THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE “IMPOSSIBLE” EM DRIVE: “It’s much more likely that the researchers are overlooking something than that much of our physics is wrong.” Nevertheless, it moves.

GOOD ADVICE: Democrats Should Not Even Dream About President Beyoncé.

SEEN ON FACEBOOK:

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1346: The Trump Dossier, The Left, And Tea Party Targeting.

JULIETTE OCHIENG: Steve Harvey, Talladega College, and the Shame Mob. “The trick to resisting them is to realize that shame is the only weapon they’re wielding. They have nothing else. And if one is immune to their form of shaming–name-calling–reading it is like watching a toddler throw a fit, only funnier.”

WHEN IT BECAME POLITICALLY INCONVENIENT FOR THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Why Did the Bureau of Justice Statistics Stop Publishing the Data on Interracial Crime?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, RAMPANT HOMOPHOBIA EDITION: Censorship: UC-Davis Student Protesters Shut Down Milo Yiannopoulos.

JON GABRIEL LOOKS BACK AT President Obama’s Disastrous Record On Race.

Every time an officer of any race used lethal force against a black suspect, most of them ruled justifiable, Black Lives Matter cast it as another example of privilege and white supremacy. BLM harassed bewildered customers at malls and brunches, and regularly blocked traffic on major freeways. Concerned Student 1959 tried to shut down the University of Missouri as Amherst Uprising did the same for their school.

Did Obama comment on the widespread racial unrest wracking his country? Occasionally. But each time he used his “on the one hand, but on the other” formulation that defines himself as the moral fulcrum amidst the madness. The President didn’t mention that his fingerprints were all over the riots.

Before getting into politics, Barack Obama was a community organizer. This anodyne term was created by Chicago leftist Saul Alinsky who created the position to “rub raw the sores of discontent.” Many thought Obama’s moderate sounding speeches meant he had tossed Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals in the dustbin. Instead, upon entering the White House, Obama created Organizing for Action, which has trained 5 million Americans in Alinsky tactics.

Occupy Wall Street, Wisconsin’s anti-Walker protests, and Black Lives Matter didn’t arise of their own accord. They were the bitter fruit intentionally cultivated by OfA.

More disturbingly, Obama’s goal to “fundamentally transform America” is far from over. In his farewell speech, Obama repeatedly stressed the need for the crowd to “lace up your shoes and do some organizing.”

If Obama had wanted racial healing, he would have pursued racial healing.

PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Trump rips John Lewis: Worry about your ‘crime infested’ district. “Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk – no action or results. Sad!”

MIKE PENCE TO BE SWORN IN AS VICE PRESIDENT BY CLARENCE THOMAS. That’s a nice step toward breaking down the marginalization that official Washington has inflicted on Thomas for years. Maybe next the Smithsonian’s African American History museum will admit he exists.

HAPPY DIVORCE SEASON:

Unbeknownst to me, family lawyers apparently call January “divorce month.” As the Christmas tree is thrown out and the wrapping paper cleared away, the empty Champagne bottles taken out behind the garage, Google searches for terms like “divorce lawyer” and “file for divorce” spike. Many of the people researching how to untie the knot will probably not do so. But some will.

Brad Wilcox and Samuel Sturgeon of the Institute for Family Studies suggest that there might be good reason to hold off, particularly if you have kids. Of course, there might be good reason not to hold off! But the majority of divorces involving kids don’t come from “high conflict” marriages or situations involving abuse; Wilcox and Sturgeon point to data indicating that most divorces come from couples who are still basically functioning as parents.

Counterintuitively, kids whose parents divorce amid flying crockery and lurid accusations may actually do better, post-divorce, than kids whose parents unhappily fizzle out. But if you think about it for a while, that’s not all that surprising. In homes with major conflict, divorce brings a certain measure of peace and stability. But if your parents are basically civil to each other, divorce could come as an unwelcome surprise.

Our parents, our family unit, are the first and most bedrock fact of our lives. Suddenly breaking that apart — for no reason apparent to the children involved — shakes a faith in the world that will never be rebuilt in quite the same way. Moreover, divorce often means downward economic mobility. Unless you are hugely wealthy, splitting your income across two households means that sacrifices have to be made by both parties, and often, that financial stress is added to the emotional upheaval of unraveling two lives.

Small wonder, then, that the children of divorce tend to have worse outcomes on various measures than the children whose parents stay together.

Small wonder, indeed.

SO APPARENTLY IT WAS THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION that got Legal Insurrection’s YouTube channel taken down, claiming that the audio it posted of speakers at the MLA’s debate on anti-Israel sanctions was some sort of “copyright infringement.”

It’s probably a bad idea to make bogus copyright claims against a Cornell law professor, especially one who’s represented by blogosphere legal titan Ron “the Shark” Coleman.

RENDEZVOUS NEAR RIVER L’OURT: The latest in StrategyPage’s Battle of the Bulge commemorative photo series. Bed sheets turned used as winter camouflage. The snow is deep.

THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN AMERICAN HISTORY, MAYBE THE WORLD: Pelosi blames Bush for $9 trillion in debt added under Obama.

Is there anything he can’t do?

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Oikophobia on the rise after Trump win: Irrational fear of fellow countrymen is spreading among America’s ruling class.

SELF-DEFENSE: Beloved 78-year-old Texas Landlord Takes Out Would-be Robber.

GEORGE SCOVILLE: “Fake News?” Media, Heal Thyself.

In December, PolitiFact awarded its “2016 Lie of the Year” award to “Fake news.” But mainstream press deserves plenty of blame. We can’t all be gullible rubes, after all. Why are American news consumers turning away from mainstream media? The answer is simple: contemporary reporting is awful.

According to George Mason University economist and political scientist Tim Groseclose, whose work has focused on measuring partisan bias in the press, news editors and reporters overwhelmingly skew left on the American political spectrum. To wit, the Center for Public Integrity found that, of the over $396,000 that members of the press gave in 2016 to the two major presidential campaigns, 96 percent of the funds went to Clinton.

Recent headlines claiming that malicious foreign actors “hacked” the 2016 election suggest that editors make deliberate choices to try to shape how we think about current events. Although federal officials have found no evidence of vote-tampering, the damage is already done: over 50 percent of Democrats in a recent YouGov poll think Russians hacked actual vote tallies to help Trump. This conspiracy theory rivals the belief that President Obama is a Kenyan Muslim.

Michael Cleply, a former New York Times reporter, wrote after the election that his editors often assigned stories to him with prepackaged narratives. His job was to gather facts and comments from sources to support the storyline. This is not “reporting.” It is little wonder that many people distrust mainstream media.

Nope.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Media beware, your credibility is all you have.

I GUESS AMERICA IS FEELING TRUMPTASTIC! Gallup: ‘Personal satisfaction’ highest in 16 years.

EUGENE VOLOKH ON BUZZFEED: When ‘there is serious reason to doubt’ rumors and allegations, is it libelous to publish them?

RUSSIANS! HACKING OBAMA’S DOGS! White House defends Sunny and Bo after biting report.

President Obama’s top spokesman on Friday defended the first family’s dogs after a report this week that one bit a young visitor.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest refused to confirm the report, but said with a grin that “Bo and Sunny have been genuine ambassadors to the American people.”

The comment elicited laughter from the reporters assembled inside the James A. Brady Press Briefing Room.

“They’ve represented themselves and their country quite well,” a smiling Earnest added.

TMZ reported Thursday that the younger Obama dog, Sunny, recently bit an 18-year-old family friend when she went to pet her.

The bite reportedly left a cut under the girl’s eye, which was treated by the White House physician.

Ouch.

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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Georgia Tech’s Model Expands: Three years after its low-cost MOOC-inspired master’s degree program in computer science launched, the institute announces a new program in analytics priced at less than $10,000. “The announcement is perhaps the clearest indication yet that Georgia Tech views OMSCS as a successful model for delivering graduate education. The program hasn’t lived up to best-case projections — early on, the institute said it could grow to as many as 10,000 students in its third year — but it has generated a positive cash flow, positive evaluations and plenty of buzz in higher education circles.”

All is proceeding as I have foreseen.