THE NEW GRINCH: Relatives with eco-friendly gifts! Hey, nothing wrong with a nice compact-fluorescent stocking stuffer. But that this is being mocked in the New York Times suggests that overearnest environmentalism is getting tiresome even in PC circles.

My present for Al Gore this year? A commercial airline timetable. [Hope it works out better than that book on filmmaking did. –ed. I thought it would just be a harmless hobby!]

BRENDAN LOY: Hurricane forecasters say seasonal errors are hurting their credibility. I think they’re right.

MICHAEL YON: More on British forces at war.

Plus, Iraq: Beyond the drop in violence.

I HAVE TO SAY that when the Clintons were off the national stage, I didn’t miss stuff like this.

UPDATE: Or this, though technically the Huma Abedin story is new.

SARKOZY INSPIRES more admiration from Americans.

JEFF SOYER on gun control as a wedge issue in 2008.

WITH A PUBLICATION DATE OF NOVEMBER 28, this comes out just a little too late for me. Up late last night with sudden plumbing problems. Ugh. I knew enough to do first aid by opening the cleanout pipe to relieve the pressure, but it took Roto-Rooter to do the rest. The guy showed up just before midnight and did a good job; not bad for the Sunday night after Thanksgiving.

WHO’S FUNNY on the Supreme Court.

KILL YOUR KID, get alimony?

COULD THE YOUTUBE REVOLUTION backfire?

ADVICE TO THE DEMOCRATS, from Abu Muqawama.

MCCAIN POUNDS CLINTON ON IRAQ: And actually some others:

“Is that the same Sen. Clinton that said she had to suspend disbelief in order to acknowledge to that the strategy of the surge was succeeding?” McCain said in reference to Clinton’s statement that the United States should stop trying to intervene in a “civil war” in Iraq. “Clearly, it’s succeeding. You would have to suspend disbelief to believe that it’s not.”

McCain later said Clinton’s support for a phased withdrawal from Iraq “would have been a catastrophe for the United States of America.”

“Look, now the same people who were saying seven or eight months were saying you can’t succeed militarily, we’ve succeeded military. Sen. Edwards used to call it the ‘McCain strategy.’ He doesn’t call it that anymore,” McCain claimed. “Their record is wrong on this. My record is right.”

He’s giving them both barrels.

MICKEY KAUS wonders why D.C. didn’t back down in the Heller case: “How stupid were the gun-controllers in the D.C government to persist in their cause? The result may be a ruling that after 200 years actually gives meaning to distressingly clear language of the Amendment. Couldn’t gun-controllers from the rest of the country have talked them out of it?” I believe that there were some efforts to get the ordinance in question repealed, but obviously they weren’t enough.

I GUESS THE PORKBUSTERS LEFT HIM “TOO DAMN TIRED” TO CARRY ON : Trent Lott will resign. He will not be missed.

UPDATE: A Trent Lott roundup.

IT’S GREENHOUSE FRIENDLY! “Gordon Brown will call for an acceleration of nuclear power today in a speech to business leaders designed to show he is focused on the long term and will not buckle in the face of negative headlines.”

FINALLY, SOME GOOD FROM TERMITES: “Termites — notorious for their voracious appetite for wood, rendering houses to dust and causing billions of dollars in damage per year — may provide the biochemical means to a greener biofuel future. The bellies of these tiny beasts actually harbor a gold mine of microbes that have now been tapped as a rich source of enzymes for improving the conversion of wood or waste biomass to valuable biofuels.” (Via Rand Simberg.)

SANDY LEVINSON:

According to a blog published by the New York Times, Hillary Clinton has told Iowa voters, “I believe in the Second Amendment, and I don’t see any contradiction between the Second Amendment and laws that keep guns out of the hands of criminals.” The irony in this statement is that her husband did a great service to the Republican takeover in 1994 by relentlessly pushing his symbolic “assault weapons ban.” According to Stanford political scientist Morris Fiorina, it probably cost the Democrats at least six seats in the House (including Speaker Tom Foley from Eastern Washington and Jack Brooks, the long-time Texan head of the House Judiciary Committee) . . . So I take Sen. Clinton’s declaration of support for the Second Amendment–the next question, of course, is what precisely she “believes” the Second Amendment means in 2007–is the best evidence possible for the new-found respect it gathers, at least rhetorically, across the political spectrum.

Indeed. I can’t say I’m surprised by Hillary’s reaction. Or Obama’s.

HUCKABEE VS. THE SAUDIS: “Consumers are financing both sides in the war on terror because of the actions of U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said Sunday. . . . ‘The United States has been far too involved in sort of looking the other way, not only at the atrocities of human rights and violation of women,’ Huckabee said on CNN’s ‘Late Edition.'”