WIDE-EYED: ESPRESSO Planet Hunter Ready to Drink in the Universe for Alien Worlds.

The ESPRESSO instrument, which is installed on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in northern Chile, made its first observations last month, project team members announced today (Dec. 6).

ESPRESSO is designed to find alien planets via the “radial velocity” method — that is, by detecting the tiny wobbles in a star’s movement caused by the gravitational tug of orbiting planets. The instrument is the next-generation version of the prolific HARPS spectrograph, which has discovered more than 100 exoplanets to date.

Only NASA’s famous Kepler space telescope, which looks for the tiny brightness dips caused when planets cross their star’s face, has found more alien worlds than HARPS. (The gap between the two is pretty big, however: Kepler’s tally currently stands at 2,515 planets across its two missions, along with 2,500 or so additional “candidates” awaiting confirmation by follow-up studies or observations.)

“ESPRESSO isn’t just the evolution of our previous instruments like HARPS, but it will be transformational, with its higher resolution and higher precision,” project lead scientist Francesco Pepe, of the University of Geneva in Switzerland, said in a statement.

Just how precise will ESPRESSO (whose name is short for Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations) actually be? Project team members are aiming for a velocity-measurement precision of just a few centimeters (1 inch or so) per second, compared with the 1 meter (3.3. feet) per second capability of HARPS. ESPRESSO should therefore be able to spot some of the smallest planets ever found, ESO representatives said.

Most of the exoplanets I can recall have had too much mass to really be earthlike. ESPRESSO should help find ones closer in size to Earth.

MORE: BREAKING: Leonard Lopate and Johnathan Schwartz, two longtime hosts at WNYC, have been put on leave effectively immediately pending investigations into allegations of inappropriate conduct.

CHANGE: See just how much Trump has slashed refugee resettlement in U.S. — the numbers are astounding.

YET EMPEROR XI HAD DECREED OTHERWISE: US firms losing confidence in China business climate.

The U.S.-China Business Council’s survey showed most companies are enjoying better profitability and expecting higher revenues for their China operations as the economy revives.

But restricted market access and uncertainty over Beijing’s policies toward foreign companies have left them less optimistic about the business climate than in recent years.

The council represents 200 U.S. companies doing business with China. Results from the annual survey were based on responses from more than half its members.

Challenges include fierce competition from Chinese rivals, demands for technology transfers and strict cyber regulations.

“Most of the regulatory challenges that companies face each day did not see improvement this year,” President John Frisbie said. “The stagnation in implementation of needed economic reforms is undermining confidence among American companies that their concerns will be addressed.”

Given that Xi has spurned necessary reforms in order to consolidate more power than any Chinese leader since Mao, this is not a surprise — and seems unlikely to end well.

HOLMAN JENKINS: How Free Speech Lost in Charlottesville: An unflinching report on the failure of police to control ‘antifascist’ protesters.

To avoid giving left-wing counterprotesters the impression the police were ready for a fight, officers were denied permission to don riot gear. A proposal that local militants be asked to sign statements forswearing violence was rejected. A proposal to close the whole of downtown to vehicle traffic was rejected. A petition from local businesses to cancel the event was rejected. A single officer was assigned to the intersection where Heather Heyer would later be killed in a vehicular homicide—a lightly-equipped “school resource officer” who would be withdrawn when events, as expected, “went south.”

Instead—and this is a bit hard to believe—the local police chief’s plan was to let the violence at the Aug. 12 event get out of hand and then declare an unlawful assembly to justify unleashing a Virginia State Police riot force to disperse the crowd.

A name familiar to readers of this column will be Pam Starsia, a left-wing leader in Charlottesville who consistently resisted police efforts to protect peace and property as a manifestation of “white supremacy.” . . .

As the report details, the armed militias that featured so heavily in press coverage at the time, and were wrongly assumed to be aligned with the white nationalists, closed in to give the officer cover while he intervened and generally acted to protect members of the public regardless of affiliation.

Two officers were recorded discussing the incident on their body-cam mikes: “I like those militia guys,” said one. His colleague replied, “Yeah, they’re doing a good job.”

When the militia groups are outperforming the police, there’s a problem.

ROGER SIMON ON JERUSALEM: Trump and Congress Challenge the Palestinians to Grow Up.

TOTALLY NONPARTISAN INVESTIGATION WE SWEAR, PART 1,000,006: Mueller Deputy Was Personal Attorney of Ben Rhodes, Represented Clinton Foundation.

B-1B BELOW THE RAINBOW: The rainstorm that struck Guam didn’t stop the ground crew. A well-composed photo.

I WAS WAY AHEAD OF HER ON THIS ONE: Pelosi Tells Republicans to Leave California.

THE TWO BIG WARS AT ONCE REQUIREMENT RETURNS WITH A VENGEANCE

YA THINK? A new cryptocurrency won’t solve Venezuela’s economic crisis.

Venezuelan president Nicolás Mauro thinks that a new digital currency could revive the country from economic collapse and help it sidestep US sanctions. During the latest episode of his weekly TV show Los Domingos con Maduro, the president announced his plans to launch the ‘petro’ – a digital currency somehow backed up by Venezuela’s oil, gas and diamond reserves.

“Venezuela will create a new cryptocurrency,” Maduro told his live studio audience during the five-hour broadcast, which also included Christmas songs and dancing. The petro would help Venezuela “advance in issues of monetary sovereignty, financial transactions and overcome the financial blockade,” he said. Venezuela’s existing currency, the bolívar, is rapidly dropping in value, reducing the monthly minimum wage to just over $4.30 and plunging millions of Venezuelans into poverty.

It looks like Maduro has had one eye on the rising price of bitcoin, which is already on its way to $12,000 after breaking the $10,000 barrier for the first time late in November. Somewhat ironically, some Venezuelan citizens are already well ahead of Maduro when it comes to the cryptocurrency, and started mining bitcoin as a way of earning enough US dollars to import food and medical supplies.

Venezuelan opposition leaders quickly decried Maduro’s proposal, saying it lacks credibility and has no hope of being passed by congress.

A legislature can pass anything it has the votes for. Making it work is a different matter, and one where socialist governments have a history of total failure.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Republican college funding bill requires due process in Title IX proceedings, religious freedom.

Recently offered by House Education Committee Republicans, the PROSPER Act includes several elements that were “influenced by or were taken directly from” a model bill offered by the due process group Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, SAVE said in an email.

It pointed to an explicit pledge that institutions can’t be sanctioned or lose federal funding for delaying or suspending their own sexual-assault investigations “in response to a request from a law enforcement agency or a prosecutor.” Colleges often launch their own investigations – driven as much by PR as the search for the truth – while police investigations are ongoing.

The bill also requires the investigation and disciplinary proceeding to be “prompt, impartial, and fair” to both parties; give “all parties to the proceeding … adequate written notice of the allegation” at least two weeks before a hearing; and give everyone access to “all material evidence” at least a week before a hearing.

This should be obvious, but . . .

HAVE YOU NO DECENCY, SIR?

Full story here, if you can stomach it.

JAMES LILEKS FISKS A CONDESCENDING DALLAS MORNING NEWS COLUMN BY A YALE HISTORIAN ON HOW TO FIGHT FASCISM. It really isn’t a fair fight:

Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.

Unless they are inconvenient facts that can be cast as irrelevancies, overshadowed by whatever fierce moral urgency now characterizes the issues. If one says “men cannot have babies, and do not menstruate” on Twitter you will set upon with great fury; what may seem to you to be factual, based on biology, is regarded by some as a misconstructed understanding of a larger issue, gender, which is not subject to the same set of empirical rules.

Many people who share your view will not defend you, because they do not want to be characterized as — phobes — another piece of linguistic violence, by the way; it turns a difference of opinion into a mental illness.

If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so.

Question: was the deconstruction of Western modes of thinking a project of leftist intellectuals, or conservative ones? Who thought that “truth” was a figleaf for entrenched, reactionary authority?

Would you like to make the argument that Derida et al were classical liberals?

Read the whole thing.

HUGH HEWITT: A special counsel needs to investigate the FBI and Justice Department. Now.

The Post reported that a former top FBI official, Peter Strzok, who had been assigned to and then removed from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, had “exchanged politically charged texts disparaging [President] Trump and supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton” and that Strzok was “also a key player in the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server.”

This is a blockbuster revelation, carrying the possibility of shattering public confidence in a number of long-held assumptions about the criminal-justice system generally and the FBI and the Justice Department specifically. The Justice Department should appoint a special counsel to investigate Strzok’s actions as soon as possible.

The Strzok report comes on the heels of the widely derided Justice Department investigation into IRS discrimination against conservative groups, including the disposition of allegations against IRS senior official Lois Lerner, and after the wildly erratic behavior of then-FBI Director James B. Comey during 2016. It also follows the vote to hold then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt of Congress — the first ever against a sitting member of the Cabinet — with 17 Democrats voting in support. Mix into this battering of the Justice Department’s and FBI’s reputations the still-murky charges and counter-charges of abuse of “unmasking” powers during the waning days of the Obama era.

This stinks to high heaven.

STEPHEN GUTOWSKI: NRA Blasts Misleading Claims Made About Gun Background Check Bill Ahead of House Vote.

Despite what appears in the bill’s text, Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights, described it as establishing “a gun control super-database” and “expanding the Brady-NICS gun owner registry.”

“Weak Republicans always push gun control laws under the guise of ‘enforcing the laws we have,’ but only end up pushing the Democrat agenda, giving gun owners more reasons to worry,” he said.

Meanwhile an alert from Erich Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America (GOA), claimed Fix NICS “would require that the rolls of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and ObamaCare be trolled for recipients with PTSD, ADHD, or Alzheimer’s—that is, people who have had guardians appointed,” the group’s legislative council said it was not arguing the bill would create new categories of prohibited people. Instead, he said, the bill’s attempt to gather all of the records required under current law, which dates back nearly a decade, is the problem.

“No, we are not arguing that ‘Fix NICS’ adds new categories,” Michael Hammond, general counsel for GOA, told the Free Beacon. “But we are arguing that 18 U.S.C. 922(g), as interpreted by the 2007 NICS Improvement Amendments Act and its regulations at 27 CFR 478.11, is so potentially broad, that, if every eligible name were submitted to NICS, as the bill proposes, the result would be the submission of a large number of names of otherwise law-abiding Americans.”

More to come, I’m sure.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Ithaca College violates own policy for Palestinian flag.

AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases, Updated Hourly.

Plus, new Kindle Daily Deals.

And, today’s Digital Deals.

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 1672: Ohio Attorney General Asks Federal Court To Release Lois Lerner’s Deposition In Tea Party Targeting Case.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Jerusalem Is the Capital of Israel, Mueller Mania and Much, Much More.

IN JUNE, the Senate voted 90-0 to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. But now that it’s actually being done, it’s a crazy idea?

I SUSPECT THERE’S PLENTY OF DIRT YET TO COME OUT IN THE FASHION AND MUSIC INDUSTRIES: ‘Terrifying and humiliating’: male models accuse fashion photographer Bruce Weber of sexual harassment.

EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Deceitful Bias in The New York Times.

John Stossel’s latest video for Reason TV:

Just think of the Times as being almost entirely staffed by Democratic operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.