WHAT IS THIS, NAZI GERMANY? Democrats Take Aim at Civil Liberties Group F.I.R.E.

In the wake of last year’s election upset, Democratic activists and journalists worried about the rise of authoritarianism under the new administration urged Americans to donate to the ACLU and other organizations devoted to protecting civil liberties against government overreach. But now Senate Democrats are trying to derail a Trump cabinet nominee because she donated to a group that stands up for free speech and due process in an arena where their ideological allies have tried to restrict them. . . .

Imagine Senator Casey’s quote applied to a hypothetical 2019 Trump administration policy that stripped due process rights from terror suspects: “Democrats must fully explain whether they support the radical view that it should be more difficult for victims of terrorism to receive justice,” an administration spokesman might demand. Such a statement would surely be described (accurately) as classic demagoguery.

As a spokesperson for DeVos noted, FIRE does work in a wide range of areas. It protects student free speech rights regardless of the speakers’ political orientation, although because conservatives are a such a small ideological minority on campus, their views tend to be targeted more frequently. And it advocates for sexual assault policies that fairly weigh the interests of both accusers and the accused, rather than simply expelling students after kangaroo court show trials, as many activists demand.

That Democrats are floating this line of attack against DeVos is a testimony to how influential identity-politics fixated campus activists have become even among the party’s moderates. Which, needless to say, is a big reason the party finds itself in opposition in the first place.

You want more Trump? Because this is how you get more Trump.

FAKE NEWS IS EVERYWHERE: When Leftist Foundations Fund Activism Posing as Journalism.

ASIA PIVOT: China to set up Asia-Pacific security framework amid growing mistrust among its neighbours.

China has vowed to set up an Asia-Pacific security framework and continue building up its armed forces, citing complex security concerns in the region.

In its first policy white paper on Asia-Pacific security cooperation, Beijing said on Wednesday that the present security framework should be upgraded.

Military alliances in the region should be made with transparency and confrontation should be avoided, it says. It also calls for more military exchanges between China and other nations in the ­region.

“The current security structure in the region is not satisfactory, which has led to mistrust among the nations,” vice foreign minister Liu Zhenmin said.

Sometimes, diplomacy consists of the doggie playing nice until it has a big enough rock of its own.

JOHN PODESTA AS SECRETARY OF STATE? Hillary’s List Of Cabinet Picks Revealed, Including Black Person To Be Named Later. The “black person to be named later” bit is funny, but this list of sad retreads (Jamie Gorelick as Attorney General? Really?) makes Trump’s picks look awfully good, which probably means it’s “fake news,” right?

AWARENESS: We asked Nancy Pelosi what part of Obamacare had underperformed. “I can’t think of anything,” she said.

Vox, so click with caution.

JOSE CABRANES: If colleges keep killing academic freedom, civilization will die, too. “Recent attempts to shame professors for unpopular views and to curtail the due process rights of those accused of misconduct are cause for alarm. Especially when academic freedom is endangered at places such as Yale — long celebrated as a leader on freedom of expression — we know that the erosion of academic freedom has become a national problem.”

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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Dangerous Rise of ‘The New Civics.’

You may wish to revisit this 2006 essay by Eric S. Raymond, The Gramscian Damage.

DONALD TRUMP: Bringing Media A Reality Check:

The relationship with the White House press corps is being redefined by President-elect Donald Trump, who takes to Twitter to drive home his point and calls out journalists in a fiery new normal reporters will need to adjust to quickly, media watchdogs said.

“This administration is going to cause the press to rediscover itself and rediscover its true role,” said Richard Benedetto, an American University professor who as a reporter covered the White House for decades. “It’s going to be a rough ride because this president operates a little differently.”

Again: 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 is being renegotiated under Trump.

Plus, some related thoughts of mine from last night. The best thing would be to have an honest, competent, reasonably fair press. It’s not entirely clear what the second-best thing is.

DISTRACTED DRIVING: The Next Ad Frontier is the Windshield.

The advent of connected cars is creating a new sales battleground, and using a vehicle’s windshield may be the next way to pitch more products and services to consumers. McKinsey & Co. estimates that mobile and data-driven services in autos will generate $1.5 trillion by 2030. At least part of that will be spent projecting information to drivers and passengers right before their eyes.

“When you think of a person driving and what your needs are when you’re on a typical trip, it’s food, it’s fuel and it’s rest stops,” said John Butler, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst. “Owning the inside of the car is critical, it’s really where the money is made. The real value is locked up in the ad opportunity.”

I’m going to hang on to my comparatively low-tech 2009-model SUV until it falls apart around me.

ALLIES:

That’s all I’ve been able to find on this story so far.

IF IT WEREN’T FOR DOUBLE STANDARDS, THEY’D HAVE NO STANDARDS AT ALL: Trump’s Presser Shows Media Double Standard On Politicians Attacking The Press: The idea that this kind of singling out of press members by politicians is new and especially catastrophic is odd. Remember de Blasio and Obama doing the same? “There was also the time the Obama adminstration named Fox national reporter James Rosen a co-conspirator in violating the Espionage Act so they could spy on his phone records, whereabouts, and personal emails. Or the time the Obama administration seized two months of AP reporters’ phone records. Also, don’t forget the time Obama booted three newspapers’ reporters from his campaign plane because he didn’t like their coverage. So, there’s that.”

That’s different, because shut up.

A-10 WARTHOG UPGRADES FOR COMBAT SEARCH AND RESCUE MISSIONS: A short but informative article.

Of all the fixed-wing aircraft in the US Air Force’s inventory, no plane carries out CSAR missions like the A-10. CSAR missions jump off with little warning and often involve going deep into enemy territory, so becoming certified to perform CSAR missions takes tons of training, which only A-10 pilots undergo. The A-10’s rugged survivability, massive forward firing power, newly acquired communication capabilities, and long loiter times at low altitudes make it ideal for flying low and slow and finding the lost person.

RELATED: From May 2016, when the plot to kill the A-10 was still in full swing. Can popularity save the A-10? Long post by Jim Dunnigan but has the details.

THEY’RE NOT A CIVIL RIGHTS GROUP, THEY’RE A DEMOCRATIC PARTY FRONT GROUP: NAACP head won’t say if any Republican would make a good attorney general.

NAACP President Cornell Brooks refused to say whether he thought any Republican could make a good attorney general when asked by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham detailed the NAACP’s report cards giving Democrats perfect scores and flunking Republicans during Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearings for attorney general. Graham then pressed Brooks to identify whether any Republican would be suitable to lead the Justice Department.

“Can you name one person you think would be a good attorney general on the Republican side?” Graham asked.

“Senator, my purpose here, as you well know, as a witness is to speak to the nominee’s fitness to serve as attorney general,” Brooks answered.

Graham said he thought it was “odd” how the nation’s oldest civil rights organization viewed the Democratic Party much more favorably than the GOP before noting that Brooks’ view of Sessions was matched by the NAACP’s view of the Republican Party.

I thought these tax-exempt groups were supposed to be nonpartisan.

MICHAEL MOORE: Trump Is ‘The Godfather of This Decade’s Fake News’

The word you’re looking for is “chutzpah.”

DATA POINT: One of my friends, an Arab immigrant who hates Trump and has been blasting him on social media nonstop for a year, watched Rex Tillerson’s confirmation hearing yesterday and came away very impressed, to his own surprise.

HOLDING THE JERRIES OFF ALL NIGHT LONG: That is the face of a very weary soldier. Great photo, informative caption. The latest in StrategyPage’s Battle of the Bulge photo series. (Yes, there’s a typo in the title. It’ll be fixed.)

MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY: Why the media’s Trump dossier coverage is suicidal.

Whether or not you agree with Dougherty on any of the particulars, they all come down to this one line: “Our institutions can’t temporarily suspend the very standards that grant them credibility and expect to survive.”

I’d quibble only with the word “temporarily.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Study: For-Profits Match Similar Nonprofits in Learning Results.

Students at for-profit institutions achieve learning results that are similar to those of students who attend comparable nonprofit colleges, according to a new study by the Council for Aid to Education.

The council used its Collegiate Learning Assessment to measure learning outcomes in six areas for 624 students from four for-profit higher education systems, which the study does not name, and then compared the scores with those of a matched group of students from 20 unnamed public and private institutions that were selected because they were similar to the for-profits on key measures related to academic performance. The CLA aims to show how students’ learning has grown on average between when they entered and when they graduated from an institution.

“In all six comparisons, students at proprietary institutions outperformed the students at the nonproprietary comparison institutions,” the study said. “However, in all but one case, the difference in mean scores is too small to be considered statistically significant.” Students from the for-profits outperformed their peers at nonprofits to a statistically significant degree on the performance task section, which includes measurements of problem solving and writing.

Who could have seen this coming?

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Hey Hollywood, Smugness Isn’t a Political Strategy.

The problem with Hollywood people making political speeches is not that their political ideas are worse than anyone else’s, or that they enjoy sharing their half-baked ideas. This is a minor and forgivable social sin, like arriving five minutes early for a party. No, the problem with Hollywood people making political speeches is that the speeches themselves are bad, at least at their presumed goal of producing political change.

Take Streep. She’s right that Trump should not have made fun of a disabled reporter. However, she surrounded that point with an extended discussion of how mean everyone was being to actors and journalists.

This was a double mistake. First, it accepted Trump’s frame: it’s a handful of liberal elites against the rest of the country. That’s an argument he just won, so it’s unwise to try for an immediate rematch. And second, there is in this whole world no sight less rhetorically compelling than that of successful people with fun and rewarding jobs, and a decent income, complaining that they’re victims of the unglamorous folks who labor at all the strenuously boring work required to make their lives nice. Even I, who have one of those jobs, am rolling my eyes and saying “Good heavens, suck it up.” The only people who don’t recoil from this sort of vacuous self-pity are those similarly situated in elite liberal institutions — but since those folks already hate Trump, you haven’t actually changed anything.

Perspective is difficult for those working in an isolated and highly paid field which devotes an entire season to self-congratulation.

EMISSIONS CHEAT: Six Volkswagen Executives Indicted by Department of Justice.

A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Michigan returned an indictment today, fingering the execs for playing key roles in a decade-long conspiracy to deceive the U.S. government and public. While five of the men live in Germany, one man — Oliver Schmidt, former head of VW’s regulatory compliance department — was nabbed by the FBI in a Miami airport on Saturday while attempting to return to Germany.

As the charges were handed down, the embattled automaker pleaded guilty to three criminal federal counts and agreed to pay $4.3 billion in criminal and civil penalties.

It will be interesting to see if Germany agrees to extradite the other five.

SO MUCH WINNING: Trump Pentagon likely to abandon social experiments for core mission under Mattis, say expert. Rumors that Mattis only took the job on condition that the Department of Defense be renamed the Department of War remain, as they say, unverifiable.

I THINK REPUBLICANS SHOULD USE THIS AS A JUMPING-OFF POINT TO CAP THE PAY OF UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS AND NONPROFIT OFFICERS AT THE LEVEL OF A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE: Democrats Move To Cap Employee Pay.

VIDEO: Prof. Stephen Cohen: Allegations Against Trump a ‘Grave American National Security Threat’.

It took five years, a major hurricane, and a civil war in Iraq to discredit and hobble George W. Bush, and the Democrats aren’t going to make that kind of a mistake again.

SEAN DAVIS: Progressives Don’t Understand How Gun ‘Silencers’ Work. Here Are Some Facts To Help Them.