K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Substitute teacher arrested over brutal beating she gave to student at Texas high school, and there’s video.

DANIEL MITCHELL: How the Welfare State Undermines Support for Immigration. Want more support for open immigration? Chop back on the welfare state. “It’s not just a controversy in the United States. Taxpayers in the Netherlands, for instance, are becoming less tolerant of immigrants who want handouts rather than work.”

FLASHBACK: Mayor Bloomberg closes Manhattan worship services of 25 religious groups. The list. “In a move with no precedent in New York City history Mayor Michael Bloomberg will shut down after today the worship services of scores of what he calls ‘these religious groups.’ At least 57 churches and synagogues are affected.”

SOCIALISM: IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL LEAVE. 35 percent of San Franciscans consider leaving for good, according to city survey.

Somebody really needs to fund Glenn’s Welcome Wagon idea.

KATIE PAVLICH LINKS ABC SPIKING EPSTEIN STORY TO CLINTONS, STEPHANOPOULOS:

“There’s no question, executives at ABC protected Jeffrey Epstein,” host Tucker Carlson began. “Why do you think they did that?”

“Because their star anchor’s name is George Stephanopoulos and of course George Stephanopoulos worked as Bill Clinton’s communications director at the White House,” Pavlich explained. “And when was this information given to Robach at ABC? When did she bring all this to her executives to say we should put this to air? Right before the 2016 election when Hillary Clinton was running on the Democratic ticket.”

* * * * * * * *

“This all comes down to the Clintons, George Stephanopoulos working at ABC and the circle of connections they have there, and protecting not just the Clintons of course, because that is something they are willing to do for political purposes,” Pavlich continued. “According to ABC’s editorial standards, which we keep hearing about, the standards are necessarily about accusers bringing forward evidence on someone who had already been convicted of similar crimes, but instead to protect political people and friends who are beneficial to them and who have very, very close connections to people in their network who claim to be leading journalists, like George Stephanopoulos.”

As the New York Times reported this past July, “A strange thing happened when Jeffrey Epstein came back to New York City after being branded a sex offender: His reputation appeared to rise. In 2010, the year after he got out of a Florida prison, Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos dined at his Manhattan mansion with a British royal.”

More here: Megyn Kelly Releases Interview with Fired Staffer at Center of ABC’s Epstein Cover-Up [Video].

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FROM MY UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE COLLEAGUE, VEJAS LIULEVICIUS: The Great Courses: The Rise Of Communism From Marx To Lenin.

#JOURNALISM:

OK, BOOMER: Elizabeth Warren: ‘Black trans and cis women, gender-nonconforming and nonbinary people’ are the ‘backbone of our democracy.’

AT AMAZON, Men’s Winter Essentials.

HYPOTHESIS: “JOURNALISTIC” OUTLETS ARE RUN BY GARBAGE PEOPLE.

WHAT’S MOST NOTABLE IS THAT THAT THEY’VE BECOME A BASTION OF BAD IDEAS IS TAKEN FOR GRANTED: Erik Gilbert: How Ed Schools Became a Bastion of Bad Ideas.

A few years ago, when I was on my university’s Graduate Council, a new course proposal came to us from our College of Education. The proposal referred to the different learning styles of students, something that struck me as odd — I remembered having heard years before that the learning-styles theory had been discredited. Trusting my colleagues’ expertise, I kept my mouth shut and, assuming that learning styles must have been rehabilitated by new research, voted to pass the proposal.

I later polled the education majors in one of my history classes: Not only did they know about learning styles, they all knew the acronym “VARK,” which stands for visual, auditory, reading/writing and kinesthetic — the four alleged learning styles. The theory, it seemed, was alive and well.

Then I sought out the supporting research. Instead, I quickly came across a New York Times article on the curious persistence of learning styles — curious because of widespread evidence debunking the theory (The Atlantic has since published a similar piece). Despite all this, learning styles still apparently pervade colleges of education. A 2014 article in Nature Reviews Neuroscience on the topic of “neuromyths” found that over 90 percent of teachers it surveyed believed in learning styles. . . .

Evidence shows that virtually anyone can learn to read if they are taught to associate letters with particular sounds (phonics) and that trying to teach students to read using the whole language approach works poorly. Still, colleges of education continue to resist phonics. . . .

There are real costs to these inertial, anti-scientific ways. Researchers warn that trying to accommodate students’ beliefs about their own learning styles may actually make it harder for them to learn. The fact that fewer than 40 percent of American eighth graders are proficient readers is partially attributable to educators’ dogged opposition to phonics. . . .

No doubt there are useful things we could learn from the high schools and they from us, but what’s wandering in from the sidewalk may be the worst aspects of the high school, not the best. Instead of the enthusiasm of the robotics team and the Latin club, it’s the top-down administration and the stifling, centralized approach to curriculum and pedagogy that seem to be trying to get their noses under the tent.

Ed school graduates now occupy a growing role in academic administration, especially at lower-tier schools, and they are bringing an ed-school mentality with them.

In three words, ignorant, mediocre, authoritarianism.

SETTING A PRECEDENT FOR EXPANSIVE EXECUTIVE POWER IN TRUMP’S SECOND TERM, WHILE MAKING THAT SECOND TERM MORE LIKELY: Elizabeth Warren: As President, Maybe I’ll Just Freeze Deportations Until Congress Agrees To Pass A Massive Amnesty Bill.

OPEN THREAD: It’s a community of thinkers, really.

SPACE: Whoa! Incredible Video Shows a SpaceX Rocket Fairing Plunging into the Ocean.

REVENGE FOR ASSANGE: Wikileaks Drops A Bomb.

LET’S PLAY A ROUND OF “WHISTLEBLOWER SHIT-SHOW!”  Well, CBS fired Ashley Bianco, producer formerly of ABC for allegedly releasing the video that outlines how ABC spiked an investigation of pedophile and Clinton mega-donor Jefferey Epstein. Megyn Kelly interviews her and she tearfully denies it. On the same day, James O’Keefe published a letter from the real whistleblower.

In the meantime both networks are following the DNC-talking points about investigating leakers: When the President does it, it’s bad. When they do it…crickets.

Where to start? I wish Kelly had asked Bianco what CBS told her when they fired her. That aside, I’ve been asked a lot about her legal remedies. Honestly, you could take what I know about Labor Law, put in your eye and still see pretty well. As I understand it, NY is an “at-will” state, meaning they can fire you for no reason unless it’s a race/age/gender thing.

Defamation? Maybe, but defamation claims in NY require “in hac verbae”, that is a pleading of the actual defamatory statement in the Complaint. And you can bet that both CBS and ABC would fight coughing up any docs for years, and would resist pre-action discovery to depose the HR departments to find out what ABC said to CBS. I doubt this lady has the financial wherewithal for that kind of fight.

But, this may be one of the rare instances where a cause of action for Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress might work. Very generally, the tort requires that the plaintiff must have been in the “zone of danger” of the defendant’s negligent act, or it must have been foreseeable that the defendant’s negligent conduct would have caused the plaintiff emotional harm. (And New York does not, like a few states, require physical harm or contact). And if CBS fired an employee on ABC’s mistaken say-so, well, that’s pretty damned negligent. Dare I even say “collusion”?

Who’s taking odds that CBS writes a check to make this go away?

BTW, Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself.

VIDEO: I talk about my book, The Social Media Upheaval, with the folks from the San Francisco Review of Books.

TRUTH IN LABELING: Clovis brewery prints ‘Epstein didn’t kill himself’ on the bottom of cans.

HEH: Suicide Hotline volunteer shocked when Hillary Clinton tried to ‘place an order.’

TO BE FAIR, HE’S A DEMOCRATIC APPOINTEE: How do you get to be a federal judge and think the expression is “unchartered territory”?

Plus:

Now, I agree with the idea that Trump’s speech about law is unconventional, but what determines that he has violated all recognized democratic norms? It’s often said that the judiciary is the least democratic part of the government, that it’s countermajoritarian. So what are the norms of democracy that say a President should not criticize the courts?! You might just as well call this purported norm a norm of anti-democracy.

Anyway… the weasel word is “recognized.” It takes all the oomph out of “all.” Trump’s speech about judges violates “all recognized democratic norms.” Who are the recognizers? The judges?

Weasel is the word. The people lecturing us on norms and principles and democracy are people who are willing to overturn all three in the pursuit, or maintenance, of power.

DON’T WORRY, THE DEMOCRATS HAVE A PLAN TO FIX THIS: Trump economy is really experiencing a middle-class boom — this data doesn’t lie.

MEGYN KELLY RELEASES INTERVIEW WITH FIRED STAFFER AT CENTER OF EPSTEIN COVER-UP (Video):

UPDATE: Much more on this interview at Ed Driscoll.com.

YOU MAY WANT TO REFINE YOUR MARKETING ON THIS: The world’s first Gattaca baby tests are finally here.