Trump wants a 45 percent tax on Chinese imports.

As Tom Nichols tweets, “I bet this sounds awesome to people who have no idea how much stuff they buy from China.”

Relax — I’m sure that trade protectionism will work this time.

SUSPECT IN COLOGNE SEX ATTACKS: “I AM SYRIAN. YOU HAVE TO TREAT ME KINDLY. MRS MERKEL INVITED ME.”

Related: The Migrant Rape Culture The Political Elite Wishes Were Fake:

It’s hard to explain the “why” behind the troubling correlation between increased Muslim immigration and sexual assault. But one explanation can be found in Islamic culture itself and the heinous way it treats victims of rape.

Many women who find themselves the victims of sexual assault can later become victims of brutal punishments handed down by Sharia courts. In 2008, a Somali girl was stoned to death after being gang raped. Her crime was for engaging in fornication, according to the Islamist court which sentenced her. Courts in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh regularly hand down multiple lashings to rape victims and do little to rapists.

Even if the law does nothing, victims can still find themselves murdered in honor killings. For instance, a Syrian woman who suffered a gang rape in her native land was later stabbed to death in October in an act to purify her shame. The murder took place, shockingly enough, in Germany.

It looks like Europe may engage in victim blaming today and victim slaying tomorrow if it doesn’t get a handle on this problem soon enough.

Which dovetails perfectly into this headline — German Interior Minister: Chatroom Comments are Just as Bad as Muslim Mass Sex Attacks on Women.

WINNER OF 2015’S WORST COLLEGE PRESIDENT OF THE YEAR: Peter Salovey of Yale. A good call, though it was a rich field this year.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Toyota Wants Its Cars To Expect Its Unexpected. I love my car, but if I were to buy a new one it would be for some of the fancier semi-autonomous electronics. But not yet.

WHEN JUDGES VIOLATE THE LAW: Court ordered a billionaire businessman not to speak online about a rival businessman, and to remove posts about him. “In late 2014, a Florida trial court issued an injunction ordering billionaire businessman Alki David not to post about businessman John Textor and to remove posts about Textor. Yesterday, the Florida Court of Appeal quite rightly held that the injunction violated the First Amendment — but such injunctions have regrettably become common and often stay in place when the speaker lacks David’s financial resources and thus can’t hire a lawyer for an appeal.”

We need more accountability for judges who violate people’s rights.

SO YESTERDAY, when I wrote about grid failures, blackouts, and generators, some readers suggested that while a home generator is nice, proper disaster-prep involves having more than one source of backup power, heat, etc. They’re right. I also recommend inverters, which you can take with you, or use at home. I’ve had posts on that here and here.

SAYS THE MAN WHO WOULD HAPPILY CONFISCATE 90 PERCENT OF TAXPAYER EARNINGS: Bernie Sanders: ‘Greed Is Not Good.’

CLAIM: Rahm Emanuel offered family five million in taxpayer hush money to keep dashcam shooting video embargoed past election:

Emanuel had maintained since McDonald’s death that he has never seen the dash-cam video, but the emails prove the mayor knew exactly what the footage showed when city lawyers negotiated a deal that would at least delay the video’s release. Attorneys for McDonald’s estate sent Platt screenshots of the video and a detailed description:

“After Laquan immediately spun to the ground, graphic puffs of smoke from ricochet shots establishes that Officer Van Dyke continued to fire his weapon for approximately 16 seconds after Mr. McDonald laid helplessly in the street.”

Emanuel’s lawyers were offering $5 million in hush money to keep this hidden just weeks before the runoff election. And the biggest part of the deal—that McDonald family attorneys agreed to keep the video to themselves until criminal proceedings were concluded—just so happened to be inked the day after Emanuel was re-elected.

Found via Iowahawk, who posits that Emanuel’s “toast” after this disclosure.  “Emanuel needs to resign,” he adds. “Even though what will follow is the express lane to Detroit.”

If only there was some other option for Chicago voters…

CUE THE JERSEY JOKES NOW: Behind a Shopping Center in New Jersey, Signs of a Mass Extinction.

HMM: Ingenious New Non-Lethal Bullet Burns Propellant Inside the Round.

DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: Cologne New Year sex attacks: Germany’s women are angry, scared – and getting tired of excuses.

When you import people from a genuine “rape culture,” you will get more rape. And it will persist until you either expel them, or punish enough of them, harshly enough, to make them change their worldview. And, by the way, the same is true of the rape-enabling German political class.

Related: Some un-PC events in Cologne. “To me, the attacks themselves are far less surprising than the fact that a paper like the Guardian isn’t pulling its punches. In fact, the actual events are not surprising at all. The minister may call the attacks ‘a completely new dimension of crime,’ but that only reflects the minister’s ignorance of the Lara Logan story at the hands of a mob in Egypt.”

Also related: Huge influx of migrant men will lead to more sex attacks like those in Cologne, says analyst, as it’s revealed Austrian police have ALSO covered up identical gang assaults.

This is your political class, Europe. They’d rather see sexual assaults against European women, than risk anything that might make “migrants” look bad.

ADDRESSING THE ONE-SIDED POLITICIZATION OF CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION: How Law Schools Can Fix The One-Sided Pursuit Of ‘Social Justice’ Through Clinics. “To correct this latter problem, I have a modest proposal. On any controversial matter where clinics will be pursuing social justice, a law school should establish two clinics. Thus, if there is a clinic whose focus is on representing those charged with death penalty, there should be another to represent murder victims to help them make victim impact statements. If there is a clinic representing tenants, there should be another representing small landlords.”

This is a good idea. It’s funny but one of my former colleagues in the UT legal clinic hated doing landlord/tenant because — though she was a big lefty in general — her family had a few properties in the NYC area that they rented out, and they were always getting screwed by deadbeat tenants. This gave her a degree of compassion in that field that was less present elsewhere. Lawyers in particular should know that there are two sides to every story.

At the University of Tennessee College of Law, we follow the above advice to some degree: We have a wide range of clinics, including a Business & Trademark Law Clinic aimed at helping small businesses.

HOW FAR HAS TRUMP MOVED THE OVERTON WINDOW? THIS FAR: Tom Friedman calls for “controlling low-skilled immigration.”

HERE’S WHY HILLARY WILL BE INDICTED: Former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova predicts chaos in a few months when Attorney General Loretta Lynch declines to prosecute Hillary Clinton despite an FBI recommendation to indict the former Secretary of State. Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group interviews of congressional and government ethics insiders suggest an indictment for Hatch Act violations isn’t likely. The outlook is far more ominous for Clinton on an indictment for negligence in handling classified information.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 973.

IN THAT CASE, I’M SURPRISED OBAMA HASN’T PUSHED HARDER ON THIS: Megan McArdle: Closing Tax ‘Loopholes’ Would Choke the Middle Class.

Paying for new spending by “closing the loopholes” is a favorite rallying cry of almost everyone. But rarely are those people picturing giving up their own deductions for mortgage interest, employer-sponsored health insurance, dependent children, or retirement accounts. Why, no! Those aren’t loopholes. Those are just the basics of a decent middle-class life. Loopholes are the deductions used by other, richer people who can afford crooked lawyers.

The sad fact is, however, that almost all of the money lost to “tax expenditures” goes to you, Mr. or Ms. Middle American. It cannot be otherwise; you have most of the money. Oh, I know it doesn’t feel like you have most of the money. Didn’t you just read an article saying that the top 1 percent of Americans collect around 20 percent of national income?

Why, yes, you did. But that means the bottom 99 percent have 80 percent of national income. If we confiscated every dollar the top 1 percent made, that still wouldn’t quite cover our national expenditures. And it is not actually practical to take all of it, since the normal response to 100 percent tax rates would be to move or to stop making money.

Indeed.

IT VARIES. FOR HEALTH-INSURANCE PURPOSES, 27. FOR ABORTION, PUBERTY. FOR SEXUAL CONSENT, IT’S ONCE YOU’RE OUT OF SCHOOL. When Are You Really An Adult?

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Should The Navy Go To A Big Fleet / Small Ships Doctrine?

TODAY IN HISTORY: 17 Years Ago Bill Clinton Faced Senate For Charges Of Perjury (VIDEO).