THIS IS MOSTLY A STEALTHY WAY TO KEEP HOMELESS PEOPLE OUT: As More Retailers Ban Paper Money, It’s Making Things Awkward For Customers Without Plastic.

SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Children prefer fruit juice over more nutritious whole fruit, milk at school.

WHY NO, JESUS AND MITHRAS WEREN’T BOTH BORN OF VIRGINS: If you think this issue is an irrelevant pre-modern scrap, think again because it deals with an important sector of the Left’s deconstruction of the West.

JERRY BROWN: THE PEASANTS ARE REVOLTING! Jerry Brown Blasts ‘Rural Areas’ for Not Liking Gas Tax That Disproportionately Harms Them.

He credited Californians with understanding that the high taxes and spending are “helping their community.” He admitted that they need more public transportation, however.

“We need more rapid transit. We need trains and we need more efficient cars and we need all of that, and that’s why this climate change is not just adapting, it’s inventing new technology,” he said.

He said Americans have the wrong idea about how to respond to Chinese technology, and then compared fighting climate change to World War II.

“I would point to the fact that it took [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt many, many years to get America willing to go into World War II and fight the Nazis,” Brown said. “We have an enemy and perhaps very much devastating in a similar way and we have to fight climate change and the president has got to lead on that.”

Global warming as the moral equivalent of WWII? How new and original a thought!

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: The 20 Worst Quotes of 2018.

HOW MUCH OF IT WILL WE BE UNLEARNING OVER THE COMING YEARS? What We Learned in 2018: Health and Medicine.

THE CALLS ARE COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE:

● Shot: ABC: ‘No Evidence’ Dems Responsible, Encouraging Illegal Immigration.

—NewsBusters, yesterday, describing Sunday’s Good Morning America on ABC.

● Chaser: WaPo Reporter: ‘We Want’ Migrants to ‘Come Across the Border.’

—NewsBusters, yesterday, describing Washington Post Democratic activist with a byline Mary Jordan’s appearance on ABC’s This Week.

(Classical reference in headline.)

LIKE PUTIN’S RUSSIA TODAY, THEY “PLANNED” A LOT OF STUFF THAT NEVER CAME CLOSE TO HAPPENING: The USSR Planned a Super Sub That Launched Rockets and Delivered Tanks.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Bernie Sanders’ alumni seek meeting to address ‘sexual violence’ on 2016 campaign.

The signees did not describe specific instances of “sexual violence and harassment” that occurred on the campaign. The statement circulated broadly over the past weekend among former staffers who added their names in support and was not specific to people who had experienced harassment or violence.

Several people who signed the letter said that their effort is not just about Sanders’ 2016 or 2020 presidential campaigns, but rather about what they called a pervasive culture of toxic masculinity in the campaign world. They stressed that they hoped their letter would not be reduced to reinforcing the “Bernie Bro” caricature, but rather would be one part of a larger reckoning among people running campaigns.

“This letter is just a start,” said one of the organizers who declined to be named. “We are addressing what happened on the Bernie campaign but as people that work in this space we see that all campaigns are extremely dangerous to women and marginalized people and we are attempting to fix that.”

As Stephen Miller tweets, “Wait until they hear about the things [Sanders] wrote about in the ’70s.”

JIM GERAGHTY: Twenty Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Bernie Sanders. “His first successful campaign, for mayor of Burlington in 1981, was largely driven by opposition to higher residential property taxes.”

THESE PROTESTORS WANT TO ‘KEEP ON TRUCKIN’ IN 2019: The creator of that familiar 1960s slogan would likely be spinning in his grave (if he were in it, which he’s not!) as Tesla owners find themselves unable to re-charge, thanks to “ICEing” protests.

SPENGLER: It’s chutzpah to blame Trump for Syria.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: The Ten Most Outrageous Higher Ed Stories From 2018.

ROGER SIMON: Bye-bye, 2018 —The Year of Living Hatefully.

CRYBULLY: Store Clerk Loses His Mind When Man Wearing Trump Gear Walks into Store. “The owners of the store actually did the right thing and fired the clerk.”

IDEAS SO GOOD THEY HAVE TO BE MANDATORY: California will soon require pet stores to only sell rescue dogs and cats.

Under California’s AB 485 law, all pet stores also must maintain records for each animal, including a sign that lists the name of the shelter that the animal was obtained. Stores that violate the new law will be subjected to a fine of $500.

Individuals in California, however, can still buy from private breeders.

“For how much longer?” seems like a fair question.

My wife and I are the proud and happy owners of two rescue dogs, but we wouldn’t think of making a different choice more difficult for anyone else.

IS WEST VIRGINIA UNCONSTITUTIONAL?: At the start of the Civil War, most of the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s northwestern region were not keen on the Confederacy and wanted to remain with the Union. On this day in 1862, therefore, Abraham Lincoln signed into law an Act admitting West Virginia as our 35^th state, thus dividing Virginia in two.

But did the United States comply with all the Constitutional requirements for creating a new state out of an old one? The answer is arguably no. There is a Constitutional requirement that a state give its permission before a region can secede and became a separate state. In this case, permission came only from a rump government-in-exile session of the Virginia legislature consisting of members from the seceding region. Times being what they were Lincoln accepted it.  Still, as nice as it is to have West Virginia as a state (hey, 50 is a nice round number), we might not want to wave that around as a precedent.

Vasan Kesavan and Michael Stokes Paulsen discussed this burning Constitutional question at length a few years back.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I talk about this very precedent, in the context of splitting California, in my state secession paper, forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review.

SO THAT WE ARE ALWAYS REMINDED OF OUR PLACE: GAO Report Shows Govt. Agencies Like IRS and NIH Are Heavily Armed, WHY?

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VIDEO: Franklin Graham Blocked on Facebook for 2016 Post on Transgender Bathroom Bill. “I think it was a personal attack toward me.”

LOOKING TO MAKE A YEAR-END CHARITABLE DONATION? I recommend the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which has been fighting higher-ed totalitarianism for many years.

DOUBLE STANDARDS: When Mother Jones suggests approaching white supremacists with empathy, it’s ‘provocative.’

EDUCATION SECRETARY BETSY DeVOS IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK: I am so pleased that the U.S. Department of Education has withdrawn the Obama Administration’s controversial Dear Colleague Letter applying disparate impact analysis to school discipline. It is worth pointing out that I am not the only one who is pleased. As I detail in my article, there were a lot of teachers, across the country, upset over the Obama Administration’s policy. And then there is this polling data:

In 2015, Education Next-Program on Education Policy and Governance conducted a survey of teachers. The question on school discipline asked: “Do you support or oppose federal policies that prevent schools from expelling or suspending black and Hispanic students at higher rates than other students?”

A healthy majority of teachers—59%–reported that they opposed the policy. Only 23% supported it (with 18% answering that they neither support nor oppose). Interestingly, most of the teachers who opposed the policy were not the least wishy-washy in their opposition. Of the 59% who opposed the policy, 34% said that “completely oppose the policy” while only 25% “somewhat oppose.” Supporters on the other hand were more lukewarm. Of the 23%, 16% said they “somewhat support” the policy, while only 7% “completely support the policy.”

Members of the general public responded similarly. A majority (51%) opposed the policy, while only 21% supported (with the 29% answering that they neither support nor oppose). The same pattern of strong opposition and weak support emerged.

But even though rank and file teachers as well as local union leaders opposed the Obama Administration’s policy, the national teachers unions sided with the Obama Administration.   It is one more example of the huge distance between union members and their national leaders.