HILLARY CLINTON SOCK PUPPETS.

Should’ve hired an expert!

MICHAEL BARONE: Lessons from the Surge.

A BIG PAKISTAN ROUNDUP from Jules Crittenden.

A LAME CHRISTMAS VIDEO that takes the cake:

Via FrontBurner.

HERE’S PROF. KENNETH ANDERSON’S REVIEW of Jack Goldsmith’s The Terror Presidency. Our podcast interview with Goldsmith is here.

MORE ON THE PROBLEMS AT HARPER’S.

DUDES, YOU’RE BEHIND THE CURVE: This is the blender to have.

HUCKABEE SLIPPING? I don’t think polls are much use in predicting the Iowa caucuses, but we’ll know soon enough.

SAUDI ARABIAN nanotechnology.

JOHN EDWARDS: Obama living in Never-Never Land.

The former North Carolina senator labeled “ridiculous” comments made by the Obama campaign that seemed to link former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s vote to authorize the use of force against Iraq, embraced Sen. Barack Obama’s politics over Clinton’s, and said an anti-Obama flier from a pro-Clinton union was “misleading” and “deceptive.”

Ouch.

HUCKABEE’S BAD WEEK continues.

More here, including video.

WHAT’S ON Tom Goldstein’s iPhone.

MICHAEL YOUNG LOOKS FOR NEOCONS IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION and can’t seem to find any: “So maybe it’s time to stop referring to the neocon policies of the Bush administration. The neocons are gone, many for so long that no one seems to remember their leaving. What we now have in Washington is a mishmash of old political realism and improvisation, topped with increasingly empty oratory on freedom and democracy. That should please quite a few of Bush’s domestic critics. He’s returned to the futile routine in the Middle East that they always urged him to.”

In other words, the bureaucracy won, with predictable results.

BENAZIR BHUTTO MAY BE DEAD, but she’s got a book coming out entitled Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West. Interestingly, the Insta-Wife used to babysit for Bhutto’s agent, Andrew Wylie. Well, it’s interesting to me, anyway.

A YEAR-END DEFENSE OF REBECCA AGUILAR: “It might have something to do with the fact that the shooter is white.” [LATER: That link’s stopped working. Try this one.]

If Aguilar’s behavior was so seemly, then why did KDFW move so quickly to get the video off the Web? (More here, And background here.)

MICKEY KAUS: “Truthchecking the MSM’s Truthcheckers.”

NAOMI WOLF’S regrets.

WHAT? COLONEL SANDERS ISN’T AN ACTUAL COLONEL in the United States Army? Never mind.

THIS SEEMS LIKE A NON-STORY: Giuliani advised the maker of Oxycontin. So what? Yeah, it gets abused — most drugs do — but it also provides a lot of people with pain relief. I think the “crusade” against Oxycontin is just more drug-war hysteria, putting Giuliani on the side of the angels here. Well, paid on the side of the angels, but that’s as much as you can ask from lawyers in private practice . . . .

GO FIGURE: Traffic on Daily Kos Decreasing As Primaries Approach? Well, Kos has been pretty thoroughly co-opted, and become part of the Democratic establishment himself, which no doubt makes the site seem less fresh and interesting.

UPDATE: An alternate explanation: “Daily Kos is less fresh and interesting than in the past. But that’s because Kos hasn’t been as active there. He has stretched himself thin by taking on columns for establishment media outlets like Newsweek and The Hill. He’s also the father of two children as of April. . . . The Kos brand is languishing because the blogger is the brand and the blogger has more than his blog to feed these days.” That’s a good point, though of course the two aren’t entirely inconsistent.

Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus wonders if it’s General Petraeus’s fault: “I was at a very nice left-wing party over the holidays and the youthful antiwar types were saying that traffic was down on all the left-wing sites because of … Iraq. … That’s not what I said. It’s what they said. … Iraq just isn’t as salient now that it doesn’t seem to be spiraling into apocalypse. . . . Of course, some right-wing sites seem to be experiencing a mild decline since August also. Maybe the whole blogosphere was about Iraq!” Hmm. InstaPundit traffic is up considerably since August. But then, InstaPundit has a somewhat broader focus than just politics and Iraq. Come for the war, stay for the nanotechnology! And the gadgets! And the science fiction recommendations! And the podcasts . . . .