MOE LANE: “Pro-tip: when you’re trying to defend a man against being an anti-Semite, don’t suggest that the reason for the initial charges is because of an international Jewish conspiracy. It… muddles… the message; or perhaps it does not.”

CANADA: Mandatory minimum gun sentences unconstitutional, says judge.

IN RESPONSE TO GANDHI: What do I think about Indian civilization? It would be a good thing.

AMY ALKON’S PODCAST: Dr. Brandy Engler, inside the erotic minds of men (& women).

NETWORK NEWS IGNORING, BUT WOMEN’S MEDIA PICKING UP ON THE STORY: Brave Mom Shoots Intruder 5 Times to Save Twins. And I’ll repeat — somebody who breaks into your house, then enters the attic in pursuit of woman and kids, probably isn’t just out to lift a TV.

A MYSTERY OF SCIENCE: So this weekend I went shooting with a friend. We shot an AK-74, an SKS, and a civilianized M4, as well as a cool Colt cowboy revolver. The guns didn’t shoot themselves, and neither of us was transformed into a mass murderer. Go figure — from what I’ve read in the New York Times that’s practically unheard of . . . .

How’d I do? Not bad, for a law professor. He’s a Special Forces veteran. He outshot me on the rifles by a significant margin, I outshot him on the pistol by a not-so-significant margin. I’ll take that.

UPDATE: Reader Gerald Hanner writes: “For a Special Forces type, a handgun is the last resort — or maybe a knife or club is. For most of us flyers the only thing that we could get in the cockpit, usually, was Colt combat masterpiece. And that wasn’t much when a bunch of guys with AK-47s were looking for you.”

Yeah, my old secretary was a Marine combat engineer reservist, and I had to give him pistol lessons before his second deployment. He said the Marines didn’t teach him much about pistol shooting (it’s “every Marine a rifleman,” not “every Marine a pistolero”) but it’s hard to carry an M-16 while you’re squatting down to defuse a bomb. I’m a decent shot with a handgun, though — as I find out whenever I shoot in competitions — while my accuracy is good, I don’t have the speed that real pistol competitors have. They’ll get off five shots in the time it takes me to get two, and they’ll be at least as accurate as me.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Several readers point out that the “Combat Masterpiece” is a Smith & Wesson, not a Colt.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on books in Health, Fitness & Dieting.

STARSHIPS and stargates.

TWO WORDS: Maria Shriver. What The Heck Happened To Arnold Schwarzenegger?

SO OVER THE YEARS I’VE OFTEN SAID that in my ideal world, happily married gay couples would have closets full of assault weapons.

You’d think that right now, with all the gun-owner-hating going on, that the second half of that statement would be the controversial part. But you’d be wrong. I was just disinvited from a scheduled speech by the Utah County, Utah GOP because — after a special meeting to discuss the subject — I was deemed “too controversial” because of my support for gay rights. Er, okay.

Having an unpaid speaking gig (which I seldom do anymore) canceled is no hardship. And people are welcome to believe what they want to believe, and invite whom they want to speak — but as the GOP looks at why they’re viewed as intolerant, well, this kind of thing might be part of it. “Big tent” or teepee? Your choice.

But future inviters be warned: While I take a live-and-let-live view toward social conservatives, I’m not one myself. Take it or leave it.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Why is it “inhumane” and “idiotic” to question the veracity of the claims that have been made about Hillary Clinton’s various medical conditions? Because no one would doubt the honesty of a politician — especially one named Clinton!

But it’s hard to be shamed by those who have none, and have-you-no-decency attacks are unpersuasive coming from those who have consistently demonstrated the lack thereof.

INDEED: Hate Speech Against Gun Owners Shows Double Standard. Hey, if it weren’t for double standards, the left would have no standards at all!

Plus: “If liberals and left-wingers get any more civil, conservatives and Republicans might have to start wearing body armor.” Start?

HOW’S THAT ARAB SPRING WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Reprisal fears cloud Libya probe into US consulate attack. “The case frightens local investigators, especially given the increased pace of assassinations targeting military and police officers in the east of the country.”

HOW’S THAT ARAB SPRING THING WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? “At a central Cairo produce market, vendors have increased prices for green beans by 33 per cent, tomatoes by 50 per cent and zucchini and bananas by 100 per cent. Imported coffee prices have risen more than 20 per cent. The price of bread, a staple of the Egyptian diet, has gone up by 20 per cent in poor neighbourhoods and by even more in well-to-do areas.”

Walter Russell Mead comments: “Most Egyptians live very close to the margin; a 20 percent rise in the price of bread means that many people will be eating fewer calories and giving less food to their kids. For people in this situation, the only important political question is the availability of the basics you need for survival. The Muslim Brotherhood promised change; so far, the change involves mostly belt-tightening.”

As I’ve noted before, when you import half your calories, you shouldn’t be discouraging tourism, which is what brings the foreign exchange. Barbaric laws, mass sexual assaults on foreign women in public places, and general instability don’t do much for tourism.

SHOOTINGS AND GUNS: Reader John Dias emails:

In this mornings Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate we were reminded of the anniversary of a shooting massacre by Mark James Robert Essex that started late December 1971 and ended with his death eight days later. What struck me about this was that Essex used a Ruger .44 Magnum Carbine with a total capacity of 5 rounds (it uses a built-in tube magazine). With this (and a .38 caliber revolver), he killed 9 and injured 13. Many of the dead and injured were police officers.

Essex acted independently but had some previous affiliation with the Black Panthers and he undoubtedly got marksmanship training while in the navy. At one point he exchanged fire with a military helicopter and scored a hit on the transmission before being gunned down.

Just goes to show that a motivated unstable person doesn’t need a heck of a lot in the way of tools to do a lot of damage.

Here’s the news story. Here’s more.

UPDATE: Various readers say the Ruger has a rotary magazine, not a tube. The point holds. No one would confuse it for an “assault weapon.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Some Pluses, Many Negatives for Higher Education. “What is most discouraging to this writer, however, is that despite growing recognition of the problems, the amount of progress has been relatively scant.”

I’d like to see some hearings on this in Congress.

GETTING THE PRIORITIES STRAIGHT: McConnell: Any gun proposals will take back seat to solving country’s financial problems.

JOURNALISM: FAIL: Meet the Press Shows Debt Clock $3 Trillion Less Than Actual $16.4 Trillion Total.

THAT WOULD BE NICE: The Hill: Tax reform more likely after ‘fiscal cliff’ agreement, say House Republicans.

CHUCK HAGEL: It was a war for oil! “Isn’t Hagel’s statement a direct attack on the motives and honesty of those senators who supported the war—including Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry? Indeed, what does it say about Chuck Hagel, who voted to authorize the war in October 2002? He knew it was a war for oil, didn’t say so at the time, but voted for it anyway? And then, a few years later, at the height of the fighting by American soldiers in Iraq, he proclaims with false braggadocio the alleged truth that it’s all just a war for oil? Is President Obama really going to nominate this man as secretary of defense?”

Well, really, isn’t Hagel a perfect fit?

LOOKING BACK AT predictions for 2013 from ten years ago.

ENTHUSIASM: Obama’s Biggest Donors Aren’t Coughing Up For Inauguration: Only 14 of the president’s 400-plus campaign bundlers have written a check.

ERIC PIANIN: McConnell Bests Boehner As GOP Negotiator-In-Chief.

WELL, THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION FREED SLAVES, AND UNLIMITED DEBT ENSLAVES THE FREE: Democratic Rep.: Debt-ceiling blank check is like Emancipation Proclamation.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 12 reciprocating saws compared.

I own a Milwaukee Sawzall, based on strong Insta-reader recommendations.

CLARICE FELDMAN: This week in the War On Science.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Grocery & Gourmet Food Outlet Sale.

THEODORE DALRYMPLE: What Is The Best Way To Treat Diabetes?

IF YOU’RE DRIVING DRUNK, don’t post it on Facebook.

HIRING: Job Applicants’ “Cultural Fit” Can Trump Qualifications. “The phrase ‘cultural fit’ may summon up obnoxious images of old boys clubs and social connections, but it’s a powerful buzzword among human resources professionals. A cooperative, creative atmosphere can make workdays more tolerable and head off problems before they begin.”

Well, that was probably true in the days of old boys’ clubs, too.

BEST COUNTRY TO RETIRE TO: Ecuador?

HMM: ABC: Not Enough Democratic Support To Confirm Hagel.

HOW TO BUILD an indestructible snow fort.

TRIFECTA: Credibility Cliff: Americans Have Lost Faith in Their Government.

IN THE MAIL: From Vox Day, A Throne of Bones. Also from Thomas Sawyer, The Two-State Solution for America.

CHARLIE MARTIN: 13 Weeks: Week Nine — In Which We See Results.

COVERUP FAILS: Fracking Safe in NY State, Says Leaked Report. “Thanks to a leak from an anonymous insider, we learned Thursday that a report commissioned by the State of New York has given fracking a clean bill of health. The insider ‘did not think it should be kept secret’ and released the document, which is now nearly one year old, to the New York Times.”

Remember when the authorities used to cover up dangers? Now they’re covering up news that fracking is safe, because that harms their political agenda.

Still: “This is very good news. Contrary to green fears that fracking is a mortal danger to both humans and the environment, this report finds exactly the opposite, arguing that fracking “can be done safely within the regulatory system that the state has been developing for several years.” With the environmental concerns largely settled, the ground is now set for New York to claim its share of the energy revolution and the jobs and industry that come with it.”

Except that the Greens are still complaining. They’re science-deniers. It’s a Green War On Science!

UPDATE: A reader emails:

You know who John Hanger is, right? Former DEP secretary for PA governor Ed Rendell. The greenies loved his nomination as secretary, until he and Rendell got fracking going. He and Rendell are probably the two biggest fracking supporters in the Democratic party, and they’re liberals. Fracking is a huge success in PA.

The Ds constantly complain that Republicans aren’t stepping across the aisle and compromising, but they, strangely, never seem to offer up this as an example of Democrats doing it as a way to shame the Rs. I wonder why. Maybe it’s because Rendell and Hanger picked the wrong issue and left the party reservation.

Probably.

PUBLISHING IN THE 21ST CENTURY: “Of the 300 or so six figure deals that were reported to them in 2012, 45 were from books that started off self-published.”

AT AMAZON, Top Deals in Camera & Photo.

Also, today only: ProForm Power 995 Treadmill, $799 (60% off).

BILL WHITTLE: Afterburner: Rule of Lawlessness.

ANOTHER BRILLIANT “GREEN” INITIATIVE FAILS: Whoops—’Cash for Clunkers’ Actually Hurt the Environment.

SHOCKER: Pew Study: MSNBC Really Is More Partisan Than Fox. “ON MSNBC, the ratio of negative to positive stories on GOP candidate Mitt Romney was 71 to 3. That’s not a news channel. That’s a propaganda machine, and owner Comcast should probably change Phil Griffin’s title from president to high minister of information, or something equally befitting the work of a party propagandist hack in a totalitarian regime. . . . I thought show host Sean Hannity of Fox News defined party propagandist. But while his channel was bad, it wasn’t as bad-boy biased as MSNBC.” Interesting to see such strong language in the Baltimore Sun.

CHANGE: Gasoline prices, which hit a 2012 low of $3.22 a gallon Dec. 19, are up 8 cents in the past two weeks and will likely continue climbing through April.

JUSTICE IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: “It’s one thing if a bank is too big to fail, so the government has to save it if it’s in danger of going under. It’s another if the bank is too big to be brought to justice, so the government can’t even make it obey the laws while it goes about its immortal way. That seems to have been the case recently with HSBC.”

Well, when laws are for the little people, too big to prosecute becomes perfectly expectable. Just ask David Gregory.

JOHN FUND: E-mail Scandal at the EPA: The Obama administration embraces secrecy and stonewalling.

It’s not uncommon for government officials to have private e-mail accounts. But federal law has set up several barriers to prevent officials from using non-official or secret e-mail addresses to conduct business and then conceal the contents of those accounts from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Politico reports that the EPA was supposed to ensure that anyone requesting Jackson’s e-mails under FOIA would also have access to communications from “Richard Windsor.” “But the system is far from foolproof,” it dryly notes.

When the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market group, came up empty on its FOIA requests for Jackson’s e-mails relating to her anti-coal efforts, it was told by an EPA whistleblower that she was using “Richard Windsor” and other aliases to coordinate with outside anti-coal groups and engage in other activity she wouldn’t want to come to light.

After CEI filed suit, the Justice Department last month reluctantly agreed to produce 12,000 “Richard Windsor” e-mails. The first batch is set to be released on January 14. CEI employees told me they expect the e-mails will be heavily redacted to obscure their content, but that House committees headed by Representative Darrell Issa of California and Representative Fred Upton of Michigan will launch probes that will ultimately bring all of the e-mails to light.

Indeed, Representative Upton has written to the EPA demanding to know whether the use of alias e-mail accounts “has in any way affected the transparency of the agency’s activities or the quality or completeness of information provided” to Congress. In response, the office of the EPA’s inspector general has announced that it will investigate to see if “EPA follows applicable laws and regulations when using private and alias e-mail accounts to conduct official business.”

It clearly hasn’t always in the past. In 2000, Clinton EPA administrator Carol Browner responded to a Landmark Legal Foundation FOIA lawsuit by claiming that she didn’t use her government computer for e-mail. But Browner then ordered the hard drive on the computer to be reformatted and all backup tapes destroyed, just hours after a federal judge ordered her agency to preserve all agency e-mails. . . .

Mark Tapscott, the executive editor of the Washington Examiner, has long chronicled how government officials evade laws designed to enhance transparency. He points out that such evasion is rampant because enforcement of FOIA laws rarely occurs. “Nobody in government has ever gone to jail for violating the FOIA,” he points out.

Laws are for the little people.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College Is the Key to Financial Success . . . if you’re a college president, that is.

According to an analysis by the Chronicle of Higher Education, in the 2011 fiscal year, 132 presidents of public colleges and universities made $344,000 or more — the income level that marks the divide between the bottom 99 percent and the top 1 percent. Private-college presidents raked in even more: 208 made $344,000 or more in 2010, with 36 of those making $1 million or more.

It’s no surprise that college presidents are receiving top dollar: More and more, a year’s college tuition is exceeding the annual salary that a student can expect to make in the first few years after graduation. (And that assumes the student can even snag a job requiring a college degree in this dismal economy.)

At New York City’s New School, for instance, then-president (and now failed Nebraska Senate candidate) Bob Kerrey made $3 million in 2010. Students entering the college this fall will pay a steep $38,000 in tuition. (And that’s before room and board.) It’s the same story at other colleges. At Washington University of St. Louis, where the tuition is now $44,000, chancellor Mark Stephen Wrighton made around $2.3 million. At Vanderbilt University (tuition: $42,000), chancellor Nicholas Zeppos made $2.2 million, while at Columbia University (tuition: $47,000), president Lee Bollinger made $1.9 million.

It’s generally less profitable to be the president of a public university, but many of their paychecks would still look pretty darn good to any member of the 99 percent.

Plus: “Why pick on these presidents? Well, for one thing, while the Occupy movement camped out on Wall Street, participants seemed driven in large part by frustration over onerous student loans. (If they had been upset over the mortgage crisis, their choice of locale would have made more sense.) . . . The Occupiers were right to notice that college is becoming a larger and larger financial burden for the middle class. It’s too bad they didn’t turn their focus to the members of the 1 percent who could really change that.”

They need to do some remedial reading.

MARKDOWNS AT THE AMAZON SHOE STORE. Athletic shoes, dress shoes, cold-weather boots and more. For men, women, and kids.

SO THIS PIECE IN FORBES DECLARING “UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR” AS THE LEAST STRESSFUL JOB OF 2013 got a lot of pushback, including a response from my hyper-productive historian brother.

To some degree, I think it depends on what you mean by stress. When I left law practice for law teaching, I was shocked to discover that the number of hours I worked actually went up the first year. That’s probably not true now, because I can write a law review article or prep for a class much more efficiently, but I still spend a lot of time working.

Nonetheless, what professors do have — over lawyers, at least — is control. Even that first year, I noticed that difference. I read about an experiment once that I think explains it: If you give rats random electric shocks, they get all kinds of stress symptoms like ulcers, high blood pressure, etc. Give them a button that will keep them from being shocked for a few minutes, or lessen the intensity of the shocks, and those symptoms fade, even if they wind up getting just as many shocks per day, because they have some degree of control over what happens.

When you’re a lawyer, or in many other jobs, you don’t have much control over the stresses in your life. As a professor, you have a lot more. That’s perhaps a distinction between “work” and “stress” that is worth bearing in mind in considering all sorts of jobs.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Daniel Drezner. “There’s something vaguely comic about everyone trying to brag about how stressful their job is. Personally, I blame television. Shows like ER, The West Wing, and Scandal have glamorized the notion that killer jobs are friggin’ awesome and super-sexy. You know what’s really awesome? Doing your job so well that you can relax on a regular basis.”

LOW-INFORMATION VOTERS: Hope and less change: Americans cringe at first paychecks of 2013; Stunned lib asks, ‘What happened?’

WHY THE ANTI-SOPA COALITION DISSOLVED.

ANY IDEAS? A reader emails:

You’ve written and linked a bit lately about “changing the culture”. I don’t see myself buying a women’s magazine publishing company any time soon (or even getting involved in my local GOP, but I suppose that’s at least possible). I think you make great points about changing the culture (I’m sure you know Mark Steyn has written a lot on that subject lately as well), but what can/should non-millionaires do? Are Breitbart or O’Keefe soliciting donations to buy out Cosmo or anything? Curious if you have any practical suggestions.

Well, the magazine-buying thing was a suggestion for billionaires. I have some thoughts, but any ideas from the rest of you?

THE PROBLEM WITH SELF-ESTEEM. “What’s really become prevalent over the last two decades is the idea that being highly self-confident – loving yourself, believing in yourself – is the key to success. Now the interesting thing about that belief is it’s widely held, it’s very deeply held, and it’s also untrue.”

As an alternative to self-esteem, I would suggest self-respect, which comes from actual achievement and self-knowledge.

LIFE WHEN YOU’RE NOT DAVID GREGORY: D.C. prosecutes ordinary Americans for ‘high-capacity’ magazines.

The Washington Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) inquiry into whether NBC’s David Gregory possession on national TV of an illegal 30-round “high-capacity” magazine has been ongoing for three weeks. Meanwhile, U.S. Army veteran James Brinkley is still grappling with the fallout from his arrest last year on the same charge.

Mr. Brinkley’s story is just one example of at least 105 individuals who, unlike Mr. Gregory, were arrested in 2012 for having a magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds.

On Sept. 8, Mr. Brinkley says he intended to drop his wife and young children at the White House for a tour and then head to a shooting range to practice for the U.S. Marshals Service test. Just like Mr. Gregory, Mr. Brinkley called MPD in advance for guidance on how he could do this legally. Mr. Brinkley was told that the gun had to be unloaded and locked in the trunk, and he couldn’t park the car and walk around.

Unlike Mr. Gregory, Mr. Brinkley followed the police orders by placing his Glock 22 in a box with a big padlock in the trunk of his Dodge Charger. The two ordinary, 15-round magazines were not in the gun, and he did not have any ammunition with him.

As he was dropping off his family at 11 a.m. on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue, Mr. Brinkley stopped to ask a Secret Service officer whether his wife could take the baby’s car seat into the White House. The officer saw Mr. Brinkley had an empty holster, which kicked off a traffic stop that ended in a search of the Charger’s trunk. Mr. Brinkley was booked on two counts of “high capacity” magazine possession (these are ordinary magazines nearly everywhere else in the country) and one count of possessing an unregistered gun.

Despite the evidence Mr. Brinkley had been legally transporting the gun, his attorney Richard Gardiner said the D.C. Office of the Attorney General “wouldn’t drop it.” This is the same office now showing apparent reluctance to charge Mr. Gregory.

In Obama’s America it’s all about the juice. Gregory has juice. Brinkley doesn’t. I talk about cases like Brinkley’s in my Second Amendment Penumbras article. Meanwhile, next time Brinkley should take along one of these:

TEN THINGS HAPPY PEOPLE DO DIFFERENTLY.

THE CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS: We have so many women we have to photoshop them in.

Kinda like Iranian missiles.

ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS: Nebraska Gives Keystone Pipeline A Clean Bill of Health. “One of the final obstacles to the Keystone pipeline has just been cleared: A report released yesterday by Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality found that building the pipeline would not pose a threat to any of the state’s environmentally sensitive areas.”

I guess the science is settled. I sure hope there aren’t any science-deniers out there who still oppose the pipeline.

THE ECONOMIST: America’s European moment: The troubling similarities between the fiscal mismanagement in Washington and the mess in the euro zone. In America, we’ve got the worst political class in our history. Which means it’s kind of like Europe’s is all the time . . . .

I do like the pictures of Boehner in lederhosen and Obama in a beret.

MANUFACTURING: Economist Ricardo Hausmann says the U.S. has a chance to invent the manufacturing technology of tomorrow.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on bestsellers in Men’s Watches.

Also, new stuff coming out on DVD and Blu-Ray.

UNEXPECTEDLY! USA Today: Health Care Law May Mean Less Hiring In 2013.

“CASUAL FRIDAY” IS SO 1990s: If You Really Want to Defy Conformity, Dress Up on Fridays: ‘Formal Friday’ Suits Those Tired Of Casual Office Wear; Bow Tie, Top Hat. “At some tech startups, Formal Fridays stem from employees’ desire to free themselves from the hoodies and jeans that are standard weekday dress.”

SARAH HOYT: Shock Therapy. “In our current day and age, common sense can be almost startlingly subversive. . . . World War I was terrible, and for many reasons, including the prevalence of pictures and news, the fratricide/civil-war quality of it, the massive number of casualties. It shocked an entire generation into … writing an awful lot about it, and into trying to tear down the pillars of civilization, believing that Western Civilization (and not human nature, itself) was what had brought about the carnage and the waste. Do I need to tell you they were wrong?”

TAPE: IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Unruly passenger taped to seat on Iceland Air flight. “A passenger who became unruly after allegedly drinking too much alcohol had to be taped to his seat on a trans-Atlantic flight, witnesses and authorities said.”

KILLING MARRIAGE? Online Dating Is a Horrific Den of Humanity.

WHO NEEDS A SWIMSUIT CALENDAR when there’s a Nerd Calendar? “I just wanted to make the kind of calendar I’d always dreamed about when I was a boy.”

MORE ON NEW ZEALAND’S tsunami bomb experiments.

GARY BECKER AND KEVIN MURPHY: Have We Lost The War On Drugs? “The total number of persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the U.S. has grown from 330,000 in 1980 to about 1.6 million today. Much of the increase in this population is directly due to the war on drugs and the severe punishment for persons convicted of drug trafficking. About 50% of the inmates in federal prisons and 20% of those in state prisons have been convicted of either selling or using drugs. The many minor drug traffickers and drug users who spend time in jail find fewer opportunities for legal employment after they get out of prison, and they develop better skills at criminal activities.”

IN THE MAIL: From Rob Picoli, Blessed Are the Contrarians: Diary of a Journey Through Interesting Times.

JOE MANCHIN: “I’m not supporting a ban on anything.”

WHITE HOUSE HOPES TO OVERWHELM NRA with rapid gun blitz. So it’ll be kind of an anti-gun Blitzkrieg, then. . . . .

JAMES TARANTO stands up against sexism.

THE ARABS’ 30-YEARS WAR: What A Car Bomb In Iraq Means For The Civil War In Syria.

Iraq’s volatile mixture of Sunnis and Shia is once again boiling over, and the civil war next door in Syria is not making matters any easier. Iraqi fighters are operating in Syria on both sides of the war. The U.S. recently determined that the Nusra Front, which claims credit for several spectacular attacks on Syrian regime targets and is one of the strongest rebel groups, is virtually identical in personnel and ideology to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Iraq’s and Syria’s troubles are closely related—a fact the mainstream media often forgets, choosing instead to stubbornly define the Syrian war as a fight for democracy against a dictatorship and the violence in Iraq as a contained sectarian conflict. This shortsightedness fails to recognize that across the Middle East Sunnis and Shia are engaged in a struggle for political power and religious legitimacy. Sunni rebel groups backed by Sunnis in the Gulf are fighting a Shia regime in Damascus backed by a Shia theocracy in Iran. The same is happening in Iraq, where a Shia authoritarian regime backed by Iran is fighting Sunni groups backed by the Gulf Arabs. Other actors, like the U.S., Turkey, and the Kurds, make this a truly volatile international conflict. . . . This is the broad outline of what we see as a Sunni-Shia war for the Arab world, and its two most volatile fronts, Iraq and Syria. If Assad falls, this conflict won’t be over.

Sheesh.

IT’S NICE TO SEE A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL STAND UP FOR CIVIL RIGHTS: Oconee sheriff boycotts weapons dealer after gun control policy.

OCONEE COUNTY, GA (CBS ATLANTA) – Oconee County Sheriff Scott Berry said neither he nor his law enforcement agency will purchase weapons anytime soon from a major firearms dealer, after that dealer made a change to its policy on who can buy certain types of weapons.

Dana Safety Supply, which has a store in Sugar Hill, recently amended its policy to exclude any non-law enforcement customers from purchasing semi-automatic weapons. . . . Berry said that kind of exclusion of civilians from purchasing weapons they’re lawfully allowed to own is the reason he is boycotting the company.

Good for him.

IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS, a nice brief review, by Walter Russell Mead, of The Higher Education Bubble.

And note that in a couple of weeks, I’ll be addressing another piece of the puzzle in The K-12 Implosion.

WELL, GIVEN THAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION HAS ADOPTED HIS NATIONAL-SECURITY PROGRAM, MAYBE THEY’LL START SHRINKING GOVERNMENT NOW: David Addington Takes Over Heritage Foundation Center for Legal and Judicial Policy. “Addington will focus on combating excessive claims of federal government power and overreaching claims of the Executive branch.”

CHANGE: Obama’s ‘spending problem is getting worse, not better.’

AT AMAZON, New Year’s markdowns on Exercise & Fitness equipment.

Also, today only: Up to 51% off on H&R Block Tax Software.

GERTRUDE HIMMELFARB: Compassionate Conservatism, Properly Understood.

DR. HOUSING BUBBLE: Banks ignoring foreclosure in wealthy housing markets – Beverly Hills MLS lists zero foreclosures for the 90210 zip code but distress inventory still high.

AMITY SHLAES IN INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Think Obama’s Tax Hikes Are Low Compared With Rates Of The 1950s? Think Again.

PUSHBACK: LGBT Group Takes Issue with Hagel Nomination, Urges Obama to Abandon.

NILE GARDINER: Barack Obama’s $7 million Hawaii vacation is an insult to America’s struggling middle class.

$16.4 trillion – that’s the latest figure for America’s massive national debt. Nearly $6 trillion of this debt was racked up in the first term of the Obama presidency – a 50 percent increase. It is horrifying to imagine what the debt will be when Obama leaves the White House in 2016, unless Congress has the willpower to stand in the way.

Meanwhile, as the world’s superpower is literally drowning in debt, President Obama is basking in the warmth of the beaches of Hawaii, at an exclusive resort way beyond the financial reach of most Americans. The president pays the cost of his own family’s accommodations, but there are a large number of associated costs which are paid from the public purse.

What is the actual cost of Obama’s lavish vacation to the American taxpayer? A staggering $7 million, according to veteran White House reporter Keith Koffler.

Remember when he was telling corporations not to have conferences in Las Vegas? I guess a sense of proportion is for the little people.

THE NEW YORK SUN ON ZERO DARK THIRTY:

There is a controversy surrounding the film for its depiction of torture, which moviegoers have to sit through in the first third or so of the film. The Manchester Guardian went so far as to liken Ms. Bigelow to the Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl (which would make the Obama administration what?). In fact the film treats torture in a way that we would characterize as more journalistic than anything else and, in any event, ambiguous. One can imagine, if still only that, the difficulty of sorting out the transcripts that torture produces. And the capacity for error. There is a particularly harrowing portrayal of the catastrophe at Forward Operating Base Chapman, where seven CIA operatives were slain by a suicide bomber in 2009.

Read the whole thing.

GOOD NEWS FOR ALL YOU UNEMPLOYED LAW GRADS: Case Western Dean: There’s No Oversupply of Lawyers. Yay!

UPDATE: He’s not winning many friends in the comments. And note this one:

Larry Mitchell was my corporations prof at GW. He was very big on teaching us the evils of corporations; the horrors of conflicts of interests amongst corporate boardmembers; and how badly minority shareholders could be treated due to a lack of voting power. The final exam was a joke – something to the effect of, “if you were going to rewrite Delaware corporate law, how would you do it?” But the evils of Big Academia? Conflicts of interest between university administrators and law students? How badly those law school administrators are treating their potential and actual students? Blinders…

As I keep saying, any other industry that behaved toward its customers as higher education does would be widely vilified.

WHEN REALITY COMES to low-information voters.

PAUL MIRENGOFF: Chuck Hagel’s nomination and the clarity it would bring. “Hagel has no natural constituency, except perhaps for those who want a foreign and defense policy that is tougher on Israel and softer on Iran. Unfortunately, as I have observed, Obama belongs to that constituency. . . . Nothing else can explain this odd nomination. Team Obama tried to couch it as a bipartisan act, inasmuch as Hagel was a Republican Senator. But key Republican Senators have made it clear that they don’t want Hagel at the Pentagon. Key Democrats have also failed to express enthusiasm over that prospect. Even Barney Frank opposes Hagel. If there’s a bipartisan consensus around Hagel, it’s that Obama should nominate someone else. Under these circumstances, nominating Hagel would make sense only if he brought something special to the table. And he does — his animus towards Israel and his desire to appease Iran, views that fall well outside the foreign policy and defense mainstream from which Defense Secretaries normally are selected.”

PHOTOS: Poverty, prostitutes and the long, slow death of the Soviet Union: Haunting pictures show desperate struggle to survive in last days of USSR.

GUN CONTROL PLANS IN LINCOLN, NEBRASKA?

JOURNALISM: Inmates using newspaper’s gun owner map to threaten guards, sheriff says. “Law enforcement officials from a New York region where a local paper published a map identifying gun owners say prisoners are using the information to intimidate guards. Rockland County Sheriff Louis Falco, who spoke at a news conference flanked by other county officials, said the Journal News’ decision to post an online map of names and addresses of handgun owners Dec. 23 has put law enforcement officers in danger.”

GUNS: Woman hiding with kids shoots intruder.

A woman hiding in her attic with children shot an intruder multiple times before fleeing to safety Friday.

The incident happened at a home on Henderson Ridge Lane in Loganville around 1 p.m. The woman was working in an upstairs office when she spotted a strange man outside a window, according to Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman. He said she took her 9-year-old twins to a crawlspace before the man broke in using a crowbar.

But the man eventually found the family.

“The perpetrator opens that door. Of course, at that time he’s staring at her, her two children and a .38 revolver,” Chapman told Channel 2’s Kerry Kavanaugh.

The woman then shot him five times, but he survived, Chapman said. He said the woman ran out of bullets but threatened to shoot the intruder if he moved.

“She’s standing over him, and she realizes she’s fired all six rounds. And the guy’s telling her to quit shooting,” Chapman said.

The woman ran to a neighbor’s home with her children. The intruder attempted to flee in his car but crashed into a wooded area and collapsed in a nearby driveway, Chapman said.

See, this is where one of those “assault weapons” might have come in handy.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “When some politician starts pontificating that no one needs more than a 10 round clip capacity (or 5, or 3) this is the story that should be shoved in their faces. She fired 6 shots, put 5 in the attacker and he was still kicking. What if there had been multiple attackers. Then that 30 round clip suddenly seems appropriate.”

See, that’s why I make sure the Insta-Wife has plenty of bullets. It’s out of kindness to any home invaders. Because what she’d do to them if she were out of bullets would be worse.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Donald Sensing emails:

I have some insight as a retired Army artillery officer. First, you never want to be in a gunfight with barely enough firepower. The principle is called, “overmatch,” which should be self explanatory. As a Marine friend told me, when you go to a gunfight, bring not just a gun, bring all your guns. Bring all your friends and have them bring all their guns.

Bottom line, you do not want a gunfight to be a fair fight, whether on the battlefield on inside your own home.

Every time I read some bozo gun controller talking about what he thinks is “not necessary” for self defense, it further proves that gun controllers know nothing about guns, but plenty about control, and the gun-control movement is heavily northeast urban in character.

There is more out here in the real world to defend against than muggers or home invaders, hence I explained, “Why I Am an Armed Pastor.”

I also read on another blog the comments by a western rancher who explained that he always carries a .223 semi-auto rifle when working his own property. Why? Because of wolves. Six charged him one day and it took far more than 10 rounds from his “assault” rifle to drop two of them, after which the other four fled. Naturally, he started shooting at them at long range and they were running fast to boot, so he missed most shots. Which is exactly right: “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes” is musket shooting, not a good tactic to defend against multiple predators.

But gun controllers don’t get things like that. They think everything works like on TV or the movies, when a shooter never misses and every hit immediately kills. A more ignorant bunch can hardly be identified in America today.

Well, that’s certainly true. And reader Ron Jones emails:

Take a look at the home in the story – this is the soccer mom haven, the bastion of the American middle where no evil doth enter, yet here is the worst scenario possible. Woman alone at home with her children. We need images like this house/setting to combat the images of the anti-gun lobby. Images are powerful!

Yes, and a guy who would chase down a woman and her kids to an attic crawl space was planning on something worse than lifting a TV, I suspect.

SPENGLER’S OMINOUS PROPHECY. Does decline lead to “a flight toward Caesarism?”

EUROPE: Desperate Spain Raids Pension Fund. “As more and more Spaniards retire, the government will have a major crisis on its hands as it attempts to pay pensioners through a fund composed mostly of its own debt.” Luckily, nothing like that could happen here.

OH, TO BE YOUNG AND HAMILTONIAN: The Founders’ Finance, And Ours.

Michael S. Greve reviews Thomas K. McCraw’s The Founders and Finance, which he calls “magnificent.”

SOME THOUGHTS ON GUNS FROM SAM HARRIS:

Coverage of the Newtown tragedy and its aftermath has been generally abysmal. In fact, I have never seen the “liberal media” conform to right-wing caricatures of itself with such alacrity. I have read articles in which literally everything said about firearms and ballistics has been wrong. I have heard major newscasters mispronounce the names of every weapon and weapons manufacturer more challenging than “Colt.” I can only imagine the mirth it has brought gun-rights zealots to see “automatic” and “semi-automatic” routinely confused, or to hear a major news anchor ominously declare that the shooter had been armed with a “Sig Sauzer” pistol. This has been more than embarrassing. It has offered a thousand points of proof that “liberal elites” don’t know anything about what matters when bullets start flying.

Consider the sneering response of the New York Times editorial page to Wayne LaPierre, the NRA vice president, after he suggested that we station a police officer at every school in the country:

His solution to the proliferation of guns, including semiautomatic rifles designed to kill people as quickly as possible, is to put more guns in more places. Mr. LaPierre would put a police officer in every school and compel teachers and principals to become armed guards…. Mr. LaPierre said the Newtown killing spree “might” have been averted if the killer had been confronted by an armed security guard. It’s far more likely that there would have been a dead armed security guard—just as there would have been even more carnage if civilians had started firing weapons in the Aurora movie theater.

The phrase “designed to kill people as quickly as possible” should tell us everything we need to know about the author’s grasp of the issue. The entire editorial is worth reading, in fact, because it makes the NRA’s response to Newtown seem enlightened by comparison.

Read the whole thing. Including this: “But my thoughts soon return to the armed guard, because our laws generally do not allow us to prevent crime—even when a person’s bad intentions are reasonably well understood. As someone who has received repeated death threats—several of them from the same person—I know that little can be done in advance of an attack. In fact, our laws do not even allow us to keep the most violent criminals permanently off our streets. Eighty percent of the people languishing in our maximum-security prisons will eventually be released back into society—many having become more violent for their time behind bars—and 70 percent of those will return to prison after committing further crimes. We live in a country where nonviolent drug offenders receive life sentences but a man who rapes a fifteen-year-old girl and cuts her arms off with a hatchet can be paroled for good behavior after eight years (only to kill again). I do not know what explains this impossible distortion of priorities, but given that it exists, I believe that good, trustworthy, and well-trained people should have guns. . . . Rather than new laws, I believe we need a general shift in our attitude toward public violence—wherein everyone begins to assume some responsibility for containing it. It is worth noting that this shift has already occurred in one area of our lives, without anyone’s having received special training or even agreeing that a change in attitude was necessary: Just imagine how a few men with box cutters would now be greeted by their fellow passengers at 30,000 feet.”

AT AMAZON, New Year’s markdowns in Kitchen & Dining.

UK/ARGENTINE FALKLANDS ROW REIGNITES:

The Falklands, windswept rocks a few hundred miles from the Argentinean coast, are home to no more than 3,000 people, most of whom claim descent from the UK as well as a stark loyalty to the land of their ancestors. The islands offer little value, aside from an unknown (possibly negligible) amount of oil under the seabed, and vast quantities of kelp.

Their true appeal lies in their potential to distract—for both Kirchner and Cameron. Argentine politicians always go for the Falklands when they’re having trouble at home, and Kirchner is having trouble indeed. The Argentine economy has been faltering under her rule, with soaring inflation and GDP growth of only 2 percent in 2012. Drumming up fervor among the fiercely nationalistic Argentinian population is a good way to divert attention from the sorry state of affairs at home. Meanwhile, Cameron gets to wrap himself in Thatcher’s mantle, flexing his iron muscles by stating his unwavering commitment to the sovereignty of British descendants abroad.

With its advanced crony-capitalism-under-the-guise-of-redistribution economy, Argentina is in deep trouble. Good thing nothing like that could ever happen here.

CHUCK HAGEL: “Let the Jews Pay For It.”

Related: Obama Expected To Pick Hagel.

IN MASSACHUSETTS, WARREN CAMPAIGN TURNS UP ZOMBIE WELFARE RECIPIENTS:

Red-faced state officials admitted last night they are trying to find as many as 19,000 missing welfare recipients — after the controversial taxpayer-funded voter registration pitches the state mailed to their addresses last summer were sent back marked “Return to sender, address unknown.”

The Department of Transitional Assistance contacted 477,000 welfare recipients who were on their books from June 1, 2011, to May 31, 2012, after settling a voter-rights lawsuit brought by Democratic-leaning activist groups that demanded an aggressive voter information effort by the state. That $274,000 push by DTA resulted in 31,000 new voter registrations — but revealed an alarming number of welfare recipients whose residency in Massachusetts can’t be confirmed.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find that votes were cast in their names . . . .

IMPORTANT NEWS FROM SCIENCE: Hot Chocolate Tastes Better In An Orange Cup.

FROM THE INSTA-WIFE, A RESPONSE TO DR. MARTIN SELIGMAN: PC Rhetoric Won’t Stop Mass Murder. “Why such a simplistic solution to such a complex problem?”