The sun throngs her window (I stole “throngs” from Philip Larkin); her wee nuclear family sits directly to her left on the train. Extended family insists on living in Boston, so the Polish-ish Christmas must happen there.

You know if you read this blog that UD dislikes grubby old Boston, and slogging to that city in the dead of winter seems especially stupid. But.

I listen to Julia Lezhneva for much of the trip, which also features blueberry muffins and, this year, a book about India. After New Year’s in Venice, Les UDs fly to Rajasthan.

John McWhorter calls for Harvard president Claudine Gay to step down.

[He and his third wife had] a $230,000-a-month spending habit, six houses and 11 country club memberships.

He’s tried unloading the real estate, but no one will buy because the houses have Rudy Cooties.

… first kills his father, and then fifteen or twenty people (some of the injured will die) on the campus of Prague’s Charles University. He was a student there. He killed himself as police neared.

Used a big ol’ sniper rifle and did a Charles Whitman – picked everyone off from a rooftop.

Is Harvard preparing to concede that President Gay should be let go?

The controversy swirling around Dr. Gay raises questions about what it means for a premier American university when its scholarly leader — who at Harvard has final approval on all tenure decisions — has been accused of failing to adhere to scholarly standards. The allegations against her [have] prompted some to wonder whether Harvard is treating its leader with greater latitude than it would its students.

Says the NYT. Then it takes a trip down memory lane. Devoted UD readers will recall these earlier stunningly hypocritical Harvard plagiarism cases.

In 2005, after two prominent law professors, Charles Ogletree Jr. and Laurence Tribe, were publicly accused of plagiarism, The Harvard Crimson ran an editorial decrying the “disappointing double standard,” noting that “students caught plagiarizing are routinely suspended for semesters or even entire academic years.”

In both cases, the investigations — which were led by Derek Bok, a former Harvard president, and unfolded over months — found that each had in fact committed plagiarism. The professors were publicly chastised by the administration, but Harvard did not say whether there were any sanctions, according to news reports at the time.

In an apology, Mr. Ogletree, who died this year, acknowledged that his 2004 book “All Deliberate Speed” included several paragraphs from another law professor almost verbatim, without any attribution, according to a New York Times report at the time. (He said it was the result of a mix-up by his research assistants.)

In Mr. Tribe’s case, he was deemed by Harvard’s president and the law school dean to have unintentionally included “various brief passages and phrases that echo or overlap with material” in a book by another scholar, who was not credited. Mr. Tribe, who still teaches at Harvard, apologized.

These were ATELIER plagiarism (read about UD’s tripartite scheme here], plagiarism committed by the flunkies who write your books for you because you’re far too busy and important to write them yourself. (See, among other Harvard luminaries, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jill Abramson, and Alan Dershowitz.)

The getting off scot-free bit is a prototypical instance of oligarchic privilege, an outcome no one in any of the world’s many class-based, corrupt from top to bottom, countries would have any trouble recognizing.

[Because he committed fraud, Michael] Lonski was excluded from participating in the Medicare program from April 2003 to November 2007… Less than 10 years after he was reinstated to the Medicare program, he began billing for patients who were dead.

UD‘s congress guy/hero, Jamie Raskin, gets it said.

Wow! Four months without shootouts in the street! The city of UD’s birth is really knocking it out of the park.

… gets bumped.

No better way to do that than point three guns at them and tell them they’re going to die.

Look at ’em scoot!!

No more going outside in crime-ridden Nebraska for me! Too dangerous out there.

No fans allowed to a high school football game in Georgia. Guns keep going off.

According to the SEC, the group reported cash and cash equivalents of $461.7mn for 2022 in the bank accounts of its Nigerian subsidiary, Tingo Mobile, which says it provides farmers in Nigeria with microloans, weather forecasts and an online marketplace. But the US watchdog claims the actual balance was less than $50 for that financial year.

They’re feeding Christian to the lions.

Corrupt, stupid, insane, and YOUR MAN in Tallahassee!