GOT MEDIA SKILLS? LOOKING FOR A JOB? The University of Tennessee College of Law invites applications for the position of Director of Communications.

TILTING THE PLAYING FIELD: Google Uses Its Search Engine to Hawk Its Products.

A Wall Street Journal analysis found that ads for products sold by Google and its sister companies appeared in the most prominent spot in 91% of 25,000 recent searches related to such items; and 43% of the time, the top two ads both were for Google-related products.

The analysis, run by search-ad-data firm SEMrush, examined 1,000 searches each on 25 terms, from “laptops” to “speakers” to “carbon monoxide detectors.” SEMrush ran the searches Dec. 1 on a desktop computer, blocking past web-surfing history that could influence results.

The results show how Google uses its dominant search engine to boost other parts of its business and give it an edge over competitors, which include some of its biggest advertising customers.

A Google spokesman said the company has “consciously and carefully designed” its marketing programs not to affect other advertisers.

The Journal’s analysis highlights a rarely discussed apparent conflict of interest in the $187 billion digital-advertising industry: The leading sellers of online ad space, including Google, Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp., also compete with their customers for that space.

Google searches for “phones” virtually always began with three consecutive ads for Google’s Pixel phones. All 1,000 searches for “laptops” started with a Chromebook ad. “Watches” began with an Android smartwatch ad 98% of the time. And “smoke detector” led with back-to-back ads for internet-connected alarms made by Nest, a company owned by Google parent Alphabet. In all instances, the stores these ads pointed to were also owned by Alphabet.

There’s nothing wrong with a company hyping its own products and services, but smart shoppers might want to shop around for different search engines, too.

THAT’S NOT FUNNY, COMRADE: The People’s Cube Purged from Wikipedia.

UPDATE (From Glenn): It’s still up at the more free-speech-oriented InfoGalactic.

CHELSEA MANNING COMMUTATION REVEALS OBAMA’S DOUBLE STANDARD: Espionage against the USA for causes Obama seems to favor is just fine, but embarrassing his party is not.

CHANGE: Ballotpedia Analysis: President-Elect Trump to Inherit 108 Life-Term Federal Judicial Vacancies. You know, given how overworked the federal courts are, I think Congress should consider adding at least 5 or 10 new judges per circuit, too.

A CHANGE OF THE GUARD? Trump’s threat to the liberal ‘deep state’

There’s one last way in which Trump’s inauguration represents a return to politics, and that’s as a repudiation of the ideal of a politically neutral administrative state, run by a government of experts whose rules anonymous bureaucrats faithfully follow.

There were echoes of that in Andrew Jackson’s victory, for the unruly mob that had descended on Washington in 1829 was composed of office-seekers who had been promised patronage jobs in the new administration. And many of them got what they wanted, for Jackson introduced the “spoils system” in which career civil servants were replaced by political appointees.

Civil-service reform, beginning with the 1883 Pendleton Act, was supposed to protect us from Jacksonian politics, creating a merit system that tied the president’s hands in patronage appointments. That was meant to give us an efficient government, free of corruption, with rule by scientific experts.

Instead, we got rule by stale ideologues. Today, when the “deep state” of federal workers is so wholly opposed to Trump, and is so partisan in its opposition, when they’ll do whatever they can to frustrate Trump’s policies, there’s an argument to be made for a return to politics and an abandonment of our faith in rule by politically neutral experts.

The patronage system was corrupt to be sure, but it did bring in a new group of thieves with each new administration.

ONE OF MANY: “On his first day in office, President Barack Obama pledged to run ‘the most transparent administration in history.’ As he prepares to move out of the White House, the phrase will probably be remembered as a sarcastic punchline.”

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Student group sues after members arrested for handing out copies of Constitution.

Come to think of it, “freedom’s charter” probably is a subversive document.

SCOTT JENNINGS: Obama Should Give Back His Nobel: Tired of saluting those who serve, the president slapped them in the face on the way out the door.

The last major decision of President Barack Obama was to commute the sentence of a traitor whose most recent accomplishment since giving battlefield secrets to Osama bin Laden was undergoing a taxpayer-funded sex change transition. It was a fitting end to a failed presidency that leaves President-elect Donald Trump mess after mess to clean up on the world stage. . . .

Manning helped our enemies by leaking sensitive information to a foreign organization. Period. He was arrested, confessed, and subsequently sentenced to 35 years in a military prison. His actions put America at risk and endangered the lives of “foreigners in dangerous countries who were identified as having helped American troops or diplomats,” according to The New York Times.

Afghans, Syrians, and Iraqis — brave people who continue to live in treacherous places — were put in extreme danger by Manning. These people helped America with the understanding that their actions would be kept secret. Because of Manning, their lives and the lives of their families are forever in peril. In future battles, when our military is looking for allies among local populations, who will trust that America can keep their secrets or can guarantee their safety?

Somewhere along the way, his days of trying to destroy America safely behind him, Brad decided he was Chelsea and demanded the government pay for his conversion from man to woman. And we did, as taxpayers ponied up $50,000 for a traitor to receive everything from “counseling to hormone therapy, and…gender reassignment surgery”.

Fast forward to Tuesday, when Manning’s strange tale ended with Obama commuting his sentence over the objection of Defense Secretary Ash Carter. A “former intelligence official described being ‘shocked’ to learn of Obama’s decision, adding that the ‘entire intelligence community is deflated by this inexplicable use of executive power.’ The official said the move was ‘deeply hypocritical given Obama’s denunciation of WikiLeaks’ role in the hacking of the (Democratic National Committee),’” a CNN report said.

He came in like a messiah, he’s leaving like a bum.

ACCORDING TO THE PRESS CONSENSUS, TRUMP IS AN IMPULSIVE GOOFBALL, but he came up with “Make America Great Again” after observing Romney’s defeat in 2012:

It happened on Nov. 7, 2012, the day after Mitt Romney lost what had been presumed to be a winnable race against President Obama. Republicans were spiraling into an identity crisis, one that had some wondering whether a GOP president would ever sit in the Oval Office again.

But on the 26th floor of a golden Manhattan tower that bears his name, Trump was coming to the conclusion that his own moment was at hand.

And in typical fashion, the first thing he thought about was how to brand it.

One after another, phrases popped into his head. “We Will Make America Great.” That one did not have the right ring. Then, “Make America Great.” But that sounded like a slight to the country.

And then, it hit him: “Make America Great Again.”

“I said, ‘That is so good.’ I wrote it down,” Trump recalled in an interview. “I went to my lawyers. I have a lot of lawyers in-house. We have many lawyers. I have got guys that handle this stuff. I said, ‘See if you can have this registered and trademarked.’ ”

Five days later, Trump signed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in which he asked for exclusive rights to use “Make America Great Again” for “political action committee services, namely, promoting public awareness of political issues and fundraising in the field of politics.” He enclosed a $325 registration fee.

His was a vision that ran against the conventional wisdom of the time — in fact, it was “much the opposite,” Trump said.

To save itself, the Republican establishment was convinced, the GOP would have to sand off its edges, become kinder and more inclusive. “Make America Great Again” was divisive and backward-looking. It made no nod to diversity or civility or progress.

It sounded like a death wish.

But Trump had seen something different in the country, and in the daily lives of its struggling citizens.

This doesn’t sound like the behavior of an impulsive goofball.

KURT SCHLICHTER: And Now The Left’s War On Normal Americans Truly Begins.

Related: Progressives Destroyed Normalcy And Now They’re Shocked Trump Isn’t Normal. Choose the form of your Destructor. But I disagree with the thesis of this piece that people on the right should embrace civility and normalcy. Civility and normalcy are privileges that require a broad consensus. Conservatives have been utter failures at “conserving” these traits.

Here’s my take:

There’s an old joke about a boy who complains to his mother that his little sister keeps pulling his hair.

“Oh,” responds the mother, “she doesn’t know that it hurts.”

A few minutes later, the mother hears the girl scream and runs into the other room. “She knows now,” the boy explains.

There’s a lesson for Republicans in that old joke, if they’re smart enough to absorb it.

I think that Trump is smart enough. Go pull some hair.

BOB MCMANUS ON OBAMA’S LATEST: Why liberals just love to set terrorists free. “To wit, in Progressiveland, some lives matter more than others; that dead and maimed cops and unlucky bystanders matter less than justly convicted and incarcerated radicals — and that in the final analysis benevolent government is meant to stand with the bad guys.”

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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Charlotte Law School To File Teach-Out Plan With ABA To Protect Students As School Shuts Down.

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S CRITICS: Trump vs. Media Is Much More Than Meets the Eye. It’s not just the mainstream media that (for a change) will be battling the White House. Tom Kuntz categorizes the new opponents in the Fourth Estate, including the “Red and New” libertarians already worrying about the Trump administration’s fondness for civil asset forfeiture.

JOURNALISM: When you read a science report claiming that 2016 was the hottest year on record, you might expect that you will get numbers. And you would be wrong. “Note to the New York Times: ‘trouncing’ and ‘blown past’ are phrases appropriate to sports reporting, not science reporting. Except that no sports reporter would dare write an article in which he never bothers to give you the score of the big game. . . . It’s almost like they’re hiding something. And that is indeed what we find.”

TLDR: Increase is one-hundredth of a degree. Margin of error is a tenth of a degree. So it’s all bullshit.

WELL, THE TITLES WERE A REAL TURNOFF: Obama Administration Has Written 275 Briefing Papers For Trump Administration, Not Sure How Many Have Been Read.

Partial List:

How We Lost Iraq

How We Lost the OPM Data

Well, you get the idea.

I’D BRUSH OFF THAT SEXTANT, TOO: Russia Jammed Your Satellites? US Military Develops Undersea Network as Backup.

HE DOES A GOOD SHOW: Ratings Soar As Tucker Carlson Takes Over For Megyn Kelly. “Carlson averaged just under 3 million viewers for his first week of shows in Fox’s prime-time lineup, or 10 percent more than the 2.72 million viewers that Kelly averaged all of last year, the Nielsen company said.”

I’M SURE IT MUST: “Beer Yoga” Looks Even Weirder Than It Sounds.

Beer goes with everything.

BEN STEIN: The Assassination of Donald Trump: Except It’s Not Working. “The left will beat and beat and huff and puff. But it’s a different world now. Again… The people who elected Trump don’t remotely believe he’s a racist and they’re sick of hearing it anyway. This Trump guy. He’s not a sensitive soul like Nixon. He knows how pitifully jealous the media people are. He owes them nothing. He sneers at them. He’s moving them out of the White House. It’s brilliant. He’s making real the truth of now. The media are not good guys by and large. They’re jealous snobs.”

THE H.R. POLICY MANUAL WOULD FILL A LIBRARY: Psychologists say you should masturbate at work.

FLASHBACK: “Hillary is going to be very busy as President the next 4-8 years. Donald Trump is going to be very bitter. And the Republicans are just going to be gone. Good riddence.”

Plus:

While you’re busy talking about who’s the most unpopular President, can you spare a few moments to tell us which news organization has the least accurate polling?

With election polls, you are put to the test and capable of embarrassment in the end, and even so, you’re not too reliable. In this current popularity poll, no one can ever show you up. There’s no ultimate accounting when the people reveal how much they like or don’t like Donald Trump. You can say whatever you want in the form of numbers that are called a poll, but we know that you want to cripple the Trump presidency before it even begins. I consider the poll fake news.

And I realize that from your perspective I am one of those terrible people who have “come unmoored from a shared set of core facts.” I’m not hearing the call to adhere to the “knowable, hard, empirical truth.” But I can’t accept ABC News/Washington Post poll numbers as facts. It’s a fact that ABC News/Washington Post got the election polls wrong. I don’t want be moored to false facts.

Well, but real facts offer insufficient support to the narrative.

TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY, 1942: FDR facetiously awards the Iron Cross to New York Daily News reporter John O’Donnell, for his frequent negative reporting on the war effort.

Trump needs to do this to one of the jerks at CNN. If CNN howls, tell’em Dem icon FDR did it.

I DUNNO, THAT’S NOT MY IMPRESSION: Running May Actually Be Good For Your Knees. I’m entirely prepared to believe that, as this study suggests, running reduces inflammatory substances. But I’m not sure that offsets the mechanical damage. At least, I sure seem to know a lot runners who’ve blown out knees.