COLLATERAL DAMAGE: Papa John’s Blames Poor NFL Leadership for Hurting Pizza Sales. “This should have been nipped in the bud a year and a half ago.”

COPYRIGHT SHOULD BE LIMITED TO 24 YEARS: CBS sues man for copyright over screenshots of 59-year-old TV show.

I mean, why subsidize an industry run by a bunch of rapists and pedophiles?

CULTURE OF IMPUNITY: “Columbia University on Tuesday dropped its disciplinary investigation into 16 students who disrupted a campus speaker last month.” “College Republicans, as well as the university, had maintained that the protest was disruptive — citing, for example, attempts by some to unplug the equipment used to project Robinson’s video chat — and said the university should uphold its commitment to free speech.”

HYPER-POLITICIZING SEXUAL HARASSMENT. “Are these allegations coming out now because Hillary Clinton lost the election and the time for covering for Bill Clinton is over at long last?”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Three Nebraska State Senators are demanding answers after professors from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln were caught on tape harassing a conservative student on campus. “The senators question whether the school is ‘hostile toward conservative students,’ noting that the professors have not been punished, while the student was made to feel ‘outnumbered and intimidated’ in a meeting with administrators.”

Expect more of this sort of thing.

PROFESSIONALS STUDY LOGISTICS: 15 Subs Kept Out of Service: 177 Months Of Drydock Backups.

That is almost 15 submarine-years, the equivalent of taking a boat from the 2018 budget and not adding it back until 2033.

While only Congress can pass a budget and lift caps on spending, the staffers said, part of the solution is in the Navy’s hands: outsource more work to private-sector shipyards, something the Navy does not like to do.

As the submariner community prepares to gather in Washington, D.C. for the annual Naval Submarine League symposium, a lot of subs are in rough shape. The most famous case is the USS Boise, which was scheduled to start an overhaul at the government-run Norfolk Naval Shipyard in September 2016 and is still waiting. The government finally gave up and awarded a $385.6 million contract for the work to privately run Newport News Shipbuilding – just across the James River – this month. All told, the Navy says the Boise will be out of service for 31 months longer than originally planned.

But Boise isn’t the only one.

American logistical prowess was once great enough to launch amphibious invasions of France and Saipan, half a world apart, almost simultaneously. Now we have trouble keeping seaworthy an undersized fleet.

MILTON FRIEDMAN ON The Future of Capitalism.

MYRON MAGNET: The Founders’ Grandson, Part I. How Clarence Thomas began his quest to restore our original Constitution.

ROGER SIMON: Reform Islam or Live the “New Normal” Forever.

Two of the more repugnant Americans today are the moral narcissist judges from Maryland (Theodore Chuang) and Hawaii (Derrick Watson) who tried to upend Donald Trump’s travel ban. They have metaphorical blood on their robes, whether they know it or not.

Read the whole thing.

FORBES EDITOR: EPA Administrator Is Scarier Than Radical Islamic Terrorists.

Um, no.

THE DAM HAS BURST: Six women accuse filmmaker Brett Ratner of sexual harassment or misconduct.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Professors from across the political spectrum are expressing concerns about a proposal to weaken tenure protections in the University of Arkansas system.

Several scholars are pushing back against policy changes that would make it possible to fire tenured University of Arkansas faculty for “unwillingness to work productively with colleagues.”

The change to the UA system Board of Trustees tenure policy was submitted to the Faculty Senate in late October, and includes a controversial provision that expands the list of justifications, or “cause,” for terminating employment.

“Cause is defined as conduct that demonstrates the faculty member lacks the willingness or ability to perform duties or responsibilities to the University,” the proposed policy reads, noting that tenured faculty can be disciplined or dismissed for eight core reasons, including “unsatisfactory performance” and demonstrating a “pattern of disruptive conduct or unwillingness to work productively with colleagues.”

University spokesman Nate Hinkel told The Chronicle of Higher Education that the proposed language is part of an effort to align the broader policy with “current law and best practices.”

Critics of the provision, however, argue that the new language is too broad and constitutes an attack on the academic freedom of professors who may hold contrarian political viewpoints.

“I think this is an awful change,” UA Little Rock law professor Josh Silverstein told Campus Reform. “The proposed revisions dramatical increase the power of the university to terminate tenured faculty. And the changes also limit the scope of academic freedom in ways that will both silence faculty and create additional potential grounds for dismissal should faculty speak out on issues of public policy and on matters internal to the university.”

“Disruptive conduct:” A Trump or NRA bumper sticker.

LEGALIZATION, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG: California to tax pot as much as 45%.

“High effective tax rates on California cannabis may complicate the state’s efforts to establish legal markets” said analysts Stephen Walsh and Karen Ribble in a Fitch Ratings report on California’s marijuana taxes.

California marijuana consumers are going to have to pay a combination of state and local taxes that vary by municipality. Growers and sellers have their own taxes, too.

Consumers will pay a sales tax ranging from 22.25% to 24.25%, which includes the state excise tax of 15%, and additional state and local sales taxes ranging from 7.25% to 9.25%.

Local businesses will have to pay a tax ranging from 1% to 20% of gross receipts, or $1 to $50 per square foot of marijuana plants, according to the Fitch report.

In addition, farmers will be taxed $9.25 per ounce for flower, and $2.75 per ounce for leaves.

The Fitch report says this combination of state and local taxes for consumers, retailers and growers could keep portions of California’s cannabis industry off the grid, where it has flourished for some time.

You don’t say.

The maximum effective tax rate eventually reaches zero.

JOURNALISM IS ABOUT FIGURING OUT WHAT AMERICANS SHOULDN’T BE TOLD, BECAUSE TELLING THEM MIGHT HURT DEMOCRATS: Politico Hides Fusion GPS Employment Of Key Source. “Democracy dies in darkness.” It’s not a warning: It’s a goal!

IT’S COME TO THIS: White sociology professor: It’s racist for whites to have mixed-race children. They told me if Donald Trump were elected, racist bigots would feel free to spread hate and denounce race-mixing. And they were right!

AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases, Updated Hourly.

Plus, new Kindle Daily Deals.

And, today’s Digital Deals.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: NYC’s New Normal, Tech Overlords, Vegas Update and Much, Much More.

IRAN, IRAQ AND THE KURDS: Be my bitch and I’ll make you rich.

The Iraqi Kurds thought they were safe because if there is one thing the Kurds and Iraqi Arabs can agree on one was that Iran was out to gain more control over whoever was running Iraq. Iran did have a plan and it was the old “be my bitch and I’ll make you rich” divide and conquer strategy that had worked for Iranians over thousands of years of empire building (or rebuilding). In this case the Iranians already has a large minority of Iraqi Arab Shia in favor of the Iranian style religious dictatorship. In the north one of the main Kurds factions, the PUK was suspected of being a little too willing with work with Iran.

FROM KEN WHITE: Lawsplainer: The Manafort/Gates Indictment. “The Manafort/Gates indictment is a fairly standard ‘kitchen sink’ white collar indictment that illustrates the wide array of tools available to federal prosecutors, as well as the power prosecutors have to use an investigation to provoke further federal crimes as leverage against the foolish.”

GREAT RED FLEET: How China Was Inspired by Teddy Roosevelt.

China has come a long way since 1949. Roosevelt’s America was a power on the rise, vying with stronger empires bestriding its neighborhood. China is now a power on the make, contending with a stronger empire—the informal empire administered from Washington—that dominates its neighborhood. Small wonder patriotic statesmen on each shore of the Pacific Ocean alighted on similar strategies for managing their saltwater environs. There are only so many ways for the weak to overcome the strong. Make yourself strong and your antagonists weak, and you may go far.

And to be sure, under Mao’s successors China’s Maoist strategic thought has started merging with the Mahanian vision Roosevelt prescribed. But China can do Roosevelt, Mahan, and other oldtimers one better. The state of military technology has vaulted ahead over the past century. The PLA can employ land-based armaments not only to defend seaports, but also to hoist a protective aegis over the PLA Navy battle fleet while it cruises the briny main far from port.

Tactical aircraft and shore missile emplacements can rain supporting fire on hostile fleets scores if not hundreds of miles offshore—supplementing PLA Navy firepower with that furnished by the PLA Air Force and Strategic Rocket Force, alongside super-empowered coastal-defense craft that would be instantly recognizable to Mao. Latter-day coastal artillery constitutes a difference-maker for an outgunned Chinese fleet—an option not open to Roosevelt’s navy, fettered as it was by rudimentary weapons and fire-control technology.

What Mahan once branded a “radically erroneous” mode of sea combat—keeping a battle fleet under protective shelter from shore fire support—is swiftly coming of age.

If Fortress China’s coastal-defense-on-steroids pans out, it can accomplish the goal Roosevelt envisioned for shore gunnery—shielding China’s coastlines on a grand scale while freeing the fleet for expeditionary endeavors in remote seas. China will have deployed a genuinely free-range fleet without placing homeland security in jeopardy.

We’re in a similar position Britain was in during the 150 years before World War II. The US is the predominant maritime and trading power, with global interests to protect — but the Royal Navy was given a shipbuilding priority ours has been lacking.

MICHAEL BARONE: Google and Facebook run for censors-in-chief.

Do Google and Facebook engage in what lawyers call viewpoint discrimination? There’s some pretty good evidence that they do. Consider the lawsuit that radio talk show host Dennis Prager is bringing against Google. He alleges that YouTube, owned by Google (and its parent company Alphabet), puts his Prager University videos in restricted mode, but does not give similar treatment to videos from liberal sources.

Anyone familiar with Prager’s writings knows that they’re intellectually serious and far from abusive. He is a persistent but temperate advocate.

Until recently, Google hasn’t issued a public comment on the lawsuit. When it finally did, it started off with a typical Silicon Valley boilerplate about its dedication to free speech (“YouTube is an open platform”), quickly followed up with Silicon Valley boilerplate which, translated from the Orwellian, declares that Google actually isn’t so dedicated to free speech (“we provide different choices and settings. Restricted mode is an optional feature used by a small subset of users to filter out videos that may include sensitive or mature content”). It’s what “Congress has encouraged online services to provide for parents and others interested in a more family-friendly experience online.” As I wrote about the case of its firing of engineer James Damore last summer, Google is engaging in Orwellian doublespeak: free exchange of ideas means free exchange of ideas we approve.

All of which avoids the central question in the lawsuit, which is not whether YouTube consumers can choose restricted mode, but the criteria by which Google designates certain videos and not others as restricted. That designation restricts its circulation, as Google implicitly concedes. If, as is alleged and seems likely here, the designation is applied so as to discriminate against conservative videos, Google is engaged in viewpoint discrimination.

Let’s turn to Facebook, which according to author James Bovard blocked his post labeled “Janet Reno, Tyrant or Saint?” and including video of the burning of the Branch Davidian compound during an FBI raid in 1993. When he retitled the post, “Janet Reno, American Saint,” and substituted an official portrait of the late attorney general for the Branch Davidian burning, his post was immediately accepted.

Janet Reno, a saint? So much for screening out “fake news.”

SEEN ON FACEBOOK: “If this were Israel: ‘Israeli Police shoot Muslim truck driver, eight dead.'”