SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:57 P.M. ET:

NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN...WELL...YOU KNOW – FROM AP:    ATLANTA (AP) -- Authorities say a former U.S. postal worker is charged with delaying and destroying mail after investigators found about 4,500 pieces of mail in the woods outside Atlanta.  Prosecutors say 25-year-old Thomas O. Beaurem of McDonough was indicted by a federal grand jury on the charge. He has pleaded not guilty.  Investigators say they found the mail in a wooded area in Decatur, and some pieces of the mail that was dumped had cancellation dates as early as Oct. 5. The Postal Service was first informed of the undelivered mail Oct. 18.  Authorities said that some of the correspondence was too badly damaged to deliver, but other mail from the woods has since been delivered.   Hillary would have made him postmaster-general.

THE DEMS HAVE AT LEAST ONE MATURE SENATOR – FROM BREITBART:   On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Cavuto: Coast to Coast,” Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) stated that people “just gotta get over” President-Elect Donald Trump’s election in response to efforts to deny Trump a victory.  Manchin reacted to efforts to deny Trump an electoral victory by saying, “People just gotta get over it and go on. I mean, let’s get on with governing this country, making us the world leader, and keeping — maintaining that superpower status. And that means we’ve all got to get behind our president, whether you voted for him or not, and work with him, and try to make him successful, and be respectful if we disagree and find a different path forward. But I’m just — I mean, this is taking too much time and energy. There’s too much — too many other things to be concerned about. And I think we have the greatest system of democracy in the world. It’s not perfect. They’re going to make some mistakes, but it’s one we can trust. Now, I trust it, and I feel very comfortable with it.”  Sounds like a man who might switch parties if conditions are right.  West Virginia is becoming increasingly Republican and went for Trump.  Manchin is up for re-election in two years.

AT LEAST THERE WAS A FAIR INQUIRY – FROM HEATSTREET:  Two Babson College students who were alleged to have yelled racial slurs at black women during a celebration of Donald Trump’s election victory have been cleared of any wrongdoing.  After the election, Parker Rand-Ricciardi and Edward Tomasso decided to go out and celebrate their candidate’s win. They did so by driving onto the nearby Wellesley campus, an all-women college, with a Trump flag flying proudly.  Students at Wellesley, however, told a different story. Rand-Ricciardi and Tomasso, they said, spit on a student and shouted “racial and homophobic slurs while parked in front of the Harambee House, an on-campus gathering place traditionally meant for African-American students.” As a result of that, the two students were told to leave the Babson campus and not return until Dec. 11.  But no one was ever able to prove that the two students did anything other than yell “Make America Great Again.”  On Monday, the school officially ruled that Rand-Ricciardi and Tomasso did nothing wrong. Babson did not, however, apologize to the students for Babson President Kerry Healey’s apology to Wellesley, or for several professors signing a letter condemning the now-disproven actions on the night of Nov. 8.  I don't know what the facts are.  I wasn't there.  But at least the boys got what appears to be a fair hearing, which is rare in today's colleges and universities.  False charges are common.  This was handled correctly,  If the boys are innocent, justice has been served.  If they're actually guilty, they'll probably do something dumb again and get caught.  I hope they're innocent.

January 20, 2016