EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Marco Rubio Vows to Restore Intelligence Programs Restricted by Obama.

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ANDREW MCCARTHY: So how many of us look across the ocean at Europe and say, “Yeah, let’s bring some of that here”?

68 YEARS AGO TODAY THE U.N. CREATED A JEWISH STATE — They’ve Been Trying To Destroy It Ever Since.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: At UNC, abdicating the obligations of leadership in scandal.

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES SUCH HELLHOLES OF CORRUPTION, RACISM, AND VIOLENCE? The Corrupt System That Killed Laquan McDonald. “Until it is reformed, more Chicagoans will die needlessly at the hands of police. The failures are especially inexcusable in the aftermath of both a relatively recent police torture scandal and an off-the-books holding facility scandal where rights to an attorney were willfully denied. Each scandal illustrated the importance of sunlight in the Chicago police department. City leaders kept blocking it anyway.”

JOEL KOTKIN: Climate Hysteria Fostering A Climate Of Intolerance.

The Paris Climate Conference, convening this week, takes place in the very place where, arguably, the most dangerous exemplar of hysteria, the Islamic jihadi movement, has left its bloody mark. Yet the think tank mavens, academics, corporate shills and endless processions of bureaucrats gather in the City of Light not to confront the immediate deadly threat, but to ramp up their own grisly scenarios and Draconian solutions.

Welcome to the age of hysteria, where friends and foes, and even those who blissfully talk past each other, whip themselves into an emotional frenzy that bears no discussion, debate or nuance. Rather than entering a technological age of reason, we seem to lurching towards a high-tech middle ages, where warring bands – greens, jihadis, libertarians, social conservatives, nationalists – immerse themselves not in intellectual competition but, inflating their own individual outrage. In this environment, exaggeration and hysteria are weapons of recruitment, while opposition is met with demeaning attacks, potential imprisonment and, at the worst, vicious acts of violence.

Rather than address possible shortcomings in their models, climate change activists increasingly tend to discredit critics as dishonest and tools of the oil companies. There is even a move to subject skeptics to criminal prosecution for deceiving the public.

How much this does for our understanding of the complexities of climate seems questionable, but the incessant campaign on the issue clearly is having an effect on the society’s rationality. Canadian psychologists have already found elevated levels of anxiety among young people, who, after all, have been told that their world could be coming to an end, no matter what we do.

My solution: Tax the Blue Zones! Also, ban government funded travel for bureaucrats and academics. We have Skype now, and the planet is at risk!!!!

ODDLY ENOUGH, NOT AN ARTICLE ABOUT SMOD: Another danger of climate change: Giant flying boulders?

CHANGE: The leader of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats on Saturday hailed the Nordic country’s dramatic tightening of asylum policy, arguing that it would open the way for his party to join a future right-wing government. “We are on the way to winning, do you know that?”

CRIME EXPERT RIPS CNN ON AIR FOR DISHONORING AGREEMENT NOT TO DISCUSS COLORADO SHOOTER:

It was one of those stunning live-TV moments revealing the seamier side of TV news.  Pat Brown is a criminal profiler who has taken a principled stand on media appearances about mass murderers. She will not discuss individual criminals, their motives, etc., believing that to do so only increases the number of mass murders.

But when Brown appeared on CNN’s New Day this morning, co-host Christi Paul immediately tried to engage her in a discussion of Colorado Springs shooter Robert Dear’s possible “anti-government” views. Retorted Brown: “I’m a little disturbed because I made an agreement with CNN to appear this morning only under the condition that we do not talk about the particular shooter, use his name, or show his face.” Undeterred, Paul tried to lure Brown into a discussion of the shooting investigation, but again Brown rebuffed it There the interview ended, but co-host Victor Blackwell came on to claim that the agreement had been honored because neither Dear’s photo nor name had been used. Didn’t use Dear’s name? Really? Have a look at the screencap, Mr. Blackwell.

This is CNN.

A GLORIOUS ANNIVERSARY: 20 HAPPY YEARS OF FREEDOM ON THE ROADS:

On November 29, 1995, President Clinton grudgingly signed a highway bill repealing the much-hated National Maximum Speed Limit. In 1973, President Nixon signed the NMSL into law in an effort to force people to save gas. This law allowed the federal government to withhold federal highway money from states that didn’t drop their speed limit to 55 mph. Real-world fuel savings were negligible. Safety activists proclaimed that it saved a lot of lives, and would bring out charts showing that the highway fatality rate had dropped since the law was enacted. The starting point for said charts was when the law was enacted, and sure enough, the fatality rate decreased in the years after. Had they shown a chart going back decades, you would have seen that the fatality rate had been declining since the late 1940s.

Since she’s simultaneously running on nostalgia for the post-Cold War pre-GWOT go-go happy fun time 1990s and yet against so many of President Clinton’s policies, do we know what Hillary thinks about her husband signing this into law?

RAHM EMANUEL HOLDS OTHERS ACCOUNTABLE ON POLICE SHOOTING VIDEO, NOT HIMSELF: “If the video had come out during the election campaign, Rahm Emanuel would not be mayor today.”

Related: “Producer of anti-Islam film arrested, ordered held without bail.”

Also: “For violating a minor election law, Dinesh D’Souza was punished heavily. Even his liberal lawyer has realized his conviction was politically motivated.”

What is it with Obama and his associates such as Rahm (Obama’s former White House Chief of Staff) and Hillary (his Secretary of State) being complicit in suppressing videos and video makers?

ENVIRONMENTALISM HAS ALWAYS BEEN A RELIGION OF THE ELITES: Germans reluctant to go green, survey finds.

In fact, the modern environmental movement has its roots in efforts by rich landowners to block the (environmentally friendly!) Storm King pumped storage facility because they were afraid it would hurt their views. Not much has changed in 50 years.

GOOD IDEAS EVOLVE, SO HOW COME LIBERALS BELIEVE IN ‘CREATIONIST’ GOVERNMENT?, asks Kyle Smith:

Fans of state intervention in the economy — call them government creationists — insist on giving as much power as possible to an all-wise, all-powerful daddy figure whom they elect to, for instance, “fix” climate change or health care with a top-down agenda restricting innovation and imposing ever-more regulations. Their enemy is experimentation, incremental change — evolution.

Their intelligent designs turn out to be incredibly stupid in practice, and for their failures the central planners expect to be rewarded with more and more power. As British politician Douglas Carswell says in “The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy,” planners “consistently underrate the importance of spontaneous, organic arrangements and fail to recognize that the best plan is often not to have one.”*

Plus this:

The Internet is a similar story; Al Gore and Barack Obama brag that the government created it. The truth is that it wasn’t until government got out of the way that what was once the Arpanet, a Pentagon creation, evolved into the Internet. “If you really want to see the Arpanet as the origin of the Internet,” Ridley asks, “please explain why the government sat on it for 30 years and did almost nothing with it until it was effectively privatized in the 1990s, with explosive results.”

Until 1989, the government actually prohibited Arpanet from being used for private or commercial ends. Ridley quotes a handbook distributed to MIT users of the Arpanet that read, in the 1980s, “sending electronic messages over the Arpanet for commercial profit or political purposes is both antisocial and illegal.”

Read the whole thing.

* So the benefits of dynamism over stasim, to coin a phrase.

AP BLOCKED REPORT THAT PALESTINIANS REJECTED ISRAELI STATEHOOD OFFER. In 2009, “a long-time Jerusalem reporter learned of an Israeli offer that would give a majority of the West Bank and all of Gaza—including a corridor between them—to the Palestinians. But his scoop was blocked,” as former AP man Mark Lavie writes in his article at Tablet:

In March 2009, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat was interviewed in Arabic on Al-Jazeera. When I saw the MEMRI translation I immediately understood its significance: Erekat disclosed that Abbas had turned down an offer that would have given the Palestinians a state in almost all of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and parts of Jerusalem. Then I found out about the map. No one else had the story.

Excited about this scoop, I raced into my bureau chief’s office at the AP in Jerusalem. Imagine my shock when I was told it’s not a story—and I was banned from writing about it. It just couldn’t be a legitimate story, in line with the new definition of journalism.

The profession I joined in the 1960s wasn’t about helping anyone. It was about reporting and explaining the news. This new definition of journalism, apparently requires choosing sides. This became clear to me as long ago as 1988, at the beginning of the First Intifada, when I saw a reporter jump out of her car in the middle of a Gaza riot and shout at the Palestinians throwing rocks at the vehicle: “Why are you doing this? I’m trying to help you!” Like most Western media sources, she wanted to frame the uprising—the Palestinians as people—as helpless victims, to pillory the Israelis as the cruel oppressors. Stories that didn’t fit that framework had a hard time seeing the light of day. Even a peace offer.

So, naturally, despite the fact that Israel offered the Palestinians a state twice—in 2000 and 2008—the world saw Israel as the intransigent side. The 2008 proposal was largely unreported in world media.

Unexpectedly.

DON’T DISTURB THE LEFT’S NARRATIVE WITH REALITY: Top Political Donors: SEIU #1, Koch Brothers #49.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: If Billionaires are an Indicator, Going to a Top College Doesn’t Really Matter.

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