SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Practice Tip: Citing Older U.S. Cases—state and federal.

JUST SAY NO TO SELF-SERVING BULLSHIT: Markle, Scobie and the grim triumph of the race grifters: The shameful smears against the royals are enough to make this republican sing ‘God Save the King’.

HEH:

UPenn President Lights Special ‘Please Don’t Pull That $100 Million Donation’ Menorah https://t.co/c5KM8Q1MYu pic.twitter.com/E7bPmtfD5d

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 8, 2023

Related: Harvard, MIT, UPenn presidents are so far left, even the White House condemns them: report.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Jonathan Turley: ‘Bunch of Lies’: Biden’s Clintonesque Denial Before a House Impeachment Inquiry Vote. “As with Clinton, the denial was absurd, even insulting. Roughly 70% of voters (including 40% of Democrats) believe Biden has acted either unlawfully or unethically in the overseas business dealings of his family. More importantly, the House has interviews, documents, photos and even audiotapes contradicting Biden’s continuing denial of having any knowledge of his son’s financial dealings.”

FACEPAINT FACEPLANT: Outlet behind coverage of young Chiefs fan in facepaint edits original article.

VOTER FRAUD IS A MYTH: ‘Dirty voter rolls’ slammed, 131% of eligible DC voters registered.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Hunter Biden Whistleblowers Claim ‘Complete Vindication’ After Bombshell Indictment: Biden case ‘would have died a quiet death’ without whistleblowers, attorney says.

TO BE FAIR, IT WAS THE ONLY PLAN HE HAD ANYWHERE, AND IT’S GENERALLY WORKED FOR HIM: Matt Taibbi: Lying Was the Only Plan Biden, U.S. Ever Had in Ukraine.

On the other hand, if the plan was to bleed Putin dry without losing any American soldiers, it wasn’t so bad.

ANDREW SULLIVAN: The Day The Empress’ Clothes Fell Off: Did the Congressional hearings finally expose the scandal of the Ivy League?

It may be too much to expect that the Congressional hearings this week, starring the three presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn, will wake people up to the toxic collapse of America’s once-great Ivy League. But I can hope, can’t I? In the immortal words of Hitch (peace be upon him), as you listen to these people, “You see how far the termites have spread, and how long and well they have dined.”

The mediocrities smirked, finessed, condescended, and stonewalled. Take a good look at them. These are the people who now select our elites. And they select them, as they select every single member of the faculty, and every student, by actively discriminating against members of certain “privileged” groups and aggressively favoring other “marginalized” ones. They were themselves appointed in exactly the same way, from DEI-approved pools of candidates. As a Harvard dean, Claudine Gay’s top priority was “making more progress on diversity,” i.e. intensifying the already systemic race, sex and gender discrimination that defines the place.

In our society, we consistently get bad people at the top. That’s not an accident, that’s what the system selects for. Plus:

In the hearings, President Gay actually said, with a straight face, that “we embrace a commitment to free expression even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful.” This is the president whose university mandates all students attend a Title IX training session where they are told that “fatphobia” and “cisheterosexism” are forms of “violence,” and that “using the wrong pronouns” constitutes “abuse.” This is the same president who engineered the ouster of a law professor, Ronald Sullivan, simply because he represented a client, of whom Gay and students (rightly but irrelevantly) disapproved, Harvey Weinstein.

This is the same president who watched a brilliant and popular professor, Carole Hooven, be effectively hounded out of her position after a public shaming campaign by one of her department’s DEI enforcers, and a mob of teaching fellows, because Hooven dared to state on television that biological sex is binary.

Plus:

Freedom of speech in the Ivy League extends exclusively to the voices of the oppressed; they are also permitted to disrupt classes, deplatform or shout down controversial speakers, hurl obscenities, force members of oppressor groups — i.e. Jewish students and teachers in the latest case — into locked libraries and offices during protests, and blocked from classrooms. Jewish students have even been assaulted — at Harvard, at Columbia, at UMass Amherst, at Tulane. Assaults by woke students used to be rare, such as the 2017 mob at Middlebury that put Allison Stanger in a neck brace — but since 10/7, they’re intensifying.

If a member of an oppressor class says something edgy, it is a form of violence. If a member of an oppressed class commits actual violence, it’s speech. That’s why many Harvard students instantly supported a fundamentalist terror cult that killed, tortured, systematically raped and kidnapped Jews just for being Jews in their own country. Because they have been taught it’s the only moral position to take.

Abolish the Ivy League.

Related: Has woke higher education met it’s destiny? Doom scrolling the response to congressional testimony by the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and UPenn on antisemitism in higher education. If I’m being truthful, it’s fun.

OPEN THREAD: Because I want you to keep busy.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Bob Zubrin: Rethink the Mars Program.

HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: ‘The world is watching’: Lawmakers call for ouster of 3 university presidents after their legalistic answers about antisemitism and genocide.

AI RESEARCHERS WHO’VE NEVER HEARD OF THE THREE LAWS? Must’ve gone to Harvard, Penn, or MIT. No, really, a friend who drives an Uber in a major city sent this:

Dunno if I told you. Had a Microsoft ChatGPT guy in the vehicle a few weeks back. He didn’t know Asimov’s Laws. Like, wtf.

He agreed when I noted that the people developing AI think humans are the problem, ergo AI likely will think humans are the problem.

I also gave him a quick version of my dark vision of the future. When vast multitudes, to include a lot of white collars with expensive degrees, are unemployed and living off the state thanks to AI, they’ll be looking for a reason to live.

The state might not like the answer they come up with.

ChatGPT guy got out at his restaurant, said he wished it was a longer ride.

Hey, I’m an influencer. Like Dylan Mulvaney!

Well, not exactly like Dylan Mulvaney. And that last point about the unemployed white collars, brings to mind this from Eric Hoffer: “Nothing is so unsettling to a social order as the presence of a mass of scribes without suitable employment and an acknowledged status.”

I had some related thoughts here.

SO I GUESS CRAZY CAT LADIES AREN’T JUST A CLICHÉ: Mysterious Link Between Owning Cats And Schizophrenia Is Real, Study Says.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: BREAKING: Federal Appeals Court Strikes Down New York’s Signage, Social Media Disclosure Requirements for Concealed Carry.

HMM: Google Deepmind Gemini Is the World’s Best AI. “Gemini gets us closer to AGI. AGI = artificial general intelligence = a machine that performs at the level of an average (median) human.”

HE MAKES A STRONG ARGUMENT:

Why on earth would we want another Boomer in the White House when we have this generation ready to lead?!?! https://t.co/ADDtuYxlTq

— Nathan Martin (@NathanMartin) December 8, 2023

THE NEW SPACE RACE: India sets sights on a moon base by 2047.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Stellantis cutting back SUV production, citing California emissions rules. “Stellantis said on Wednesday it is seeking to void a 2019 California emissions deal in which rival automakers agreed to voluntarily cut emissions beyond levels stipulated by the then-Trump administration. Separately, the automaker also said on Thursday its Toledo, Ohio, assembly plant that builds the Jeep Wrangler will move from an alternative work schedule to a traditional two-shift operation. Both moves will result in job losses but the company did not have a precise figure.”

I NEED TO DO THIS: Why You Need To Compete In A Practical Pistol Match.

WELL, GOOD: Hamas ‘beginning to break’ as tense video shows IDF facing off with terrorists in ruins of Gaza City school.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Were ‘Former Intel Officials’ Who ‘Debunked’ Hunter’s Laptop on the CIA Payroll?

TYPICAL NGO BEHAVIOR, ALAS:

The parents of an Israeli being held hostage by Hamas were reprimanded by representatives of the Red Cross after they tried to ask the Red Cross to transfer prescription medication to their child. The Red Cross told them they needed to "think about the Palestinian side. It's hard… pic.twitter.com/CrtHLKRzZf

— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) December 8, 2023

“The Red Cross certainly wouldn’t be the first elite mainstream institution to dent its brand due to hostility towards Israel. It is about as common today as sand on a beach.”

FIGHT THE POWER — STICK IT TO THE MAN: WATCH: Plane with ‘Harvard hates Jews’ banner seen flying over college campuses. “A group claiming to represent Jewish students said they hired a plane carrying the message ‘Harvard hates Jews’ to circle over Harvard and other Ivy League campuses over the next ‘several days.’ . . . According to a statement sent to Boston 25, the student group says this in response to ‘the runaway antisemitism’ on the university’s campus.”

THE ECONOMY IS BOOMING: Luxury Stores Are Bursting With Unsold Stuff. “The slowdown has left brands’ own stores, independent boutiques and e-commerce retailers stuffed with unsold stock. The boss of online luxury goods seller MyTheresa said the company is experiencing “the worst market conditions since 2008,” and had 44% more inventory by the end of its latest quarter than a year earlier. Burberry is buying back unsold products from department stores.”