CAN THEY RESIST OVERPLAYING THEIR HAND? PROBABLY NOT: House Democrats plan a witch hunt against Trump.

After Pelosi and her new majority are sworn-in, their subpoena cannon will be loaded and pointed at the White House. The Democrats will mount one politically driven investigation after another, backed by billionaires George Soros and Tom Steyer, along with other rich far-left donors.

Congressional oversight of the executive branch is an important part of our system of checks and balances. But oversight only works if it’s seen as a legitimate fact-finding exercise.

The major problem for this incoming Democratic-controlled House is that the Democrats have already concluded that their investigations should all come to the conclusion that President Trump must be impeached.

With clueless demagogues-in-training like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez making up a extremely vocal segment of the Democratic caucus, they won’t be able to help themselves.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Feds Spend $230,769 to Increase Diversity of Veterinarians.

A grant was awarded earlier this year to Tuskegee University in Alabama, which will host workshops and seminars entitled, “So You Want to Be A Vet,” to try to recruit minorities into veterinary programs.

“The need to feed the ever increasing human population, forecast to reach over 9 billion worldwide by 2050 is clear, resulting in an increasing need to fill the shortage of scientists and professionals trained in food and agricultural sciences, including food animal veterinary medicine,” according to the grant for the project. “As concerted efforts are made to fill this void, it is imperative that underrepresented minorities be included as part of the solution.”

The stated goal of the project is to “increase the number of underrepresented minorities entering veterinary school with an emphasis in food animals.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess this seminar won’t produce much of anything except a nice travel junket.

HMM: Michelle Malkin departs CRTV one day after Blaze merger announced. “I am so proud of the investigative journalism I did for CRTV. So many heroes, so many compelling stories. I will not be continuing with the company, but wish my colleagues all the best.”

#METOO: Grassley wants answers about FBI raid on whistleblower with information on Clinton Foundation, Uranium One.

YELLOW RIBBON PROJECT: Families of Hostages Still Held by Iran Vow to ‘Remain Quiet No Longer.’ “Do what is in your power to help secure the release of our loved ones and their safe return home by ensuring that their cases are at the top of the agenda.”

FALLOUT: Weekly Standard Employees Brace for the Worst as Rumors Swirl Surrounding Mag’s Imminent Demise. “#NeverTrump armageddon?”

TWS used to be a regular read, but they went quickly from reasonable critics of Candidate Trump to Democrat shills so fast it (almost) made me spill my martini.

CYBERCRIME: Emails of top NRCC officials stolen in major 2018 hack. “Republican leaders were not informed until POLITICO contacted committee officials about the incident.”

The email accounts of four senior aides at the National Republican Congressional Committee were surveilled for several months, the party officials said. The intrusion was detected in April by an NRCC vendor, who alerted the committee and its cybersecurity contractor. An internal investigation was initiated and the FBI was alerted to the attack, said the officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the incident.

However, senior House Republicans — including Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) — were not informed of the hack until POLITICO contacted the NRCC on Monday with questions about the episode. Rank-and-file House Republicans were not told, either.

Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), who served as NRCC chairman this past election cycle, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Committee officials said they decided to withhold the information because they were intent on conducting their own investigation, and feared that revealing the hack would compromise efforts to find the culprit.

Plus: “Party officials would not say when the hack began or who was behind it, although they privately believe it was a foreign agent due to the nature of the attack.”

SO IT’S COME TO THIS: University of Montana Speech Code Bans ‘Mean’ Speech.

“The ‘Statement of Responsibility’ from the university’s Student Code of Conduct explains that all members of the campus community ‘have the personal responsibility to promote an atmosphere of civility,’ and that discussions ‘should never become mean, nasty or vindictive,’” wrote FIRE’s policy reform program officer, Laura Beltz.

Of course, this raises the obvious question of who gets to decide what speech is considered “mean, nasty, or vindictive.” If I were to take a guess, based on how speech and other matters are disciplined at other universities, I’d have to say the person who decides is the person most offended, rather than a reasonable person.

Intent, in these situations, is never important to colleges and universities. One student may say something to another, without any ill intent, yet the second student may take it the wrong way and consider it “mean” or “nasty.” The second student is wrong, but that doesn’t matter, all that matters is their feelings.

Vague rules are never formulated for the benefit of those who would try to abide by them.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Mueller Is Finished with Flynn and Much, Much More. “Really, the objective of targeting Flynn has been met, there’s no need toss him in the clink because the deep state has severely damaged him. He’s bankrupt, he lost his house, he’s going to have a problem getting employed. I’m sure his security clearance has been permanently yanked so…what’s he going to do to earn a living and take care of his wife and family?”

REPORT: Microsoft is scrapping Edge, switching to just another Chrome clone.

The report is short on details. The easiest thing for Microsoft to do would be to use Chromium’s code wholesale—the Blink rendering engine, the V8 JavaScript engine, and the Chrome user interface with the Google Account parts omitted—to produce something that looks, works, and feels almost identical to Chrome. Alternatively, Redmond could use Blink and V8 but wrap them in Edge’s user interface (or some derivative thereof), to retain its own appearance. It might even be possible to do something weird, such as use Blink with the Chakra JavaScript engine. We’ll have to wait and see.

I’m old enough to remember when Microsoft bundling a browser into Windows was cause for panic and an antitrust case.

COLD WAR II: China Maneuvers to Snag Top-Secret Boeing Satellite Technology. “The founders of a small Los Angeles firm, which ordered a satellite from Boeing, say it was financed and is now controlled by Beijing.”

About $200 million flowed to the satellite project from a state-owned Chinese financial firm in a complex deal that used offshore companies to channel China’s money to Boeing. It included a discussion with a longtime friend of China’s president, said the startup’s founders.

Such technology would help fill in a missing piece of the puzzle for China as it seeks to secure its status as a superpower alongside the U.S. It would bolster China’s burgeoning space program, as well as initiatives to dominate cutting-edge industries and expand its influence in the developing world.

A web of U.S. laws effectively prohibits exporting satellite technology to China, and its satellites lag far behind those made in America. Current and former U.S. officials, and people close to the startup, called Global IP, fear the satellite could ultimately be used by China’s government or military once in space, or its technology reverse-engineered.

Good grief.

PROCUREMENT: B-21 Bomber Completes Another Review, Remains on Schedule.

“Our most recent review was last week, and the B-21 is on schedule and performance,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said during the forum in Simi Valley on Saturday.

While Wilson noted the development process is in its early stages, “We are pleased with how that program is going forward,” she said.

Officials have said the Northrop Grumman-made B-21 is expected to reach its critical design review milestone in December. It was not immediately clear whether the review Wilson spoke of is the same one.

“It’s a good example of how to run a major acquisition program well and why delegation of authority back to the services … works to get high quality and to do so quickly,” Wilson told reporters after her panel discussion.

After the delays and cost overruns caused by Pentagon confusion over the JSF program, the Raider’s quick move through the system comes as a welcome change.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. California’s mismanaged high-speed rail project has gone on for long enough.

The CHSRA has also wasted large sums of money through poor management. Tillier has detailed how the Authority plans to spend billions to outfit Bay Area stations with unnecessary tunnels and viaducts, rather than making elementary improvements to operations. A state audit has shown that the CHSRA knowingly incurred massive additional cost risks by starting construction prematurely; desperate to show progress and to meet a deadline for federal funds, the CHSRA began construction in the Central Valley without buying all the land it needed, or even completing negotiations with the freight railroads whose rights-of-way it planned to use. The state auditor also criticized the CHSRA for hiring expensive consultants, over the objections of its former CEO, to do routine budgeting work.

Some of the worst revelations in the state auditor’s report concern basic failures of contract management. The CHSRA paid contractors without inspecting their work, and contract managers’ review of the quality and cost of finished products was often so shoddy that the auditor could not even conclude whether the CHSRA’s spending was justified. In one especially egregious case, in 2017, the CHSRA hired an external consultant to check the work of Parsons Brinckerhoff (now WSP USA), which had been paid $666 million for engineering consulting. The external consultant found that the CHSRA had not received finished work for 145 of 184 tasks that Parsons Brinckerhoff had called “complete.”

It seems clear that the CHSRA is too incompetent to manage a project of California HSR’s complexity.

Meanwhile, the state’s existing water and road infrastructure is a shambles, and Sacramento still has no plan for dealing with a trillion-dollar underfunded pension crisis.

DON’T BE EVIL: Google’s ‘Filter Bubble’ Can Manipulate Your Search Results, Study Suggests.

Eighty-seven individuals searched for the same terms as part of Measuring the Filter Bubble: How Google Is Influencing What You Click, a study conducted by DuckDuckGo, a search engine that aims to protect users’ privacy. Participants searched Google for “gun control,” “immigration,” and “vaccinations,” but despite the identical search terms, the results varied, even when controlling the time and location, according to the study.

DuckDuckGo also found that logging out of Google or searching in private browsing did not change this variation in Google search results, perhaps suggesting that such tactics don’t actually provide anonymity.

Regardless of whether the users were logged in, logged out, or using the incognito mode feature, variation remained constant—in some cases, different news sources appeared in the results, while in others, the placement of a result differed drastically between searches, according to the study. The variation was also true of the results that appeared in the Google news and video boxes.

They track you when you’re sleeping, they know when you’re awake.

And if former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s infamous line is anything to go by, you’d better be good for goodness sake.

STORMY DANIELS ON AVENATTI: ‘Sometimes People Just Need a Swift Kick in the Ass.’

HEADLINES FROM 1968-2018 INCLUSIVE: Pop Culture Clobbered Conservatives in 2018.

EVERYTHING IS RACIST: Calif. University ‘Whiteness’ Panel Claims ‘Veggie Tales’ Is Racist.

Actually, “whiteness panel” does sound kind of racist.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. ‘Die Hard’ Is a Christmas Movie, and Here’s Why.

“Lethal Weapon,” too.

FAKE HATE: This again? Another university, another racist note hoax.

BLUE ON BLUE: Meet the Google engineer getting its workers ready to strike. “Google engineer Liz Fong-Jones raised over $100,000 in three hours to support striking workers, then doubled it with her own contribution.”

Fong Jones is consulting with the worker advocacy organization Coworker.org on labor rights and laws, and how to administer the strike fund and a possible strike. But having given an ultimatum to soon leave the company if certain reforms from the first walkout aren’t enacted, she says shouldn’t be the one to plan a strike. Aside from refuting the latest story about Dragonfly, Google has not replied to my questions about a possible strike and how it might respond. Fong-Jones says she hasn’t heard anything, either.

Fong-Jones, a transgender woman, has mainly focused on promoting diversity, inclusion, and tolerance as an internal employee advocate–and eventually, one of 15 whistleblowers who took the story of staff bullying to the press.

When did Silicon Valley become such a hotbed of fear and loathing for the transgendered?

OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: SecDef Mattis Says “40 years is enough” in Afghanistan.

HERE WE GO AGAIN: Quora data breach exposes 100 million users’ personal info.

DO-GOODERS, BUTTINSKIS AFFECTED MOST: 9-year-old boy gets town to overturn ban on snowball fights.

HMM: Trump Says China Will Remove Car Tariffs, China Claims Nothing.

“My meeting in Argentina with President Xi of China was an extraordinary one,” Trump explained in a follow-up post. “Relations with China have taken a BIG leap forward! Very good things will happen. We are dealing from great strength, but China likewise has much to gain if and when a deal is completed. Level the field!”

Meanwhile, China remains silent on the matter.

The stock market, on the other hand, is making noise. The announcement appears to have helped the share price of numerous automakers. General Motors and Daimler shares rose by more than 4 percent in premarket trading while Ford and Tesla increased by about 3 percent apiece. German manufacturers fared even better.

The markets might be nuts, but they’re still more trustworthy than Beijing.

REMINDER: iPhone, iPad Users Targeted by Massive Fake Gift Card ‘Malvertizing’ Scam.

Glenn posted on this yesterday, but PJ’s own Paula Bolyard adds:

If you’ve been affected by these ads, we profusely apologize. We understand that they’re terribly aggravating and intrusive and result in an unpleasant user experience. We’re aggravated too. I assure you our tech and ad folks are working overtime to rid our site of the malicious ads.

As someone who reads PJMedia almost as much as I write for it, I can echo Paula’s aggravation. We think the attack has been dealt with, but we won’t know for sure until we stop getting reports from readers caught up in them. So if you get a hijacked ad here at Instapundit or PJMedia, please email our support team here.

Update: Paula texted me to say, “If you’re still getting the redirects to spammy sites, please try clearing your cache/history/cookies to see if that fixes the issue. If the problem persists, please email us.”