WELL, SURE. THEY’RE OUT OF POWER. The Left Will Make 2019 A Dark Year.

Just remember, the country is doing fine. The left is just angry because it’s out of power.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Rahm Emanuel, racism, and Chicago Public Schools’ massive, underreported sex abuse scandal.

Back in June, a Chicago Tribune investigation uncovered 523 credible cases of rape and sexual abuse of minors at CPS over the last 10 years. Again, note that this enormous number is in just one city over 10 years.

In one case, a 16-year-old track star was raped 40 times by her coach.

Since September, CPS officials have received 624 new complaints of sex abuse, including 133 allegations of adult misconduct.

This should be a national scandal, not just a Chicago scandal. Go back a few years and you might find enough cases at CPS to rival, or surpass, clergy abuse in the Catholic Church.

Read the whole thing. Why are Democratic Party monopoly institutions such cesspits?

IT’S MEDICAL MALPRACTICE: In Screening for Suicide Risk, Facebook Takes On Tricky Public Health Role.

JON CALDARA: On January 1, I became a criminal in my hometown of Boulder.

In Boulder, if your core beliefs include dressing as the opposite gender or following the teachings of the Koran our city government will bend over backwards to protect you from those who wish to separate you from your community. You’d never be forced to self-identify to government authorities, to submit to inspection, to be registered and made to pay fees to keep your core beliefs.

My strong belief in my Second Amendment rights is core to who I am. I know that is not understood by many today, however I am not asking to be understood. I’m asking to be left alone.

I am asking for progressives who run city government to live up to their assertion of tolerance and just let me be.

Because I own a long gun with a pistol grip and a detachable magazine, I had to the end of December to self-identify to the police, present myself for investigation and my gun for inspection, pay fees in order to receive a police-issued permission slip, all to avoid jail time, monetary penalties, and the confiscation and destruction of my gun.

I have never been convicted or even charged with a crime in my 54 years of life, but this week I became a criminal.

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

MY NEW CONGRESSMAN EXPLAINS THINGS:

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Actually, 2018 was a pretty good year.

JEFF DUNETZ: Trump’s Iran Sanctions Destroying Their Economy — Liberal Critics Were Wrong.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO DO THAT: Special-ed teacher arrested for throwing New Year’s Eve party and letting kids drink alcohol and smoke pot.

SEE, IF MITT ROMNEY HAD DONE THIS KIND OF THING, HE’D BE PRESIDENT INSTEAD OF COMPLAINING ABOUT TONE.

Meanwhile, look at the things that aren’t tone-policed:

WHEN DEMS ARE OUT OF POWER, OUR POLITICS IS CRAZY. WHEN DEMS ARE IN POWER, OUR GOVERNMENT IS CRAZY. Top 10 Predictions for 2019, A Year That Will Make 2018 Look Sane.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Nancy Says No $$ for the Wall and Much, Much More. “WH spokesman Hogan Gidley said about the meeting, ‘What [President Trump] wants on his desk is a bill that opens the government, that funds the government and protects the American people. And right now, the Democrats are not serious about that. And you know they’re not serious because serious people with serious plans and serious proposals don’t negotiate in the press. And that’s all that Democrats have done to this point’.”

JOURNALISM ALGEBRA, 2018 EDITION: (Dishonest reporter with agenda + confirmation bias of editors) ÷ publishers drive to riding profitable Anti-Trump news appetite x (decimated newsroom fact-checking staff + journalism school failure to teach ethics) = Journalism 2018.

ROGER SIMON: How the Democrats Teach Immigrants to Be Criminals.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN is on the Supreme Court and obsolete laws.

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: ISIS Message After Barcelona Warning: Kill Pedestrians at ‘Very Busy and Full of Disbelief’ Location. “A vehicle is equally powerful or even more than a bomb… hit with all the force at the first moment.”

HEAVY LIFTING IN WESTERN IRAQ: This photo is revealing. A U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook transports a M777A2 155mm howitzer as part of a sling load training exercise. U.S. forces remain in western Iraq — not that far from Syria.

RELATED PHOTO: A French Army self-propelled howitzer fires on Islamic State tagets near the Syria-Iraq border. This photo was taken December 5.

REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: The Sheriff, the Sheriff’s Son, and the ‘Coward of Broward.’ “Parents of children gunned down in the Parkland school shooting in Florida last year have never understood two actions taken by Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel: his refusal to fire a campus-based deputy who failed to enter the school during the rampage that took 17 lives, and his continued defense of controversial Obama-era school policies that allowed the  accused shooter, Nikolas Cruz, to avoid arrest and a police record and thereby purchase the murder weapon. Some now think they have found the answer in a single incident that occurred in 2014. A police report shows that’s when Israel’s then-17-year-old son, Brett, was accused of participating in a sexual assault of a 14-year-old boy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas  High School. The case was investigated by Scot Peterson — the armed deputy who took cover while children and staff were shot last February. Using the Obama-era guidelines, Peterson’s recommendation helped his boss’s son receive just a three-day suspension.”

ROGER KIMBALL: The Pathetic Crusade of Mitt Romney. “Many commentators noted that Romney was happy to have Trump’s endorsement when he ran for President in 2012 and, just a few months ago, when he ran for the Senate. As Tennessee State Senator Frank Nicely put it on Twitter, ‘Mitt Romney has always been there when he needs you. The American people sensed that and he lost.’ . . . Mitt Romney thinks that Donald Trump has not risen to the ‘mantle’ of the presidency. But that mantle has been denied to Trump by an establishment that refuses to countenance his legitimacy and, moreover, by implication refuses to countenance the legitimacy of those who elected him.”

Like so many of Trump’s critics, Mitt is a coward masquerading as a brave truth-teller. Mitt could have won in 2012 if he’d shown 1/10 of Trump’s ability to punch back. But he was afraid of being called a racist for going after Obama and he lost. (And they called him a racist, and Hitler, and homophobic, and everything else anyway.) And worse, Romney seems to have learned nothing from his own experience. A sad start to his Senate career.

Plus:

Donald Trump campaigned and was elected on rolling back the regulatory state. He has made a good start on that Herculean project. He campaigned and was elected on taming illegal immigration. He is hard at work attempting to achieve that. He campaigned and was elected on cutting taxes. He managed that last year. He campaigned and was elected on rolling back political correctness. He has done that through Betsy DeVos’s department of education and in other ways. He campaigned and was elected on populating the judiciary with judges who were Constitutionalists after the pattern of Antonin Scalia. He has made astonishing progress in doing just that. He campaigned and was elected on rebuilding the United States military and, with a military budget of some $716 billion, he is well on the way to accomplishing that. He campaigned and was elected on making America energy independent. We are now the world’s largest energy producer. He campaigned and was elected on helping black and hispanic minorities, who now enjoy the lowest unemployment in history. He campaigned and was elected on a promise to challenge the spread of radical Islamic terrorism. During his first year in office, he obliterated ISIS as a fighting force. He campaigned and was elected on challenging North Korea’s nuclear program and has made historic progress on that front. He campaigned and was elected on reversing China’s unfair trade practices and expansionist policies. He has made significant progress on that front as well. He campaigned and was elected on moving our Israeli embassy to Jerusalem. He did it.

Mitt Romney thinks that Donald Trump has not risen to the ‘mantle of the office.’ I’d say, on the contrary, that he has lifted the bar and then vaulted over it.

I voted for Mitt Romney in 2012. Doubtless he is a nice man. Possibly, Donald Trump is not as nice. But he won in 2016, as Mitt Romney failed to do in 2012. And his tenure has been a litany of achievement in the light of which Mitt Romney’s complaints appear not just churlish and beside the point but slightly rancid and pathetic, not unlike the establishment he embodies.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Seen on Facebook:

OH: Dems ‘Refused’ To Even Listen To Border Security Briefing At White House.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: University offers class that explores ‘non-human perspectives’ of LGBT.

Meh. You want to be edgy, try doing non-human perspectives on rape. You can start with our friends the dolphins.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Golden Globes Hosts Vow No Trump Jokes (Right…).

Let’s go through the following quotes, courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter, to share what’s spoken between the lines:

SAMBERG … Everyone is depressed [Hollywood liberals haven’t gotten over Hillary Clinton’s loss … yet!], and maybe that’s as good a reason as any that everyone could use a little time to laugh and celebrate. Not to ignore anything [I’m already hedging my bets], but we spend so much time every day wallowing in a lot of things that are happening in our world that are really depressing [like record low unemployment rates?], and with good reason — that stuff needs to be paid attention to — but there’s also power to being positive and celebratory in the tougher times as well.

OH: …I don’t really think that [getting political] is for the hosts necessarily [reciting talking points from the show producers who fear a ratings debacle]. You make it an open and safe place for whoever wants to use that platform to speak. [of course we openly encourage anti-Trump rants despite our ‘no politics’ pledge]

SAMBERG: The most memorable moments from the last two years of the Globes have been the DeMille speeches, Meryl Streep and Oprah Winfrey. [Remember when I said the show should shy away from politics? Just kidding!]

OH: …And I’m not interested in [talking about Trump] at all. What I’m interested in is pointing to actual real change.

That’s entertainment? Anyway, much more at the link.