CRIME OF THE CENTURY: Man suspected of stealing $300,000 Ferrari arrested after asking for gas money.

Imagine how quickly they’d have caught him if it had needed a tuneup.

HILLARY 2020! Here’s a simple way to appear more likable.

BREAKING: Naked Selfie GOP Congressman Decides Not to Run Again in 2018.

If Joe Barton’s decision helps to legitimize the use of revenge porn as a political weapon, it will be a huge mistake.

MORE MARKET SHARE FOR AMERICAN FRACKERS: OPEC agrees oil cut extension to end of 2018.

Two OPEC delegates told Reuters the group had agreed to extend the cuts by nine months until the end of 2018, as largely anticipated by the market.

OPEC also decided to cap the output of Nigeria at around 1.8 million bpd but had yet to agree a cap for Libya. Both countries have been previously exempt from cuts due to unrest and lower-than-normal production.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has yet to meet with non-OPEC producers led by Russia, with the meeting scheduled to begin after 1500 GMT.

Before the earlier, OPEC-only meeting started at the group’s headquarters in Vienna on Thursday, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said it was premature to talk about exiting the cuts at least for a couple of quarters and added that the group would examine progress at its next meeting in June.

“When we get to an exit, we are going to do it very gradually … to make sure we don’t shock the market,” he said.

OPEC is being aided in its efforts, quite accidentally, by socialist member state Venezuela.

QUALITY IS JOB TWO: Build fast, fix later: speed hurts quality at Tesla, some workers say.

TO BE FAIR, THERE SEEM TO BE STRAIGHT WOMEN INVOLVED, TOO: Moore says lesbians, gays, socialists behind sexual misconduct allegations.

Straight female Trump voters, even.

FASTER, PLEASE: New patch could help heart attack patients with dead muscle.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Ohio appellate court: Ban on firearms in restraining order may violate Second Amendment.. The real scandal here is how easy it is to get a restraining order on little more than one party’s say-so.

PATRICK POOLE: On UK and Radical Islam, President Trump Is Absolutely Correct — They’re ‘Overrun.’

RELATED: Muslim population in parts of Europe could TRIPLE by 2050: New study predicts migration and birth rates will lead to dramatic rise in numbers across continent.

JOEL KOTKIN: Today’s Cities As Playgrounds For The Elites. “Cities today are about as politically diverse as the former Soviet Union; they are increasingly dominated by ‘the civic Left,’ for which pragmatism and moderation represent weakness and compromise. . . . If the flight of moderate, middle-income homeowners continues, along with the growth in population of poor residents and childless hipsters, urban centers will be destined to serve as sandboxes for the progressive political class. Most urban leaders and media boosters have been slow to recognize such trends, which call for a thorough change in policy. Urbanist Derek Thompson suggests that cities like New York are wonderful for new immigrants, hipsters, and the ultrarich but ‘not a great place for middle class families.’ Yet young families, not single hipsters, will now be increasingly critical to urban success.”

As the trajectory of many big cities has shown, their leaders would rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. So I don’t expect these policies to change from within. And I think creating “conditions peculiarly ideal for left-wing agitation,” is seen as a feature, not a bug.

POSTINDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE: Judge postpones Uber trade secret trial based on bombshell memo.

Judge William Alsup said during a hearing Tuesday that he’d only just received the letter, which a former Uber security analyst sent to one of the company’s lawyers. The full content of the letter hasn’t been shared publicly, but parts of it were read aloud during the hearing.

The 37-page letter, written earlier this year by Ric Jacobs’ attorney, details tactics Uber allegedly used to obtain trade secrets and destroy evidence. The letter details allegations that Uber employees were trained to “impede” ongoing investigations by using messages that vanished and couldn’t be traced to the company. Uber fired Jacobs in April.

“These tactics were employed clandestinely through a distributed architecture of anonymous servers, telecommunications architecture, and non-attributable hardware and software,” the letter says, according to transcripts from Tuesday’s hearing.

The memo also alleges Uber employees educated the company’s autonomous vehicle team in Pittsburgh “on using ephemeral communications, non-attributable devices, and false attorney-client privilege designations with the specific intent of preventing the discovery of devices, documents, and communications in anticipated litigation.”

PLUS: Uber Reports Massive $1.5 Billion 3Q Loss As Two Investors Drop Out Of New Financing Round.

USA TODAY EDITORIALIZES: The Sexual Harassment Reckoning: Overdue backlash mustn’t turn into sexual McCarthyism.. My prediction: Not much change for powerful figures, but ordinary men will have to sit through HR presentations on why you can’t compliment someone’s sweater. Yes, I’m cynical about this stuff. That said, these are reasonable points:

The punishment should fit the crime. All sexual misconduct is unacceptable, but not all of it is equal.

Allegations should be able to withstand thorough examination and interrogation. Anything less would be condescending, especially to women. The accused deserve due process.

This cultural sea change must trickle down to places such as restaurants and farms and small businesses, where sexual harassment can be endemic and allegations don’t make front-page news.

Where the ballot box serves as judge and jury of sexual misconduct, real change will never come as long as voters place political tribalism over basic decency.

As for where this came from all of a sudden, I think the deliberate effort to weaponize female anger — before, and especially after, the 2016 election — had a lot to do with it. It was aimed at Trump, but since Trump seems immune, it discharged into whatever targets were available. And the targets around Democratic women are mostly Democratic men.

CHANGE: Nikki Haley to China: Cut off oil to North Korea, or we’ll take the situation into our own hands.

WHOA, HADN’T SEEN THIS ONE COMING: Alex DeLarge Forced To Step Down As Leader Of Droogs Amidst Allegations Of Sexual Misconduct, the Onion “reports.”

But more seriously, their headline is a reminder that as Theodore Dalrymple wrote a decade ago, these days, it’s Anthony Burgess’ world, we’re just living in it: A Prophetic and Violent Masterpiece.

AND ANOTHER ONE: New England official says Franken tried to give her a “wet, open-mouthed kiss” onstage.

Related: Pelosi: Time for the “icon” to hit the bricks; Update: Conyers’ attorney: What’s the difference between him and Franken?. Yeah, why’s the white guy getting a pass? It’s got to be racism, right?

BREAKING: McCain to vote for GOP tax bill.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: House GOP To Cap Amount Of Student Loans For Law School, Eliminate Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

TAX CHANGES: “If this is wrong, I’d like to see the NYT refute it.”

I think — I don’t know — that the NYT is expressing concern about taxpayers who itemize and have a big state-and-local tax deduction. I’m one of those taxpayers, but I used an on-line calculator that showed that my household would save around $1000 a year under the GOP plan. And we pay over $17,000 a year in property taxes alone. The new standard deduction is that big. So it looks as though there are a lot of people who currently itemize, who’ll just be better off taking the standard deduction. Then there are the many many people — the majority of taxpayers — who are already taking the standard deduction and who’ll get a much larger standard deduction. Why isn’t the NYT happy for these people? I suspect — again, I haven’t figured it out — that the NYT is looking at all the people who just don’t owe much income tax. Once you’ve got your taxable income down to nothing, it doesn’t matter how much more you could have deducted. So those people get nothing out of the bigger standard deduction.

My sympathy when people who aren’t paying taxes fail to participate in a tax cut aimed at those who do pay is very limited.

ROGER SIMON: TOTALLY REVAMP THE ETHICS COMMITTEES AND THE OFFICE OF COMPLIANCE.

268 settlements?  Does anyone know what they were? Who paid that $17.2 million and on whose behalf?  Don’t we have a right to know how it was spent, er, how we taxpayers were fleeced by our representatives? Apparently not.  At least tell who the harassers are who got a free ride.

Read the whole thing.

CLAIM: White House Plans Tillerson Ouster From State Dept., to Be Replaced by Pompeo, Within Weeks.

SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP: Trump Fires Back at Theresa May After UK Condemns Anti-Muslim Retweets.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Canada to redact more than 5,000 records from questionnaire asking Muslim asylum seekers about religion.

The questionnaire is being redacted partly because it has been deemed to be “offensive.” Some of the questions that were asked:

Canada is a very liberal country that believes in freedom of religious practice and equality between men and women. What is your opinion on the subject? How would you feel if your boss was a woman?

How about: “Yes, I believe in the equality between men and women” and “No, I have no problem if my boss was a woman”? If these were not the answers — which apparently they were not, hence the reason for the redaction — then Canadians have a right to know. It is more offensive to deem women as inferiors in accordance with the Sharia than it is to ask the question. Canadians should also know about other possible incriminating data that may have been redacted, as it may well have impact upon the safety and well-being of Canadians.

Governance-by-virtue-signaling is never done for the protection of citizens or their rights.

THEY TOLD ME IF TRUMP WERE ELECTED WE’D SEE A RESURGENCE OF OPEN RACISM. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Student op-ed calls white people ‘an abomination.’

Texas State University’s student newspaper published an op-ed Tuesday telling “white people” that “your DNA is an abomination.”

“When I think of all the white people I’ve ever encountered—whether they’ve been professors, peers, lovers, friends, police officers, et cetera—there is perhaps only a dozen I would consider ‘decent,’” student columnist Rudy Martinez begins the op-ed, which The University Star has not posted on its website.

The piece documents Martinez’s personal opinion of “whiteness” and “white people,” which he defines to include anyone who is “a descendant of those Europeans who chose to abandon their identity in search of something ‘new’—stolen land.”

When taxpayers get tired of funding higher education, we’ll be told it’s because of “anti-intellectualism.”

RISING STAGFLATION LIKELY MADE PRINTING THE INVITATION TOO EXPENSIVE:

● Shot:

April Ryan says she was not invited to the W.H. Christmas party for the first time in 20 years covering the White House. “I don’t think I was overlooked,” she said. “I think they don’t like me. For whatever reason, they have disdain for me.”

—MSNBC producer Kyle Griffin on Twitter, yesterday.

● Chaser:

“Okay I want to watch you bake it and put it on the table. But forgive [if] I won’t eat it. Remember you guys don’t like the press.”

—April Ryan on Twitter, as quoted by Tom Blumer of NewsBusters on Sunday, in article titled, “April Ryan, Leftists Beclown Themselves Over Sarah Sanders’ Thanksgiving Pecan Pie.”

(Classical reference in headline.)