CHEATING: LCS Shock Trials Were Less Severe Than Navy Standard.

In written testimony for the Senate Armed Services committee, Dr. Michael Gilmore, director of operational testing under the Secretary of Defense, said that the shock trials for the Independence and Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ships were conducted at “reduced severity” due to concerns about the possibility of damage.

“The Navy argued that the reduced severity approach was necessary because they lacked specific test data and a general understanding of how the non-Grade A systems . . . would respond to shock,” he wrote.

In addition, for the test on the Freedom-class vessel, the Navy stopped the shock trials at the second of three shots. The third trial would have shocked the ship with a blast one-third less powerful than the vessel is designed to survive, but the Navy still deemed it to be too risky.

Sending improperly tested ships out to sea gets sailors killed.

Heads should roll for this.

CIVIL FORFEITURE: After the Government Seized $11K From Him, He Fought Back. Now, He’s Getting His Money Back.

Upon arriving at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, Clarke checked two bags and proceeded to the gate. There, the now 26-year-old was approached by law enforcement.

The agents had received a call from a ticketing agent with US Airways who told police Clarke’s luggage smelled like marijuana, according to an affidavit filed with the courts.

Police searched Clarke and his bag, and the student admitted to having cash in his pocket, according to an affidavit filed by William Conrad, a Cincinnati-based agent on the DEA task force.

After talking with Clarke, agents seized the $11,000, his cellphone, and iPad under civil asset forfeiture laws. The phone and iPad were eventually returned.

The officers alleged the money was “the proceeds of drug trafficking or was intended to be used in an illegal transaction,” according to court documents.

But Clarke said the money came from five years worth of savings from different jobs, financial aid, gifts from his family members, and benefits from his mother, who is a disabled veteran. He planned to use the money to pay for living and school expenses upon returning to Florida.

When the officers attempted to take Clarke’s money, Conrad alleged the young man grabbed a second officer’s wrist.

He was subsequently arrested and charged with assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. The charges were ultimately dropped.

The Institute for Justice took Clarke’s case and ultimately succeeded in getting him his money back, but the story doesn’t reveal how many thousands — ten of thousands? more? — IJ had to spend to win.

They do good work. You can donate here.

YOU’RE GETTING TO BE A HABIT WITH ME: Tucker Carlson’s Nightly Takedown of Lib.

PURGE UPDATE: Greece refuses to extradite officers back to Turkey.

Eight officers have sought asylum in Greece and argued that they would face threats to their personal safety if they were returned to Turkish custody.

The Greek court agreed with their claims, following a massive crackdown on Turkish authorities on suspected government opponents.

Lawyer Stavroula Tomara said the “humiliating” treatment and “torture” meted out to other coup suspects in Turkey had made an impression on the Greek court.

The court said that Turkish authorities have not presented sufficient evidence they were involved in the coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the source said, while Ankara could still appeal the decision.

Extradition would likely be a virtual death sentence for those eight officers, plus the painful indignities they’d first have to endure.

Erdogan’s Turkey brooks very little dissent.

SOCIAL JUSTICE MEDIA: Web giants to cooperate on removal of extremist content.

Web giants YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft will step up efforts to remove extremist content from their websites by creating a common database.

The companies will share ‘hashes’ – unique digital fingerprints they automatically assign to videos or photos – of extremist content they have removed from their websites to enable their peers to identify the same content on their platforms.

“We hope this collaboration will lead to greater efficiency as we continue to enforce our policies to help curb the pressing global issue of terrorist content online,” the companies said in a statement on Tuesday.

Multibillion-dollar corporations ganging together to silence particular viewpoints — perhaps an antitrust investigation would be in order.

JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON: Why the Mainstream Media Can’t Hold Trump Accountable.

The incident underscores a troubling lack of curiosity in the press that Trump’s election has done nothing to mitigate. Right now, the media should be asking themselves: Why did Trump win white college graduates? Why did he outperform Mitt Romney among blacks and Hispanics? Why did lifelong Democrats in the Rust Belt vote for him?

If the mainstream press wanted to understand and explain Trump’s appeal, they could talk to any one of the millions of ordinary Americans with non-crazy views who voted for him. Instead, the media have gravitated toward fringe supporters and conspiracy theorists—the New Hampshire lawmakers who claimed that millions of people voted illegally, the handful of white supremacists who praised Trump at a recent conference in Washington DC, the malign influence of Alex Jones and readers of Infowars.

By insisting on an ideological narrative at the expense of honest reporting, and by reacting with hysterics every time Trump tweets something provocative, journalists are undermining their credibility. As fun as it is to laugh at hysterical journalists, we actually need them to be credible because they have an important job to do: hold the incoming Trump administration accountable for real abuses of power.

Ultimately it’s really the peoples’ job to hold politicians accountable; all the press needs to do is report fairly. When they won’t or can’t, as Donald Trump pointed out yesterday, the people and politicians will turn to other outlets.

HEALTH: Alabama researchers announce positive findings of Cannabidiol study.

After one month of treatment with the oil, which contains traces of THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana, 68 percent of patients experienced a 25 percent reduction in the frequency of seizures, according to a press release. More than half of them experienced more than a 50 percent reduction in the number of seizures and 9 percent became seizure free over the course of the study.

More than two-thirds of treated patients experienced a decrease of more than 50 percent in seizure severity, according to the release.

“It is encouraging that both frequency and severity of seizures appear to improve in the majority of patients in our study, patients who have limited treatment options,” said Dr. Jerzy P. Szaflarski, professor in the Department of Neurology and director of the UAB Epilepsy Center, in a statement. “Our research adds to the evidence that CBD may reduce frequency of seizures, but we also found that it appears to decrease the severity of seizures, which is a new finding.”

Researchers also found that Cannabidiol oil could improve mood and cognition for some patients suffering from severe epilepsy. However, researchers also found interactions between the oil and common drugs used to treat epilepsy.

The small study showed improvements for many patients, but researchers still want to find out more about Cannabidiol oil’s effectiveness as an epilepsy treatment.

Criminalization put a huge damper on research like this.

LET’S GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO FRET ABOUT: Europeans mocked Bush, but they’re downright scared of Trump.

European leaders — the “Europeans” Ann Friedman refers to here — ought to be most afraid of their own voters.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Hillary Clinton blew the most winnable election in modern American history. And it’s her own fault.

I don’t care if the “fundamentals” favored the GOP. Trump was a fundamentals-defying opponent who should have landed flat on his face regardless of the baseline assumptions. I don’t care if Clinton racks up a nearly 3 million vote lead in the popular tally by grabbing up gobs of electorally superfluous ballots in California. She lost the election because she failed to win where she needed to win and where Democrats had a long record of winning — the upper Midwest — as well as where they win when they’re doing their jobs well (Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina). That’s a sign of a campaign screw-up of monumental proportions.

Most of all, I don’t want to hear about how unfairly Clinton was treated by the media. In comparison to whom? All the other candidates who’ve run for president while under criminal investigation by the FBI? (Maybe that substantial handicap should have overridden the party’s presumption that she was owed the nomination because it was “her turn.”) Or do you mean, instead, that she was treated badly in comparison to her opponent? Really? You mean the one whose 24/7 media coverage was overwhelmingly, relentlessly negative in tone and content? Either way, a halfway competent campaign should have been able to take advantage of the great good fortune of running against Donald J. Trump and left him bleeding in the ditch.

Why didn’t it happen?

Read the whole thing — but the short version is that Clinton was a terrible candidate, a lackadaisical campaigner, and she squandered her enormous ad budget.

HE’LL BE FORGIVEN FOR THAT: ‘Family Guy’ Calls Jesus a ‘D*ck’

BILL WHITTLE: Hillary’s Final Disgrace.

SHE DIED FOR TOURISM: Mysterious Mummified Legs Belonged to Queen Nefertari, Scientists Confirm.

To determine if the mummified legs belong to Queen Nefertari, scientists conducted various techniques and processes such as x-rays, chemical analysis, radiocarbon dating, genetics, paleopathology, Egyptology, etc. The study notes that this is the first ever multidisciplinary investigation performed on the mummified legs.

Results showed that the mummified legs belonged to Queen Nefertari. The tests also revealed that the legs belonged to a woman who was about five feet and four inches tall, had mild athritis and could be around 40 to 60 years old when she died, FOX News reports. The study also said the embalming materials that were used to mummify the legs coincide with the traditions of Ramesside mummification.

“The expertise that had gone into that mummification — even judging from the legs — the care, the attention, the wrapping, the materials employed; they are strongly suggestive someone of incredibly high status,” Joann Fletcher, co-author of the study, told The Guardian.

This stands in striking contrast to the legacy of Barack Obama, much of which is set to be erased in the 100 days after January 20.

EUROPE’S NEW MISSION TO MARS: Decades of attempts show how hard it is to land on Mars – here’s how we plan to succeed in 2021.

CHINA: Central Planning Stymied By Reality.

What China needs is a law against unintended consequences.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Ditching Electoral College would allow California to impose imperial rule on a colonial America.

Michael Barone:

If California continues to occupy one extreme of the national political spectrum, there may well be more such splits. At least unless and until the Democratic Party figures it needs more to make a case with more appeal beyond California if it wants to win 270 electoral votes.

All of which prompts renewed arguments about the Electoral College. The case for abolishing it is simple: Every American’s vote should count the same. But it won’t happen. Two-thirds of each house of Congress and 38 of the 50 state legislatures will never go along.

The case against abolition is one suggested by the Framers’ fears that voters in one large but highly atypical state could impose their will on a contrary-minded nation. That largest state in 1787 was Virginia, home of four of the first five presidents. New York and California, by remaining closely in line with national opinion up through 1996, made the issue moot.

California’s 21st century veer to the left makes it a live issue again. In a popular vote system, the voters of this geographically distant and culturally distinct state, whose contempt for heartland Christians resembles imperial London’s disdain for the “lesser breeds” it governed, could impose something like colonial rule over the rest of the nation. Sounds exactly like what the Framers strove to prevent.

The Founders’ genius has proven remarkably enduring.

#NEVERFORGET: Dec. 5 Is Repeal Day, the Day We Got Back Our Alcohol.

There are few things more difficult in American politics than amending the Constitution, yet Repeal forces got the job done in very short order.

So how is it that so much of what Washington does, no matter how disastrous, ends up having more staying power than Prohibition?

HMM:

WOAH. Trump transition team announces Ivanka Trump is meeting w/ Al Gore this morning to discuss climate issues

— Gabby Morrongiello (@gabriellahope_) December 5, 2016

PAYBACK’S A… YOU KNOW.

Every time Republicans are thwarted on any issue, I'm going to ask why the Democrats are racist, ageist and misandrists.

— Melissa Mackenzie ? (@MelissaTweets) December 5, 2016

BREAKING: McCrory concedes in North Carolina.

North Carolina GOP Gov. Pat McCrory has conceded the governor’s race to Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper, almost a full month after Election Day.

“Despite continued questions that should be answered regarding the voting process, I personally believe that the majority of our citizens have spoken and we should now do everything we can to support the 75th governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper,” McCrory said in a video statement.

OH, I’M READY: Get Ready for a Week of ‘Fake News’ Hysteria.

Jim Geraghty:

No two ways about it, a guy who goes into a restaurant and starts firing his gun all willy-nilly is a bad dude, and he ought to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

But now there’s going to be an eager effort to shift responsibility from him to whoever wrote about this restaurant. This guy sounds like he graduated from the Yosemite Sam School of Forensic Investigation, and if he hadn’t shown up at the doorstep of this restaurant, he would have shown up at the gate of Edwards Air Force Base asking about the aliens at Area 51 or stomped around the Pacific Northwest hunting Bigfoot. Blaming “fake news” implies a warning to everyone, “don’t write or say something that could set off some nut-job.” That argument assumes that there’s a rationality to the nut-job, and it’s our responsibility to not offer anything that could cause an irrational mind to lash out.

The real goal, as Glenn noted earlier, is to silence political opponents.

LARRY O’CONNOR: Andrew Breitbart, John Podesta, and underage sex slaves.

ANGELA MERKEL’S GERMANY: Afghan Refugee Arrested For Rape, Murder Of Top EU Official’s Daughter.

A teenage Afghan asylum seeker has been arrested after allegedly raping and drowning a 19-year-old German student in the city of Freiburg. The student was the daughter of a top EU official, the UK’s Sunday Express reports, and volunteered regularly at a refugee center.

The victim, identified as Maria Ladenburger, was a medical student whose body was discovered in the Dreisam river Oct. 16. She attended a party on the night of the murder and was cycling home hours before her body was discovered.

The 17-year-old migrant was arrested Friday after he was identified by CCTV footage and his DNA was matched to the crime scene. The suspect, who arrived in Germany in 2015, has remained silent during interrogations.

The murder struck an already on-edge Germany after a similar incident took place two weeks later.

Good lord.

POLITICO: Democrats to give Trump Cabinet picks the Garland treatment.

Senate Democrats are preparing to put Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks through a grinding confirmation process, weighing delay tactics that could eat up weeks of the Senate calendar and hamper his first 100 days in office.

Multiple Democratic senators told POLITICO in interviews last week that after watching Republicans sit on Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court for nearly a year, they’re in no mood to fast-track Trump’s selections.

But it’s not just about exacting revenge.

Uh-huh.

CUT DEEP, DOC: Donald Trump Nominates Ben Carson for HUD Secretary.