WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-DOMINATED INDUSTRIES SUCH CESSPITS OF RAPE AND ABUSE? CBS News has learned that the NYPD has opened a preliminary investigation into accusations of sexual misconduct against hip hop mogul Russell Simmons.

NOBODY STEPS ON A CHURCH IN MY TOWN: ISIS Threatens National Cathedral in Fiery Propaganda Image.

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Preliminary Scan Suggests This Interstellar Visitor Is Not an Alien Spaceship.

FASTER, PLEASE. Winning: President Trump Cuts Physical Red Tape of Government Regulations.

REVIEW: The 2018 Nissan Leaf.

By way of comparison, here’s my 2011 Nissan Leaf review.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN ANGELA MERKEL’S GERMANY: Intelligence leaks reveal Erdogan regime arming criminal Turkish gangs in Germany.

FASTER, PLEASE: New drug thwarts Zika, dengue, West Nile in cell cultures. “When you target a host function rather than a viral protein, it’s usually much more difficult for a virus to develop resistance.”

AT AMAZON, shop the 12 Days Of Deals.

Plus, savings in Tools and Home Improvement.

FASTER, PLEASE: A ‘Game Changer’ for Patients With Irregular Heart Rhythm. And by “faster, please” I mean the medical science, not the heartbeat, because. . . .

YES, BUT IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH REPEALING “NET NEUTRALITY.” Are We in the Twilight of the Internet’s Golden Age? The Internet went downhill with the appearance of Twitter and Facebook and other monopolistic “walled garden” social media sites.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The 10 Worst Christmas Songs of All Time.

This is one music-related post that really should go to 11:

AND YOU WON’T BELIEVE THE ANSWER! Scientists Bashed a Fake Skull to See if a Rare Neolithic Weapon Could Kill. Okay, actually, you will totally believe that a wooden war club can smash a skull. Because, well.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Oberlin’s budget woes should worry all of higher ed. Weird, I wonder what caused that “dip in enrollment?”

NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER, FROM GREG LUKIANOFF AND JONATHAN HAIDT: The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure. I’m not sure the intentions are as good as advertised, to be honest.

WAS A SONIC WEAPON DEPLOYED IN CUBA? What I don’t get is, the Cubans presumably want us there, and who else could be doing it?

ANN ALTHOUSE ROUNDS UP REACTIONS to that “Cat Person” story.

So when I was in high school, I rewrote Dorthy Parker’s “The Waltz” using all the original dialogue but from the viewpoint of the male dance partner. I got an A+. I was thinking about doing the same for this story, but my time is worth a lot more now than it was then. But if I did, the ending would be something like this:

Enough stewing, I said to myself. I should probably go to the gym, try to work off some of this weight. She didn’t seem to be into the “Dad bod,” despite what the magazines say.

At the gym, I left my unlocked iPhone in an unlocked locker, as one does. When I returned to the locker room, I saw that someone — a hacker? — had gotten on my phone and sent these texts:

“Are you fucking that guy right now”
“Are you”
“Are you”
“Are you”
“Answer me”
“Whore.”

I started to send a text apologizing and saying that it wasn’t me, someone had taken my unlocked phone from an unlocked locker at the gym. But then I thought: Who’d believe something like that? Best to let it lie, so I hit the showers.

Oh, wait, did I say I left my phone in the locker? I meant to say, my assistant left his phone, logged into my text app, in a locker in a different town. Sorry for the confusion!

I did a better job with “The Waltz,” but then, it was for a grade. And the ending was more believable.

MATT WELCH: JOURNALISTS ARE AT WAR WITH THEIR CRITICS — AND THEY’RE LOSING BADLY.

After President Trump recently tweeted another sophomoric insult at CNN anchor Don Lemon, for example, the network opted for not a bemused stoicism but a condescending whine: “In a world where bullies torment kids on social media to devastating effect on a regular basis with insults and name-calling, it is sad to see our president engaging in the very same behavior himself. Leaders should lead by example.” Boo-frickity-hoo.

As the above illustrates, the two opposing views on media are self-reinforcing and increasingly dominate American politics. Anti-media fervor is arguably the strongest glue left holding together the Republican coalition, as evidenced by our troll president; his troll-Svengali, Breitbart editor Stephen K. Bannon; and the uber-troll, twice-defrocked Alabama jurist Roy Moore.

The legacy media and its left-of-center customer base, meanwhile, cannot resist taking the bait, leading to too much anti-Trump error and an off-putting haughtiness when caught out. Reliable Sources this weekend used the occasion of a bad CNN mistake — the network had reported that Trump and his son received a WikiLeaks web address and encryption key before they were made public, when in fact they got them after — to have several guests bemoan Trump’s attacks on the media, rather than, I don’t know, delve into exactly how CNN messed up.

The struggle against Trump’s norms-shattering presidency is real. So is the decreasing marginal utility of crying wolf at every opportunity. How to thread that needle? Another CNN anchor, Jake Tapper, pointed the way at the L.A. Press Clubs awards this year.

“We don’t need to give the enemies of the Fourth Estate any ammunition,” Tapper warned. “That means we need to be squeaky clean. We’re not the resistance. We’re not the opposition. We’re here to tell the truth, report the facts, regardless of whom those facts favor one way or the other.”

That’s nice. How’s the search for Anderson Cooper’s “hacker” coming along?

MSNBC ANALYST: “It’s ‘Unfortunate’ Voters Shape Public Policy.” I think what MSNBC’s Elise Jordan *really* means is that it’s unfortunate that those knuckle-dragging, gun-and-bible-clinging, fly-over proles who work with their hands have a vote at all:

“I think it’s unfortunate that we are designing — that we are designing public policy in a way that, you know, comes down to how you voted in an election.”

FLASHBACK: Elections have consequences.

UNEXPECTEDLY! US retail sales rose 0.8% in Nov, vs 0.3% increase expected.

THIS IS GOLD: Those Trump-Hating FBI Tweets Came Out As A Result of Democratic Complaints About FBI Bias:

Ironically, Democrats pushed for the investigation. Many Clinton supporters blamed then-FBI Director James Comey’s actions during that investigation for Clinton’s election loss.

“This is highly encouraging and to be expected given Director Comey’s drastic deviation from Justice Department protocol,” Clinton campaign communications director Brian Fallon said back in January. “A probe of this sort, however long it takes to conduct, is utterly necessary in order to take the first step to restore the FBI’s reputation as a non-partisan institution.:

Horowitz, writing to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, said that his office obtained the Strzok texts after asking the FBI to produce communications from bureau-issued phones for a select group of employees who worked on the Clinton email probe.

Back when Democrats thought political bias at the FBI was a Very Serious Problem.

ANDREW MCCARTHY IN THE WASHINGTON POST: Mueller Needs To Make A Change.

Mueller’s investigation was triggered when former FBI director James B. Comey, no fan of the president who dismissed him, leaked a memo of a meeting with President Trump. Comey admitted hoping this revelation would lead to appointment of a special counsel. Furthermore, the investigative team Mueller has assembled includes Democratic donors and supporters, including one lawyer who represented the Clinton Foundation and one who represented a subject in the Hillary Clinton email investigation. This month, moreover, it came to light that two members of the team, who had also worked on the Clinton email investigation, were having an extramarital affair and exchanged text messages expressing partisan political views — favoring Clinton and depicting Trump as ‘loathsome.’

Worse, in one August 2016 text, one of them, FBI agent Peter Strzok, asserted that the FBI “can’t take that risk” that Trump could be elected, equating some unspecified action against this seemingly unlikely possibility to “an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.” Dismayingly, this text, which crosses the line between political banter and tainted law enforcement, refers to a meeting in the office of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, then (and now) the bureau’s No. 2 official. While not as weighty, legitimate questions have been raised about McCabe’s own objectivity, his wife’s state Senate campaign having been lavishly funded by groups tied to Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), a Clinton insider.

Read the whole thing.

ASHLEY HAMILTON: Dismantling The Scaffolding Of the Administrative State.