WHEN DID SCIENTISTS BECOME SO JUDGMENTAL? Endangered Hawaiian monk seals keep getting eels stuck up their noses and scientists want them to stop.

P. DAVID HORNIK: Are Israel’s Strikes on Hezbollah’s Tunnels a Precursor to a Bigger Operation?

KIMBERLY STRASSEL ON TWITTER: “How good of a nominee is William Barr for AG? Based on the immediate demands by Democrats that he recuse himself from pretty much everything important—a pretty darn good one.”

ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH: The Little Town That Pot Built.

Garden City isn’t much of a city; it’s smaller than a square mile and has fewer than 300 residents. But it could afford to spend $3 million on downtown infrastructure upgrades thanks to its four bustling marijuana retailers.

Before the first medical marijuana dispensary in town opened in 2009, Garden City collected about $360,000 in revenue each year, said longtime Town Administrator Cheryl Campbell. Now pot is legal for recreational use, too, and last year, the town raked in over $2 million from sales taxes alone — mostly from the sale of bud, pre-rolled joints, edibles and other pot products.

“It’s not a stream of revenue they should rely on for their major, long-term spending needs,” said Katherine Loughead, a policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.

But:

Thanks to the influx of sales tax revenue, Garden City has been able to spend more on public works such as the new sidewalks and crosswalks along Eighth Avenue, the street outside Empire State Pizza. The city also provides grants of up to $8,000 to help local businesses pay for property investments such as facade improvements.

Empire State Pizza’s landlord used one such grant to add windows, an awning and new tiling to the exterior of the restaurant and its neighbor, a popular hot wings restaurant called Wing Shack. Schwartz used another grant to replace the pizza place’s outdoor signage, he said.

The money also has allowed the city to add new services. Garden City used to be patrolled by the county sheriff’s office, but now it can afford its own four-person police force. Campbell’s staff — once just her — has swelled to three and a temp, not including the police department.

Government expenditures will expand to exceed revenues.

THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT THE WAY I’D HOPED: AirDrop Assaults On The Rise As Criminals Cyber Flash Strangers.

SIGN OF THE TIMES: The 2019 Pantone Color of the Year “Living Coral” beams optimism.

Flashback: “But I like taupe.”

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: This Wasn’t Even Amazon’s First Bear Repellent Accident.

BUT OF COURSE: Snopes, Fact-Checker For Facebook And Google, Botches Fact Check.

The meme showed a picture of President Donald Trump with Republican lawmakers and members of his administration following the House’s vote to repeal Obamacare in 2017. Thirty-three people in the photo Snopes used had a red X over their face, though it cropped out a 34th person included in others.

The caption accurately claimed the photo was taken at the White House following the House’s Obamacare vote, then falsely claimed that “Everyone with an X has since been voted out of Congress.”

Political reporters mocked the meme’s inaccuracies after Nicholas Kitchel, a former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer, shared it in a Nov. 17 tweet.

But Snopes fact-checker Bethania Palma, a former writer for liberal website Raw Story, fact-checked the meme three weeks later and claimed it was accurate.

All organizations make mistakes, but when the mistakes all go in the same direction, it does tend to make people a tiny bit suspicious that there could possibly be an agenda at work.

WHERE’S THE DOJ? Clinton Foundation whistleblowers have come forward with hundreds of pages of evidence, Meadows says.

HMM: Senator-Elect Josh Hawley Being Investigated by Missouri Secretary of State. “Did Hawley spend campaign funds on his official business as attorney general?”

STEPHEN KRUISER: Democrats’ 2020 Field Shaping Up To Be an Entertaining ‘Old vs Young’ Slugfest. “Grab your popcorn and beer.”

Consider them grabbed.

WINNING: Fiat Chrysler plans to open factory in Detroit to build new three-row, Jeep Grand Cherokee.

The move comes as the industry faces pressure from President Donald Trump to keep manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and stands in stark contrast to the recent decision by General Motors to stop production and idle five plants in North America including four in the United States.

GM has come under fire after announcing last week that it plans to cut 14,000 jobs in the U.S. and Canada, citing a weakening economy, the escalating trade war and a desire to reposition itself as a smaller, more nimble company. Ford is also scaling back, saying last week that it planned to cut a shift at two of its U.S. plants in an attempt to avoid more onerous layoffs.

Detroit will lose two GM facilities altogether. Both were performing well under capacity and contributing to a dismal capacity utilization rate of just 76 percent across the United States, far below Fiat Chrysler’s rate of 90 percent.

Fiat Chrysler’s plants are running at close to capacity due to continued strong demand for trucks and SUV’s. Overall, Fiat Chrysler’s sales in the U.S. are up 8 percent this year, easily outpacing the industry less than one percent according to the market research firm Autodata.

Jeep has been on an impressive roll in recent years, showing growth even with some older models. If I camped more often, I’d be in line for a new Gladiator on Day One. It’s a shame though that Fiat continues to starve Chrysler of product — they make just two models, a large sedan and a minivan — which look like dead-end categories in this market.

CYBERSECURITY: 22 apps with 2 million+ Google Play downloads had a malicious backdoor. “Device-draining downloader used for ad fraud could have recovered other malicious files.”

The 22 rogue titles included Sparkle Flashlight, a flashlight app that had been downloaded more than 1 million times since it entered Google Play sometime in 2016 or 2017, antivirus provider Sophos said in a blog post published Thursday. Beginning around March of this year, Sparkle Flashlight and two other apps were updated to add the secret downloader. The remaining 19 apps became available after June and contained the downloader from the start.

By the time Google removed the apps in late November, they were being used to click endlessly on fraudulent ads. “Andr/Clickr-ad,” as Sophos has dubbed the family of apps, automatically started and ran even after a user force-closed them, functions that caused the apps to consume huge amounts of bandwidth and drain batteries.

I don’t have much experience with Android, so I’ll have to ask Instapundit readers how an app steals permission to continue running after a force-close.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Comey Testifies in Private Today and Much, Much More. “Former FBI Director James Comey, also known as Comey the Redeemer will be testifying behind closed doors today with the House Judiciary Committee before the Democrats take over in January and use the Committee to attack the President. Comey tried to fight the subpoena but agreed to testify privately if the Committee would release his testimony in a timely manner. If you are a Comey-head, you have a great weekend ahead of you reading his transcripts.”

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: The Price of a Cup of Coffee in Venezuela Is Up 285,614% in a Year.

Instead of celebrating minimum wage hikes in hyperinflation-pummeled Venezuela, consumers now run as fast as they can to buy goods before the inevitable price increases.

In other words, higher wages are as much bad news as good news as they simply mean the printing press will run faster at the central bank and businesses will react accordingly.

So after President Nicolas Maduro raised wages by a staggering 150 percent last week — the sixth minimum wage increase in 2018 alone — perhaps it comes as no surprise that a cup of coffee in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas doubled from the week earlier to 400 sovereign bolivars or about ($0.76).

Unexpectedly.

FOX LOCKED OUT OF HENHOUSE: US ices Iran out of Yemen talks.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry recently informed Sweden, which is hosting this week’s UN-sponsored talks, of its desire to send a senior adviser to Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to the shuttle diplomacy between the Houthi rebels and the internationally recognized government of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi in Stockholm. But the request was denied, according to several Iranian sources, because of US pressure.

The State Department would not confirm its role in shutting out Tehran, saying it doesn’t detail the contents of its private diplomatic discussions. Neither the Swedish Embassy in Washington nor UN envoy Martin Griffiths responded to requests for comment.

But the State Department did suggest the Iranians are not playing a helpful role.

I’ve already contacted Sarah Hoyt about borrowing her shocked face.

OH FER CRYIN’ OUT LOUD: It’s Now Racist To Ask Students To ‘Be Respectful In Class.’

Anita Moss, a senior lecturer of biology at the University of Texas-San Antonio (UTSA) was investigated after she called police on a repeatedly disruptive student, according to the College Fix. Moss, who is white, had been telling Paige Burgess, who is black, all semester to be less disruptive and to take her feet off of chairs.

The problem started when another student, Apurva Rawal, put out a tweet making it seem like Moss had flipped out and called the police just because a student had her feet up in class. He sent a video of the police removing the student.

Even though Moss was cleared of racial discrimination and had positive reviews from students, she was removed from class for the semester. The racial bias investigation was not the only investigation going on. Her demands for proper classroom etiquette were also reviewed, and led to her removal, the Fix reported.

Incentives matter, and these incentives suck.

YA THINK? ESPN returns ‘SportsCenter’ to its roots: ‘I think we miscalculated a little bit.’

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook “Whitelisted” Apps Got Access To Your Data And Activities — With Or Without Consent.

So who got the data? Companies like Netflix, Lyft, AirBNB and others, and it wasn’t just limited to specific users. The apps also got access to the data of friends of users, people who not only didn’t consent but also didn’t use those apps. This continued for whitelisted apps even after Facebook publicly declared it had stopped. “If people don’t feel comfortable using Facebook and specifically logging in Facebook and using Facebook in apps, we don’t have a platform, we don’t have developers,” a Facebook spokesperson said of the policy change at the time.

Yeah, Facebook management says a lot of things.

BRINKSMANSHIP: Christmas Shutdown Threat Will Come Down to Border Talks Between Trump, Chuck and Nancy. “Dems want another continuing resolution, arguing that lack of planning or use of non-wall security funds shows that a wall is ‘a throwaway idea to fire up his base’.”

FAUXCAHONTAS: Elizabeth Warren Stands by DNA Test. But Around Her, Worries Abound.

Advisers close to Ms. Warren say she has privately expressed concern that she may have damaged her relationships to Native American groups and her own standing with progressive activists, particularly those who are racial minorities. Several outside advisers are even more worried: They say they believe a plan should be made to repair that damage, possibly including a strong statement of apology.

The advisers say Ms. Warren will have to confront the issue again if she announces a presidential campaign, which is expected in the coming weeks, and several would like her to act soon.

Big unforced error, chief.

JUST DO IT: House Republicans Ask Trump to Declassify ‘Damning’ Obama DOJ Emails. “The DOJ kept the information from the majority of Congress for more than two years.”

DEBRA HEINE: Why Michael Flynn Was Set Up. “As Obama’s DIA, he rocked the boat.”

FILM: The 100 Scares That Shaped Horror. “From Frankenstein to Freddy, the movie moments that formed the genre (and our nightmares).“

Very informative, very well done — I got lost in this one last night. Although Brian Yuzna’s Society was a curious omission.

THIS IS MSNBC: Trump Probably Thought Bush Funeral Was All About Him Even Though It Wasn’t, but It Was a Rebuke of Him.

The lack of self-awareness on display would be shocking if it hadn’t long ago become mundane.