OUT: RACISM. IN: FACISM. To counter effect of facial biases in legal system, researchers suggest new training. “Researchers at Columbia University are recommending a new form of training to eliminate facial biases that could lead to more severe punishments for defendants with ‘untrustworthy’ features. Certain facial features, such as downturned lips and a heavy brow, can make someone seem untrustworthy, even though these do not have an effect on the person’s character. But according to a new study from Columbia researchers, legal defendants who appear untrustworthy are more likely to be sentenced to death rather than life in prison. This was true even in cases in which participants were conscious of their bias.”

RACISM IN AMERICA TODAY:

Here’s the same mayor claiming it was just an innocent mistake to not invite White people, you know, cause it happens to all of us from time to time. https://t.co/Egeiq2lQ0s

— Liberacrat Media™️ (@Liberacrat_) December 15, 2023

THIS LEFTY FOREIGN BILLIONAIRE MAY BE WORSE THAN SOROS: He’s from Switzerland, he spends hundreds of millions every year supporting Democrats, far-left advocacy groups and voter registration drives. It’s my latest PJ Media column and congressional testimony from the head of the Capital Research Center (CRC).

IT’S HARD WHEN NOBODY TRUSTS YOU: CDC warns of ‘urgent need’ to increase vaccinations for COVID-19, other respiratory illnesses.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU: Mandatory Anti-Drunk-Driving Tech Is Coming, and GM’s Ready: New passenger vehicles will soon be required to have some kind of impaired driving detection onboard.

ACADEMIA’S “ETHNIC CLEANSING” HITS MUSIC. Totalitarianism means that literally no issue or field is too small to bend to your will, whether it be “Schenkerian musicology” or your personal choice to abandon homosexuality. (Disclosure: my firm, Allen Harris, represents Professor Jackson, the unfortunate Schenkerian.)

CHRIS QUEEN: The New Disney War Heats Up. “This week, Trian nominated two candidates for Disney’s board. Peltz is one of those candidates, of course, but the second one is a name that should intrigue students of recent Disney history: Jay Rasulo.”

File Under “Not that there’s anything wrong with it”: DAILY CALLER EXCLUSIVE: Senate Staffer Caught Filming Gay Sex Tape In Senate Hearing Room (GRAPHIC).

It’s true. The government is in the very best of, ummm, hands. Warning, eye bleach may be required.

FIRST LOOK: Rossi Survival Rifle: A lightweight, versatile rifle which shoots both .45 Colt cartridges and .410 shells.

THAT’S NICE, BUT WILL BIDEN ENFORCE IT? Senate closes in on deal on new hardline border policy that could ban asylum after 5,000 crossings a day.

WELL, BYE: Here’s What Happened to the DOJ Official Who Tried to Protect Hunter Biden.

PERFECT GIFT: The Perfect Pizza Pack™. #CommissionEarned

WELL, HARVARD: “Harvard forces a Jewish student group to hide its menorah each night after its lighting over fears of vandalism that ‘won’t look good’ for the Ivy League school, the rabbi of Harvard Chabad said.” (Bumped).

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: San Francisco Hits Record Overdose Deaths.

MATT TAIBBI: Orf vs. the Memory Hole: “Extreme MAGA Republicans:” When the president goes to a campaign fundraiser, stock lines ensue. Plus, the “Vermin Switcheroo.”

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Grand Theft Auto 6 Stole My Stolen Identity. “It’s your much-needed break from the serious news and this week we have a fake Joker, a real stolen ambulance, a molested manatee statue, and Colorado’s most audacious trial attorney.”

OH: Fed Official Says Central Bank Isn’t ‘Really Talking About Rate Cuts.’

A senior Federal Reserve official said Friday that central-bank policy makers weren’t actively debating when to cut interest rates, an apparent effort to temper markets’ exuberant interpretation of comments Chair Jerome Powell made two days earlier.

“We aren’t really talking about rate cuts right now,” New York Fed President John Williams said on CNBC. “We’re very focused on the question in front of us, which as Chair Powell said…is, have you gotten monetary policy to a sufficiently restrictive stance?”

Williams serves as the vice chair of the Fed’s rate-setting committee and is part of Powell’s inner circle of monetary policy advisers.

Stocks surged and bond yields tumbled Wednesday after the Fed held interest rates steady and officials projected three rate cuts next year.

End-of-the-year rallies always feel nice but it looks like this one is built on false hope.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Claudine Gay problem goes way beyond Harvard: Do you really think that people like Claudine Gay are found only at Ivy League universities? We should all be so lucky.

THEY CAN’T AFFORD THE EMBARRASSMENT: Chicago Aldermen Block Plan to Put Question of Sanctuary City Status on the Ballot.

SHOCKER: Oprah Winfrey confirms she added weight-loss medication to regimen.

I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN BIDEN WAS GOING TO RESTORE OUR TATTERED RELATIONS WITH COUNTRIES LIKE MEXICO: Mexico Suspends Deportations, Allowing Even More Invaders to Reach US.

FLASHBACK: “The NGOs and foundations deserve much, much closer scrutiny than they’re getting, both in terms of their activities, and in terms of where the money goes. And that’s even before you get to basic questions of accounting, oversight, and general honesty in advertising.”

GET IN SHAPE: Yes4All Kettlebell PVC. #CommissionEarned

DANIEL HENNINGER: University Presidents Flunk Out.

It may be no coincidence that colleges are abandoning SATs at the same time three university presidents were flunking questions in public about genocide. After receiving Fs for insisting that the answer to any direct question is “It depends on the context,” University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill lost her job and Harvard’s board of governors retained Claudine Gay with a limp vote of confidence—“she is the right leader to help our community heal.” Uh-huh.

This may be the moment to bring back vocabulary tests.

Question: What six-syllable word describes the three university presidents who testified before Congress?

Answer: Pusillanimity.

Next: Name as many synonyms as you can for “pusillanimity.”

Answer, by way of the Merriam-Webster dictionary (remember those?): Cowardice, cravenness, gutlessness, spinelessness and—my favorite—poltroonery.

In those plain words is written the history of academia’s plummet the past 50 years from respectability to antisemitic riots.

First came the speech codes. No, those came second. What began the long downhill roll in the 1970s was grade inflation. Students whose work deserved a C demanded an A or B. Professors who resisted this threat to standards gave up.

That was an early inkling that traditional college norms could be pushed around and politicized. Speech codes emerged at many schools, not least Harvard, arguing that certain words were—another new vocabulary addition—“hurtful.”

After establishing that words alone could bring reprimand by the university, the speech coders expanded the prohibitions to include something new called microaggressions, or inadvertent slights. Microaggressions had a fraternal twin, trigger warnings, which required profs to warn students that a text or even a thought might distress them.

It sounds like a joke now, but we know it was no joke. This was the moment when the adults in the room—presumably the universities’ presidents—should have intervened to protect free speech and inquiry from being diminished. They did not. Virtually without exception, they were pusillanimous. Fellow ostriches included hundreds of spineless boards of trustees.

Here we bring back to this space an important figure in the universities’ decline: Herbert Marcuse (1896-1979). Though Marcuse isn’t a household name, any purportedly serious university intellectual—say, Ms. Magill of Penn or Harvard’s Ms. Gay—knows about his contribution to governance at their institutions.

Marcuse, a left-wing philosopher who taught at Columbia and Harvard, proposed zero tolerance for conservative ideas. “Liberating tolerance,” Marcuse wrote in 1965, “would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.” No one needs a doctorate in anything to understand that. He wasn’t done: “Certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed.”

I can’t conceive a more concise description of cancel culture, which we got.

University presidents should have recognized—or acknowledged—that cancel culture was another sign their schools were off the rails.

They wanted off the rails.

KRUISER: Trump Derangement Syndrome Meltdown of the Week — DESTROYER OF WORLDS Edition. “Their panic delights and energizes me.”