OKAY, NOW THAT’S JUST… WHAT?  Giant, muscle-bound penguin ruled prehistoric bird world.

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS:   Los Angeles Animal Shelters May Put Dogs on Vegan Diet.

EVERY DROPLET A WAVE:  Post-Roy Moore, Please Spare Us the ‘Blue Wave’ Claptrap.

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION PROCEEDS APACE:   Spurlock denounces himself.

EVIDENCE WOULD SEEM TO SAY SO:  Do Lefties Live in a Parallel Universe? Let’s Explore.

OBJECTION! DIMWITS ARE BRIGHTER THAN THIS:  Dimwit Sheila Jackson Lee Confronts a Befuddled Rod Rosenstein.

FEMALE PRIVILEGE!  It really does take longer for men to recover from viruses, colds.

CIVIL RIGHTS NEWS:  Why Combating Terrorism In Large Cities Requires Gun Rights Reform.

NEWS THAT ARE BESIDE THE POINT:  These Type A personality traits could help you live a very long life.

I KNOW IT’S A CRAZY IDEA, BUT YOU COULD… MODERATE YOUR DRINK?   How to hide your holiday hangover from your boss.

AT AMAZON, Shop Amazon Exclusives-Baby.

VOX: Universities Have A Sexual Harassment Problem: Can They Fix It?

No, but I can.

YES, ANOTHER OPEN THREAD. Discuss away; people seem to like it.

WHY IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SUCH A CESSPIT OF MISOGYNY AND ABUSE? Tom Carper Admitted to Hitting His Wife in 1998 Interview: Carper said allegation was ‘without basis in fact’ during first campaign for Congress. “Carper represented Delaware first in the House, then was elected governor in 1993, and has been in the Senate since 2001. He fought the accusation that he hit his wife when it first emerged during his 1982 run for Congress, saying it was ‘without basis in fact’ and pledging to sue the New York Post, which first published the accusation in 1982, for libel. Carper won in 1982 largely by attacking his Republican opponent for his ‘vicious’ efforts to ‘smear’ him and his wife, but 16 years later he admitted to Delaware reporter Celia Cohen that the accusation was true all along.”

IT HAPPENS SLOWLY, THEN ALL AT ONCE: Is The Higher Education Bubble Starting To Pop?

AT AMAZON, 12 Days of Deals — For Tinselly Crafters and Jingle Rockers.

Plus, Holiday Deals in Home Goods.

THIS IS HOW AN OBITUARY SHOULD BE WRITTEN: Robert Charles Sproul – aka “R.C.” – passed away earlier today. Sproul was known, loved and profoundly respected among American and European evangelical and reformed thinkers and evangelists but relatively obscure to the general public. That’s the nation’s misfortune. Dr. Al Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and increasingly America’s pre-eminent evangelical public intellectual, explains why in a moving tribute that includes this arresting paragraph and much more:

“He was, as the British would say, a man in full. He never made a half-argument, presented a half-correction, preached a half-sermon, or laughed a half-laugh. He was all in, all the time. His voice would fill the room, his preaching would shake the timbers, and his passion would spread like a virus. He showed up as everything he was and with everything he believed – every time.”

Whether you’re a Christian or not, wouldn’t you want to live that kind of life?

I’VE WRITTEN SEVERAL TIMES ABOUT ZAEVION DOBSON, the heroic teenager who was killed shielding 3 girls from gunfire. Today, his killers were convicted. I’m glad that justice was done, though it won’t bring him back. The judge in the case is one of my former students, which makes me feel old.

I’M SORRY, BUT THAT SORT OF OBJECTIFICATION IS SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND IT IS NOT OKAY!. Shockingly enough, women find strong arms and muscles attractive when they look at pictures of shirtless men.. “The results show that most male bodily attractiveness stems from cues of formidability and physical strength, and that strength increases attractiveness in a linear fashion. This effect of height and weight on attractiveness may be due to mate choice mechanisms responding to cues of health, or to the benefits that height and lean bodies have in protracted aggression, hunting and other aspects of fighting ability.”

So you can dismiss this as social-construction, or you can believe in evolution, but it’s hard to do both.

WHY, INDEED? The momentous news of ISIS’s defeat was greeted, in large part, with silence. Why? “ISIS has been reduced to a shadow of its former self. The victory isn’t confined to Iraq. American-allied forces control ISIS’s former capital in Syria, and the world’s largest jihadist army is gone. Bands of insurgents still prowl the countryside, and ISIS cells exist across the world, but the war against the ‘caliphate’ is over. It’s been won.”

HMM: Democrats Mobilize Against Rod Rosenstein As Inspector General Investigation Zeroes In On FBI.

AND ANOTHER ONE: Head of Congressional Ethics Office Sued for Abusing Position, Accused of Assaulting Women.

AH, THE OLD HOW TO SPEND CHRISTMAS WITH YOUR RACIST FAMILY STANDBY.

SARA CARTER: Who’s spying on who? FBI’s use of NSA foreign surveillance program needs to be investigated, say whistleblowers.

A controversial NSA surveillance program used to monitor foreigners was also being used by the FBI as ‘backdoor’ to gain warrantless access to American communications, according to numerous former U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials with knowledge of the program.

The whistleblowers, who recently disclosed the program’s process to Congressional oversight committees, say concern over the warrantless surveillance mounted when it was disclosed earlier this year that Obama officials had accessed and unmasked communications of members of President Trump’s 2016 campaign, allegedly without clear justification.

The process, known as ‘reverse targeting,’ occurs when intelligence and law enforcement officials use a foreign person as a legal pretense for their intended target, an American citizen, the officials stated. The program, as it exists, failed to prevent terror attacks and in many cases made incorrect connections between a foreign target and an innocent American, they stated.

The whistleblowers said the program established after the September 11, 2001, attacks has not been successful in preventing terror threats, but instead infringes on privacy rights and could easily be abused for political purposes. Those concerns were also voiced to then FBI Director James Comey in 2014, and alternative options for the program were discussed, a source with knowledge said. And now, those intelligence officials want lawmakers to conduct extensive investigations into the program.

“The program can be misused by anyone with access to it,” said a former Intelligence official, with knowledge of the program. “There needs to be an extensive investigation of all the Americans connected to President Trump and the campaign who were unmasked in connection with the 2016 election.”

FBI officials declined to comment for this story.

There’s been a lot of no-commenting lately. But this fits in with a lot of stuff we’ve been hearing about the use of intelligence and law enforcement agencies for political espionage.

WELL, URBAN TEENS ARE HISTORICALLY WORSE THAN RURAL TEENS, AND URBAN AIR IS MORE POLLUTED: Study: Teen behavior worse in areas with high air pollution.. But they’re actually comparing the behavior of the same kids at different levels, so that’s something: “Parents completed a checklist every few years that tracked 13 rule-breaking behaviors among the kids, including lying, cheating, stealing, skipping school, destroying property, or using alcohol or drugs. At the same time, researchers used 25 air-quality monitors to measure daily air pollution in Southern California, relying on mathematical models to estimate the smog outside each child’s home. The investigators discovered that as air pollution levels crept up, so did the likelihood that a teen would score higher on the delinquency scale. Younan said this held true even after accounting for other factors, such as neighborhood quality, social and economic status, and other variables that can influence bad behavior.”