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November 2016

Vice President-elect Mike Pence has taken control of President-elect Donald Trump's transition team, which included letting go of all the lobbyists:
Trump had been under fire for having a transition team filled with lobbyists and other insiders, given his campaign pledge to “drain the swamp.” There had been roughly a dozen registered lobbyists working in and around the transition team, reports have said. Those lobbyists included Rob Collins of S-3 Group, Mike Catanzaro at CGCN Group, Martin Whitmer of Whitmer & Worrall, J. Steven Hart at Williams & Jensen and tobacco company Altria’s Cindy Hayden, among others.

The Young Americans for Freedom chapter at DePaul University invited Christina Hoff Sommers and Ben Shapiro to speak on campus. At some point, the administration decided not to allow Ben Shapiro on campus over supposed security concerns, even threatening him with arrest if he set foot on campus. In an ultimate twist of irony, the subject of Shapiro's speech was free speech on campus. The YAF blog has the details:
DePaul Obstructs YAF Lecture, Shapiro, Sommers Despite having no apparent problem hosting prominent leftists in the past, DePaul University is working to obstruct DePaul Young Americans for Freedom’s scheduled lecture with Christina Hoff Sommers, after the chapter announced Ben Shapiro was slated to make a guest appearance.

You may remember Joy Karega, the Oberlin College "Social Justice Writing" Professor who put numerous anti-Semitic posts and graphics on Facebook. Karega was a supporter of the anti-Israel boycott movement, and hosted an event promoting BDS right around the time the controversy over her Facebook posts erupted. But she wasn't questioned and didn't get in trouble for her anti-Israel views. Those views, unfortunately, are all the rage at Oberlin and other liberal campuses. Rather, her Facebook posting clearly veered into rank antisemitism. Like this one alleging a conspiracy by the Rothschilds to rule the world:

I guess this is now a continuing series. Turkey's Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is gutting any remnants of opposition by attacking numerous aspects of civil society, including particularly academia. Yet *shockingly* none of the progressive professors who demand a boycott of Israeli universities and academia are organizing a boycott of Turkish Universities. We have covered this hypocrisy many times: According to Turkish journalist Mahir Zeynalov, the crackdown on academics continues:

As reported the other day, Congressman Keith Ellison from Minnesota has the backing of several top Democrats to become Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Top Dems rally around radical Keith Ellison for DNC Chair:
The lesson Democrats are learning from the evisceration of the Democratic Party at the state level, the continuing loss of control of Congress, and the defeat in the presidential election is not that Democrats need to move back to the center. No, it’s that Democrats need to move not just further to the left, but to the fringe left. Several top Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer, are backing Keith Ellison, Democratic Congressman from Minnesota, as the next DNC Chair [as] Daily Kos reports....

A new Media Research Center (MRC) and YouGov poll shows that the majority of voters recognized media bias during the presidential election, but chose to reject it: https://twitter.com/BrentBozell/status/798600042831454209

Miriam Elman had an excellent post on Sunday on the possibility that, once inaugurated as president, Donald Trump would do what none of his predecessors ever did despite their promises and move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Israel's capital. The reason that Bill Clinton and George W. Bush never followed the law calling for moving the embassy because the law has a waiver provision, allowing the president not to move the embassy if he deems the move to threaten the national security. The foreign policy smart set says that the president can't do this because it will hurt the United States in the Arab world or because it would show the Palestinians that the United States is on Israel's side or that it would prejudge the terms of any final deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

Defeat after defeat on Tuesday has left the Democrat Party in shambles. So much so they cannot decide on a leader. Rep. Nancy Pelosi has led the House Democrats since 2002 while Sen. Chuck Schumer will replace Harry Reid as Senate Minority Leader. But now the Democrats have delayed a vote on leadership in the House, possibly a sign that Pelosi's time has ended. In the Senate, anti-Trump protesters in DC have begun protesting Senator Shumer's new role.

Now that Donald Trump has become the president-elect, the reactions of Democrats seem to be sorting out into two camps: the optimists and the pessimists. The optimists are saying some version of "wait and see how it goes." The pessimists are saying that the political apocalypse is coming soon or is already here. Oprah Winfrey turns out to fall into the first camp, placing herself among the optimists:
The TV host tweeted on Thursday a picture of Donald Trump at the White House with President Barack Obama with the caption 'Everybody take a deep breath! Hope lives.' She also told Entertainment Tonight that seeing President Obama and President-elect Trump together had 'given her hope'.

New York University Professor Michael Rectenwald was suspended two weeks ago for a Twitter account he ran which repudiated political correctness. Legal Insurrection readers know that's a form of heresy on college campuses today. He has now been reinstated and with a raise in pay. FOX News reports:
NYU brings back professor who blasted PC culture, gives him a raise Liberal studies professor Michael Rectenwald, the man behind the controversial @DeplorableNYUProf account, has been promoted by prestigious New York University and given a raise days after the university had put him on a paid leave for criticizing politically correct culture on campus.