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.

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?”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Fight Rust — And Win.

AT AMAZON, new releases in Historical Fiction.

LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Alexis Garcia: How The Obama Administration Is Dumbing Down Education.

PETER ORSZAG: Obama lost leverage for fiscal fights ahead. “Despite Democratic claims to the contrary, President Obama’s former top budget adviser thinks his old boss has lost leverage for the budget battles to come in the wake of this week’s deal avoiding an immediate fall over the ‘fiscal cliff.’”

ANDY KESSLER: In the Privacy Wars, It’s iSpy vs. gSpy. “Big Brother is watching us. But we are watching back. . . . I know the precise number of red-light cameras because a website (poi-factory.com) crowdsources their locations and updates them daily for download to GPS devices. And 30 million surveillance cameras are a pittance compared with the 327 million cellphones in use across America, almost all of them with video cameras built in.”

MESSAGE TO LAW SCHOOL APPLICANTS: Caveat Emptor. “There is a crisis in law-school education, but don’t expect the institutions to tell potential applicants about it. In short, there are far too many graduates for the number of jobs available, and the majority of those who get jobs are not being paid nearly enough to service their debt.”

Related: How Law Schools Evade Market Competition.

AMY ALKON: I get tired of the notion that men don’t show their feelings. “What they don’t do is show them like women do, in the Approved Women’s Magazine Way Of Doing It.”

JOHN TIERNEY: Why You Won’t Be the Person You Expect to Be.

HARRY REID’S FILIBUSTER PLAN really about ramming through hard-left Supreme Court nominees? Such a move would seriously undercut the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, but I doubt they care.

ISN’T THAT BASICALLY JUST DEFAULT? Paying off the debt with a coin arbitrarily valued at $1 Trillion? It’s a nice touch to make it a platinum coin, but it might as well be a dog turd. The Gods Of The Copybook Headings are clearing their throats.

CHANGE: Leading Environmental Activist’s Blunt Confession: I Was Completely Wrong To Oppose GMOs. “As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.”

MARRIAGE PENALTY: TIME FOR A TAX DIVORCE.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Obama’s New Year’s Resolution: More Drone Strikes.

IN THE MAIL: Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It.

STEPHEN L. CARTER: Angry at the NRA? That Won’t Reduce Gun Violence. “Support for stricter U.S. gun laws hasn’t jumped as fast or as far in recent weeks as many liberals had hoped and expected. If you’re wondering why, maybe the reason is the shakiness of the public’s trust in government itself. . . . We are now approaching four years since the U.S. Senate enacted a budget. The last was in April 2009. And bear in mind that federal law requires an annual budget. Imagine the ire of the senators toward a private firm that treated legal requirements so casually. Amid such ineptitude, ‘Trust us, we’ll protect you,’ isn’t a very persuasive case to make to the tens of millions of Americans who have guns — often very powerful ones — in their homes. And directing fury at gun owners for their lack of trust isn’t likely to increase their faith in government.”

ESSENCE OF DRUDGE.

WELL, THERE’S GOOD MONEY IN DOOMSAYING. JUST ASK AL GORE! America: Doomed by Scarcity, Doomed by Plenty, Doomed, Doomed!

Pessimists move so fast they can make your head spin. A few months ago, the conventional wisdom held that America was running out of oil and gas—and so was the whole world. Peak oil and an age of scarcity were falling upon us. Alas and alack, o woe!

But then a few people and publications, including VM, began to take note of something new: vast, once-inaccessible U.S. energy reserves that might outstrip all the reserves in the Middle East (and Canada has even more than we do).

This did not fox pessimists and worriers for long. David Rothkopf has gotten in fastest with what we expect will soon be a common theme: America, once doomed because it had no more oil, is now even more doomed because it has too much.

As long as there’s a market, people will move to fill it.

HARSHING THE NARRATIVE: Study: Affirmative-Action Bans May Actually Speed Integration.

JAMES TARANTO: ‘Tokenism’ vs. ‘Diversity:’ The left’s racially charged attack on Sen. Tim Scott. Among others: “White liberals like Timothy Noah and Maureen Dowd seem to enjoy the frisson of denouncing Justice Thomas in racially charged terms that would be regarded as invidious if not career-ending in reference to any nonconservative black person.” Frisson or not, it’s still racism.

AT AMAZON, natural and organic groceries.

Also, today only: Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook, $699.99 (30% off).

GETTING IT GOOD AND HARD (CONT’D): Workers making $30,000 will take a bigger hit on their pay than those earning $500,000 under new fiscal deal.

NOW ON YOUTUBE: InstaVision: I talk with Bob Owens about guns and gun control.

SO I RAN THIS DEFICIT CHART YESTERDAY, pointing out that things were actually improving in Bush’s presidency until the election of a Democratic congress in 2007:

And the Anchoress emailed:

The deficit WAS being paid down in both 2005 and 2006, (yes, before the Pelosi congress came in, in 2007), and why?

Because unemployment was low, people were working and that meant tax revenues were approaching record heights, and the deficit was being paid down.

This is confirmed by none other than the “paper of record.”

2005: “Sharp Rise in Tax Revenue to Pare U.S. Deficit.”
2006: “Surprising Jump in Tax Revenues Is Curbing Deficit.”

I reminded folks about this in 2010, when the Democrats and the NY Times seemed to have forgotten same.

it can’t be reminded enough. :-)

Apparently not.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Tax Deal A Victory For Hollywood Cronyism.

I say: Repeal The Hollywood Tax Cuts!

BYRON YORK: Republicans Bet On Stronger Hand In Spending Fight. “Our view is that the revenue question has now been settled. It’s behind us. Now we fight on spending, and we’ve got two good opportunities to do so coming up — the debt limit and the continuing resolution.”

JOHN STOSSEL: No Regulation? No Problem. Intuition leads us to think—wrongly—that without government we’d be victims of fraud.

It is scary to think about a world without regulation. Intuition leads us to think that without government we’d be victims of fraud, as I explain in my latest book, “No, They Can’t!” But our intuition is wrong.

Consider this: An entire sector of the economy operates almost entirely without government controls. Complete strangers exchange big money there every day.

It’s the Internet. It does have regulation, just not government regulation.

On my next TV show, titled “Freedom 2.0″ (which the Fox Business Network airs this Thursday at 9 p.m. EST), economics professor Ed Stringham explains that Paypal.com, which transfers billions of dollars for people, at first assumed they needed government help to prevent fraud.

“They faced fraudsters from all over the world. They turned to the FBI,” says Stringham. “But the FBI had no idea who these people were.”

So PayPal invented a new form of regulation. “They developed a private fraud detection system, where they used computers to say, ‘This might be fraudulent,’ and then it would send it to a human to investigate that.” That dramatically reduced fraud, and PayPal thrived.

Most people who are victims of fraud don’t find law enforcement especially helpful.

MICHAEL GRAHAM: “Did Republicans end up winning the ‘fiscal cliff’ deal?”

REGULATION: Iceland won’t let teen use her given name. “Her name sounds more mainstream than Icelandic singer Björk or billionaire entrepreneur Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson, but since it’s not included in the country’s registry of 1,853 approved girl names, she can’t use it.”

GETTING IT GOOD AND HARD: At Democratic Underground, a poster asks: “What happened that my SS withholdings in my paycheck just went up?”

HE’S BEEN REELECTED, SO THERE’S NO NEED TO PRETEND: Women Excluded From White House Meetings. “The White House’s Flickr account recently released a photo of President Barack Obama and his top advisers. The complete absence of women in the image is another reminder that females are underrepresented in Obama’s staff. Additionally, the president still pays his female employees significantly less than their male counterparts.”

TECH HAS BEEN ON OF THE FEW ECONOMIC BRIGHT SPOTS BECAUSE IT’S LESS REGULATED. SO . . . Tech Giants Brace For More Regulatory Scrutiny.

ACADEMIC NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS YOU WON’T KEEP. I pretty much do the “write every day” part . . . .

JOHN HAWKINS: The 20 Most Annoying Liberals of 2012.

AND YET, COMPARED TO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, HE’S SMALL CHANGE:

A few years ago, at a Las Vegas convention for magicians, Penn Jillette, of the act Penn and Teller, was introduced to a soft-spoken young man named Apollo Robbins, who has a reputation as a pickpocket of almost supernatural ability. Jillette, who ranks pickpockets, he says, “a few notches below hypnotists on the show-biz totem pole,” was holding court at a table of colleagues, and he asked Robbins for a demonstration, ready to be unimpressed. Robbins demurred, claiming that he felt uncomfortable working in front of other magicians. He pointed out that, since Jillette was wearing only shorts and a sports shirt, he wouldn’t have much to work with.

“Come on,” Jillette said. “Steal something from me.”

Again, Robbins begged off, but he offered to do a trick instead. He instructed Jillette to place a ring that he was wearing on a piece of paper and trace its outline with a pen. By now, a small crowd had gathered. Jillette removed his ring, put it down on the paper, unclipped a pen from his shirt, and leaned forward, preparing to draw. After a moment, he froze and looked up. His face was pale.

“Fuck. You,” he said, and slumped into a chair.

Robbins held up a thin, cylindrical object: the cartridge from Jillette’s pen.

Also, Robbins gives the stuff back.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Food Stamps Aren’t for iPads … They’re for Food, People.

CREAM: Sunshine Of Your Love.

HOW TO CRIMINALIZE being a boy.

GREEN CAR UPDATE: Some Chevy dealers ceasing Volt sales due to costly tools.

AVOIDING TICKETS: Confessions Of A Traffic Cop.

AT AMAZON, New Year’s Markdowns on Tax Preparation Software. Great for everyone whose name isn’t Tim Geithner.

Also, foreign language software.

FREEDOM 2.0: I’ll be on the John Stossel show tonight on Fox Business at 9.

WRITE GAMBLING SOFTWARE, GO TO PRISON?

In a criminal case sure to make programmers nervous, a software maker who licenses a program used by online casinos and bookmakers overseas is being charged with promoting gambling in New York because authorities say his software was used by others for illegal betting in that state.

New York authorities say that about $2.3 million that Robert Stuart and his company, Extension Software, received in cash and money orders for licensing his software constitutes direct proceeds of illegal, U.S.-based bookmaking operations.

“These defendants abetted large-scale illegal gambling in the U.S. and abroad,” said District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. in a press release in October when Stuart was charged. “In doing so, they gave bettors an easy way to place illegal wagers, and created an appetite for further unlawful activity.”

But Stuart, who has been charged along with his wife and brother-in-law with one felony count for promoting gambling in New York through their software firm, says that his company sells the software only to entities outside the U.S. and that he’s not aware of anyone using it in the U.S. or using it to take illegal bets in the U.S. He also says the software doesn’t place bets, it simply provides online gambling sites with the infrastructure to select and display which sporting events they want to offer for betting and also stores the bets.

Pathetic.

AN INTERVIEW with Greg Lukianoff on his Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship And The End Of American Debate.

ROGER SIMON: Leftism: ‘Forget It, Jake. It’s Chinatown.’

Leftism has devolved into a kind of scam run not only on others but also on the self. Leftists are brilliant at convincing themselves of their own altruism and then broadcasting it to the public, thus providing cover for the most conventionally greedy and selfish behaviors. We see that in our society all the time: the quondam Marxists of Hollywood, the media, and the academy blathering on about economic equality while living lives the Medici could not have dreamed of.

Part of this construct is a “prevent game,” a public persona and system erected so privilege cannot be questioned or undermined. A nomenklatura more successful and sophisticated than anything ever conceived in the Soviet Union. The result of this is a highly stratified society. As is well known but scarcely reported, blacks and Latinos have actually done worse under Obama than other groups. Normally, that would be unconscionable, considering the rhetoric. But as we know, it’s all about the rhetoric. Reality is unimportant — an inconvenience.

Relatively unbridled capitalism has always the best way out of this, the best way to true social mobility, but our nomenklatura doesn’t want to admit this because it might threaten them and their perquisites. It would blow their cover.

I think it’s already blown. Along with many a second Chakra.

TAKING OBAMA-WORSHIP TO A NEW LEVEL: “The State Is My Shepherd, I Shall Not Want.” Ordinarily I don’t like the term “sheeple,” but when you’re going on about shepherds. . . . Okay, it’s a parody, but with a real basis.

NEIGHBORING STATES POACH JOBS FROM CALIFORNIA. And not just neighbors: “There’s nothing new about governors competing to bring jobs to their state, but rarely has it been this brazen. The Wall Street Journal reports that neighboring states, as well as some states as far flung as Georgia and Tennessee, are stationing official ‘business recruiters’ in California to convince businesses to move their operations out of state.”

Who needs a “business recruiter” to convince people to move their businesses out of state, when you’ve already got Jerry Brown and the California Legislature? . . . .

BRANDING AND the psychology of color.

WHAT’S UP NEXT for Pixar.

AT AMAZON, the Blu-Ray Deal Of The Week.

REASON TV: 38 Studios: Curt Schilling’s Crony Capitalism Debacle.

HARSHING THE NARRATIVE: L.A. Times: 2012 is tragic, but mass shootings not increasing, experts say.

LEARNING: ‘Invisible Exhibition’ opens eyes to blindness. “The visitors take on the role of the blind.”

FASTER, BETTER, CHEAPER: Architecture Pirates May Finish Copycat Building Before Original. Well, two out of three, anyway.

POLITICO: Obama’s Debt Problem. “The staggering national debt — up about 60 percent from the $10 trillion Obama inherited when he took office in January 2009 — is the single biggest blemish on Obama’s record. . . . Obama has long emphasized Bush’s role in digging the immense hole. But he owns it now, and it’s a significant political liability as he girds for a fast-approaching brawl with the GOP over how to deal with converging deadlines of a new debt ceiling fight and the need to come up with $1 trillion in deficit reduction mandated by the so-called ‘sequester.’”

You can blame Bush all you want, and Obama likes to talk about “two wars on the credit card,” but this chart illustrates that things were actually improving until we got a Democratic Congress in 2007, and got worse when we elected Obama.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Work Out Secretly At The Office.

READER BOOK PLUG: From reader Michael Rank, From Muhammed to Burj Khalifa: A Crash Course in 2,000 Years of Middle East History. $2.99 on Kindle.

HARSHING THE NARRATIVE: FBI: More People Killed with Hammers, Clubs Each Year than Rifles. I like the photo of Chuck “Clawhammer” Schumer.

THE HILL: Boehner re-elected as Speaker; Eight Republicans defect in vote.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Mono, ‘The Kissing Disease’, Really Is Spread Primarily Through Kissing.

WALTER SHAPIRO: Hey, don’t dump on Boehner and McConnell.

GALLERY: Dance-stepping back in time: Vintage photos of an Oklahoma square dance that capture an innocent slice of 1940s America. I don’t think these couples are square-dancing, though.

THE ART OF PROTEST in 2012.

IN THE MAIL: Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future.

HARVEY SILVERGLATE: Black and Whitey: How the Feds Disable Criminal Defense. “The feds have used certain techniques that virtually assure convictions of both the innocent and the guilty, the wealthy and the poor, the violent drug dealer and the white collar defendant, indifferent to the niceties of ‘due process of law,’ particularly the right to effective assistance of legal counsel. . . . These techniques are the rule, not the exception, when the Department of Justice really wants to win a case.”

HEH: Al Jazeera hands Al Gore the second-chakra-releasing sum of $100 million. Best headline on this story yet. But wait, there’s more: “Hey, I just thought up a slogan Al Jazeera can use as it promotes itself to the American people: You Can Call Us Al.”

I’LL TAKE SHORT-LIVED INTERNATIONAL LAW DOCTRINES FOR $500, ALEX: Duty to Protect: RIP. “A new UN report estimates that 60,000-plus people have been killed in Syria between March 2011 and today. Worse, the rate of casualties is increasing as the war drags on, as both sides begin to use heavier weapons. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay put it bluntly: ‘Collectively, we have fiddled at the edges while Syria burns.’ . . . It’s certainly not too late for the U.S. to get more involved in fixing the mess in Syria, but our options are now considerably worse than they were two years ago. Years have passed, and we’re continuing to pay for our ill-advised decision to intervene in Libya while ignoring the more serious crisis in Syria—as are hundreds of thousands of Syrians.”

I guess this is more of that “smart diplomacy” we were promised. Hillary Clinton was unavailable for comment because of health reasons, but somebody could ask Susan Rice or Samantha Power. . . . .

MORE, MORE, MORE! After The Fiscal Cliff, What Do Democrats Want? “President Obama just successfully raised taxes on the rich. Is he going to go back and do it again in a few months? I’m not sure about the optics here: while I think that a tax increase on the rich was popular and inevitable, I don’t think that Democrats will do well to position themselves as the party that does nothing but demand more tax increases, even on rich people.”

Oh, I think they’re okay with that. The real problem is that further tax increases will hit Democratic constituencies particularly hard.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

You’re missing the point. Look at what was passed in the last-minute fiscal cliff parachute… the Democratic strategy is not just to raise taxes on the rich, but also to exempt their favored constituencies from those taxes. If tax rates are intolerably high for everyone with money, everyone with money has to go to the democrats and beg for a loophole in smoke-filled back rooms. This is exactly what politicians want: invisible leverage, the wealthy and powerful coming to them, hat in hand, begging to be allowed to get their money back in a secret tax loophole.

Well, yes, but that only works for the Warren Buffett/George Soros rich people. Lawyers, ad execs, and nonprofit executives making $500K/year can’t do that. And they got significant pushback from the NY and CA delegations for that very reason.

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE invents Craigslist.

WHEN ROBOTS TAKE ALL OUR JOBS.

I, for one, welcome our new robot employees.

WELL, HAWAII WAS BECKONING: Obama signs ‘fiscal cliff’ bill using autopen.

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

Also, today only: Trigger Point Performance The Grid Revolutionary Foam Roller. I’m a big fan of foam-rolling for addressing all sorts of muscle pain. We have a 3-foot foam roller, but I just ordered one of these because it’s smaller and something we might take with us when traveling.

INSTAVISION: I talk with Bob Owens about gun-control efforts and what they mean.

DAVID SHUSTER: Time For David Gregory To Apologize.

Meet the Press is the oldest and most treasured public affairs show on television. The program’s host, merely by occupying the job, is a leader in broadcast journalism and in the Washington, D.C. community where the show is based.

This is why the ongoing silence of David Gregory and NBC News — following his apparent on-air violation of D.C. gun laws — is so disconcerting. By choosing not to comment, not only is Gregory diminished, but it harms the legacy of Meet the Press and leaves Washington, D.C. police with no opportunity to save face and move on.

Well, apology or not, he seems to be benefiting from a legal double standard. An apology won’t fix that.

ILLINOIS LAWMAKERS WANT TO BAN basically all modern firearms. “You would have a very short window to turn in your guns to the state police and avoid prosecution.” The bill sounds unconstitutional, but that’s never been a great concern in Illinois.

Plus, another aspect that fits the Illinois pattern: “Gun manufacturers in Illinois have already threatened to leave the area if laws limiting guns are put in place. ArmaLite owner Mark Westrom told FoxNews.com that he’s been fielding offers from at least two others states to move his operation if gun control laws in Illinois are pushed through.”

Related: Ted Nugent’s Open Letter To Joe Biden on Guns.

MORE, MORE, MORE! Obama: We raised taxes, but the rich still aren’t paying their fair share. I’d love to see someone pin him down as to exactly what constitutes a “fair share.”

UPDATE: Related: The Media And Democrats’ Flexible Definition Of “The Rich.” “Apparently to Democrats, the party of the little guy and the media, ‘The Rich’ doesn’t include General Electric, Citigroup, Diageo (makers of Puerto Rican Rum) Citi, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, American Wind Energy Association and The Motion Picture Association of America.”

IN THE ATLANTIC: The Homeschool Diaries: In New York City, teaching your own kids can make the most practical sense. “That first year, chatting with other homeschooling parents at soccer games, picnics, and after-church coffee hours, I found that our decision was far from unusual. Homeschooling has long been a philosophical choice for religious traditionalists and off-the-grid homesteaders, but for the parents we met—among them several actors, a jazz composer, a restaurateur, a TV chef, a Columbia University physical-plant supervisor, and a handful of college professors—it was a practical alternative to New York’s notoriously inadequate education system.”

Is this another foreshock of the coming K-12 implosion?

JAMES TARANTO: McFortress: An antigun newspaper avails itself of the Second Amendment. “Under normal circumstances, a company’s lawful security arrangements would hardly be newsworthy. But as we noted Monday, the Journal News provoked the bitter backlash that so frightened McBride by publishing a report in which it named residents of the two counties who have done exactly what the Journal News has now done: lawfully availed themselves of their rights under the Second Amendment. . . . This column does not begrudge the Journal News for exercising its Second Amendment right to armed self-defense. But doing so after attacking law-abiding citizens for doing exactly the same thing is the most stunning display of media hypocrisy we’ve seen since the ‘civility’ frenzy of early 2011.”

MORE ON THOSE UNDERFUNDED / OVER-GENEROUS PUBLIC PENSIONS: Calpers Seeks to Sue San Bernardino Over Pension Payments. “The California Public Employees’ Retirement System is seeking to sue bankrupt San Bernardino over missed pension payments, the second potentially precedent- setting fight the fund picked with a California city this year. San Bernardino can’t use U.S. bankruptcy law to justify its failure to make at least $5 million in payments, Calpers, the biggest U.S. public-employee pension fund, said in court papers filed Nov. 27. The motion relies on arguments the fund is also making in the bankruptcy of Stockton, California, and may be a warning to other cities struggling with high pension costs, said James E. Spiotto, a bankruptcy attorney and partner at Chapman & Cutler LLP in Chicago.”

It’s also a warning to anyone thinking of loaning those cities money.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Should You Go To Grad School? My Story.

NICK GILLESPIE ON GRIDLOCK:

The problem is usually denigrated as gridlock and laid at the feet of historically obstructionist Republicans. But none of that is true. Congress has been able to pass all sorts of stupid and generally terrible legislation under Obama and the fiscal cliff deal, whatever its particulars, merely underscores that fact.

The true obstructionists in Congress, at least when it comes to budget issues, are Senate Democrats, who haven’t completed any serious work in years. More specifically, the blame falls to Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and budget committee chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota. After a decades-long career in which he is inevitably held up as a great statesman – despite his inability to produce, much less push, a budget – Conrad is finally retiring. So maybe that will change finally.

Maybe.

WHY IS CHUCK HAGEL STILL IN THE MIX? “With liberal gay activists, key Republican senators and a bevy of pro-Israel groups vocally opposed to the former Nebraska senator, it is worthwhile to take a step back and answer some more basic questions. Let’s start with an issue that should concern the Obama administration and its allies, namely the significant policy differences between Hagel and the president. President Obama believes in tough sanctions against Iran; Hagel does not. The president insists that he wants good relations with Israel (and thereby can influence its decision-making with regard to Iran); Hagel has displayed a poisonous animosity toward the Jewish state. Hagel has advocated direct negotiations with Hamas; Obama has never gone this far. The difficulty in articulating to foes and friends our positions on an array of issues is greatly magnified when a critical cabinet officials has a long track record of disagreement with the president, or at least what the president says is his current policy.”

Personnel is policy. If Obama appoints Hagel, you’ll know what his policy is, regardless of what he says.

R.I.P.: Bob Munden, who has died aged 70, was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as “The Fastest Man with a Gun Who Ever Lived.”

AL JAZEERA BUYS CURRENT TV. “Mr. Gore and his partners were eager to complete the deal by Dec. 31, lest it be subject to higher tax rates that took effect on Jan. 1.”

That’s Irony #1. Irony #2 is Al Gore walking away with $100 million in dirty oil money. Well, it would be ironic if it weren’t so predictable. Al’s a whore, basically. Gore, I mean. Not Jazeera.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: “A few days before Christmas, the U.S. indicted three men at the Federal District courthouse in Brooklyn for plotting suicide bomb attacks. This is an extraordinary, almost unique case: none of the people or conduct has any connection to the U.S. The defendants are foreign nationals, captured by some African government ont their way to join up with al-Shabab, the Somali Islamist group. To be clear, there is no suggestion that they planned to target American nationals or facilities, or had even ever been to this country before. This is an aggressive – and unconstitutional – assertion of universal jurisdiction. The U.S. is prosecuting foreign nationals for their participation in a foreign civil war. . . . Two months after their arrest, the prisoners were secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in New York, then clandestinely taken into custody by the FBI and flown to the United States to face trial.”

Somewhere, Dick Cheney is smiling.

IF YOU’RE IN NEW ORLEANS THIS WEEKEND, you can drink with Volokh Conspiracy bloggers Saturday night.