CHANGE: Prosecutors ask FBI agents for info on Uranium One deal.

IS THERE ANYTHING HE CAN’T DO? Trump Revives Feminism, Saves Satire, Reinvigorates Journalism.

Actually, I’m pretty sure the author is only one-third correct, and that’s only if his piece is satire.

WOW: Rand Paul: Obama administration collusion against Trump might be ‘worse than Watergate.’

FASTER, PLEASE: Gene Editing Breakthrough Could Cure Deafness In Humans.

TYLER O’NEIL: Senate Democrats Target Homeschool Families in Last-Minute Tax Reform Tantrum.

A CONSERVATIVE BRIT IN DC (NOT ME) WRITES: Ryan Bourne, formerly of London’s Institute of Economic Affairs and now of the Cato Institute reflects on his first year in DC. He’s noticed something:

[A]rticle after article is written as if this really is the end of the world…[W]ho cares for…truths? Walk around DC and you’ll overhear young people declaring confidently how the tax bill is terrible for them financially. That it is championed by Trump is seemingly good enough reason that it must necessarily be bad for liberals.

Welcome to DC, Ryan!

AT AMAZON, Save on High-Speed HDMI Cables.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Beleaguered Maduro regime kills guilty and innocent alike in poor barrios, often with shots to the heart.

The young men had already been tortured at an army base when soldiers piled them into two jeeps and transported them to a wooded area just outside the Venezuelan capital.

Stumbling in the dark, with T-shirts pulled over their faces and hands tied behind their backs, they were steered to an open pit. Soldiers then used machetes to deliver blow after blow to the base of their necks. Most suffered gaping wounds that killed them before they hit the ground.

Others, bleeding profusely but still alive, crumpled into the shallow grave as their killers piled dirt over their bodies to hide the crime.

“We think they were alive a good while as they died from asphyxia,” said Zair Mundaray, a veteran prosecutor who led the exhumation and investigation that pieced together how the killings unfolded. “It had to be a terrible thing.”

For Mr. Mundaray and his team of investigators, the massacre in this area east of Caracas in October 2016 was the most bloodthirsty of killings by security forces in a country riven by unspeakable violence.

Prosecutors, criminologists and human-rights groups say it was only one of many recurring and escalating lethal attacks carried out by police or soldiers.

The full scope of the alleged atrocities is beginning to surface publicly now.

This one is behind the WSJ paywall, but I found it well worth my money.

I’D LIKE TO SAY THAT YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO A LEGISLATURE THAT ISN’T STUPID ENOUGH TO PASS SUCH A BAN, BUT WE KNOW THAT’S WRONG: A Constitutional Right to Install Bulletproof Glass?

UH-OH: U.S. warship unexpectedly docks in Port Colborne.

A U.S. navy warship named for Arkansas’ capital city that was to pass down the Welland Canal for its homeport in Florida docked in Port Colborne Wednesday afternoon due to a reported mechanical issue.

The USS Little Rock, a Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ship, was recently-commissioned alongside its namesake in Buffalo Harbor, marking the first time that has happened in the navy’s 242-year history, according to a website dedicated to the vessel’s commissioning.

The new warship is one of a number of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) the navy will operate in waters close to shore.

It was built in Marinette, Wisc., at a cost of between US$300 million and $350 million.

It left Buffalo Wednesday morning and after the delivery of two pilots to it in the Port Colborne anchorage, some four kilometres offshore, it tied up along the east wall of the Welland Canal in the city.

The USS Little Rock was headed to Naval Station Mayport, its homeport in Jacksonville, Fla.

There was no word on how long the vessel would be tied up in Port Colborne. The area it is docked alongside on the canal is restricted and there is no public access.

The LCS ships have been almost nothing but trouble — late, over budget, and with serious operational issues.

21ST CENTURY MEDICINE: Electric device slows growth of deadly brain tumors.

GOOD: Dem Vows to Shut Down Senate Over Any Bill Requiring Companies Give ‘Back Door’ Access to Encrypted Info.

TOM BROKAW: FOX NEWS ‘ON A JIHAD’ TO DEFEND TRUMP.

This isn’t the first time that Tom has uttered the J-word. In November of 2003, while receiving a 2003 “Fourth Estate Award” at the National Press Club in DC, Brokaw said in his speech:

“What troubles me is a disturbing trend of using the popular appeal of those [conservative] beliefs in some quarters as cover for a kind of commercial nihilism….They suffocate vigorous discourse, the oxygen of a system such as ours, by identifying those who refuse to conform and encouraging a kind of e-mail or telephonic jihad which is happily carried out by well-funded organizations operating under the guise of promoting fair press coverage….What is so unsettling about the current climate is the ruthless efficiency of the attacks on those who refuse to conform.”

But given that since the day after September 11th, 2001, the spokespeople for the DNC-MSM have always defined “jihad” as an entirely peaceful act of self-reflection and improvement whose ultimate goal is to live a sin-free life, what’s wrong with that?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON OFFERS CHRISTMAS LESSONS FROM CALIFORNIA:

Fix premodern problems before dreaming about postmodern solutions. Loudly virtue-signaling about addressing misdemeanors does not excuse quietly ignoring felonies.

Learn how an entire culture is fed, housed, and fueled before faulting those who address such needs.

Adopt a little humility in admitting that most of the state is an artificial construct of affluent millions living in a delicate ecosystem where nature never intended them to cluster — impossible without constant multibillion-dollar investments in water, agriculture, housing, and transportation.

Remember that voting progressively in the abstract does not automatically translate into living progressively in the concrete.

“Automatically?” For a guy who’s ordinarily such a precise writer, I believe VDH misspelled “will never” incorrectly. But read the whole thing anyhow.

ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE, NOW WE HAVE THIS TO WORRY ABOUT: Loud orgies of Mexican fish could deafen dolphins, say scientists.

HMM: Russian trolls went on attack during key election moments.

HEH: Eminem Slowly Slips Into Insanity As Trump Continues To Ignore His Rants.

GOOD LORD: Illegal VA policy allows hiring since 2002 of medical workers with revoked licenses.

Every time you think you’ve gotten close to the bottom of the swamp, you find it goes deeper still.

ROGER SIMON: Coming Soon… ‘Trump’ Season 2!

Binge read the whole thing.

SPENGLER: President Trump’s National Security Strategy is a Game Changer.

Behind the Political Curtain at Facebook: Bloomberg’s Vernon Silver and Ben Elgin take readers on a tour of the mess that is Facebook, who tries to have it both ways.  On the one hand, FB has tried to portray itself as a unknowing victim of any alleged Russian election-meddling (“hey, we only cashed the checks”) but Silver exposes Facebook’s coziness with various governments:

“In some of the world’s biggest democracies—from India and Brazil to Germany and the U.K.—the [Facebook] unit’s employees have become de facto campaign workers. And once a candidate is elected, the company in some instances goes on to train government employees or provide technical assistance for live streams at official state events.”

And some of those governments have a bad record of using social media to less than enlightening ends. Facebook’s relationship with India is a good example. As Indian Prime Minister Modi’s social media reach grew, his followers increasingly turned to Facebook and WhatsApp to target harassment campaigns against his political rivals. India has become a hotbed for fake news, with one hoax story this year that circulated on WhatsApp leading to two separate mob beatings resulting in seven deaths. The nation has also become an increasingly dangerous place for opposition parties and reporters. In the past year, several journalists critical of the ruling party have been killed. Hindu extremists who back Modi’s party have used social media to issue death threats against Muslims or critics of the government.

Silver and Elgin have a terrific track record of exposing the use by Arab regimes of telecom apps to suppress — and even make disappear — political dissents, and broke the story on FinFisher, a malware used  to hunt down political opponents.

ELI LAKE: Nikki Haley Confronts the U.N.’s ‘Jackals.’

She has made it clear that the U.N. needs America more than America needs the U.N. This is not just because the U.S. hosts the body’s headquarters. It’s because the U.S. remains the indispensable member of the organization. It contributes 23 percent of the U.N. annual budget. The U.S. provides nearly 30 percent of the budget to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA. That’s the agency that runs Palestinian schools and medical facilities and has often turned a blind eye to the participation of outlaws like Hamas. The U.S. provides the logistics for moving troops and material for peace-keeping missions and disaster relief. There is no U.N. without the U.S.

Haley made this point well in her speech announcing the U.S. veto Monday of the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “When the American people see a group of countries whose total contributions to the Palestinian people is less than 1 percent of UNRWA’s budget — when they see these countries accuse the United States of being insufficiently committed to peace — the American people lose their patience.”

Haley has delivered this message in public and private a lot in her first year on the job. She pulled the plug on U.S. participation in U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization after it declared Hebron to be a Palestinian world historic site with no mention of the deep Jewish historical connection to that city. She has sought ways to cut the fat from the U.N. peace-keeping budget, and has used the monthly U.N. Security Council meeting to deal with the Middle East to call attention to Iranian aggression.

Under the Obama-Carter theory, Haley’s approach would lead to America’s isolation at the U.N. But so far this has not been the case.

That’s because the UN self-evidently does need the US more than the US needs the UN — and it ought to give Americans a swelling sense of pride to have a UN ambassador who understands this and acts accordingly.

UPDATE: I should have added that the UN member states have always understood this, but have counted on the US pretending not to understand it.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: There’s More Than One Kind of Workplace Civility: The sexual harassment scandal is changing social norms. Let the new ones respect human variety.

In a provocative essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller argues that campus speech codes penalize people with Asperger’s syndrome, who have trouble reading social cues yet are often brilliant researchers for whom the university has traditionally been a tolerant haven. “The more ‘respectful,’ campuses became to the neurotypical, the more alienating they became to the neurodivergent,” Miller writes. . . .

Even neurotypical people can, of course, inadvertently be caught by rules against such vague and arbitrary offenses as “unwelcome jokes about a protected characteristic,” to take an example from the University of New Mexico, where Miller works. Disparate impact isn’t the only factor that makes speech codes a bad idea.

But Miller is making a deeper point about norms and exclusion. Strict standards inevitably shut out potentially valuable deviants. “Eccentricity is a precious resource, easily wasted,” he writes. . . .

The norms appropriate to a research university devoted to advancing knowledge aren’t necessarily the same as those for a teaching college nurturing undergraduates. We shouldn’t demand that cutting-edge researchers all be socially adept, but maybe we should keep some of them away from 20-year-old students. Not every workplace needs to welcome pets or expect after-hours socializing, but that doesn’t mean none should — even if the dog haters and teetotalers feel left out.

We don’t demand propriety in a stand-up comedian. But we do expect it in a judge.

Actually, nowadays we do demand it in comedians. And the rules change constantly, and are applied retrospectively. Because fairness!