SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:48 P.M. ET:

CHARGE AGAINST TRUMP TOSSED – FROM DAILY CALLER:    A federal court in New York City has dismissed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump that alleged his failure to divest from the Trump business empire violated anti-corruption provisions of the Constitution.  U.S. District Judge George Daniels, a Clinton administration appointee, ruled Thursday that the case could not proceed because the plaintiffs could not prove that Trump’s actions tangibly harmed their businesses.  The lawsuit was brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), an anti-Trump watchdog group formerly led by Clinton ally David Brock. A number of accomplished lawyers and legal scholars participated in the effort, including Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, and Richard Painter, an ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House.  People who lose elections are increasingly turning to the courts for comfort, but are often disappointed.

HOW EXCITING – FROM DAILY CALLER:   A New York Times contributor cranked the President Donald Trump-hysteria-meter to 11 on Thursday when he wrote the president “and his allies seem on the verge of staging a coup against independent institutions and the rule of law.”  In the column “The Real Coup Plot Is Trump’s,” New York Times contributor and Harvard University lecturer Yascha Mounk warns readers about the upcoming assault on American democracy that the president is plotting.  Fox News host Jesse Watters recently claimed that in the midst of all the alleged bias within the FBI, that “we have a coup on our hands in America.”  Mounk doesn’t cite any evidence that Trump is preparing to fire special counsel Robert Mueller — the president, after all, has said repeatedly that he doesn’t intend to.  If you dare criticize Mueller, you are making yourself an “active accomplice in a deliberate assault on our democracy,” according to the New York Times op-ed.  Trump Derangement Syndrome is becoming a serious disease, but there is no coverage under Obamacare unless you agree to a sex-change operation.

COMMON SENSE – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES:   The University of Minnesota has disavowed a set of guidelines issued by one of its academic departments labeling holiday symbols such as Christmas trees, doves and dreidels as “religious iconography” inappropriate for a school setting.  The school’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resources Sciences recently issued a set of guidelines that encouraged employees to “recognize holidays in ways that are respectful of the diversity of our community,” Campus Reform first reported.  The department included a list of “religious iconography” that shouldn’t be included in holiday parties, such as Santa Claus, Christmas trees, bows/wrapped gifts, bells, doves, dreidels, and green and red color schemes.  The list made the rounds on conservative media sites as evidence of an academic “War on Christmas,” but the university on Thursday distanced itself from the controversy.The guidelines were “the actions of a single employee, whose attempt at a diversity training session was, to be blunt, ill advised,” and “does not constitute a policy on the part of the university,” the school told Campus Reform in a statement.  The school handled the outrage reasonably, although late.  At least we weren't told that Christmas was racist, and part of a Zionist plot.

December 21, 2017