QUINNIPIAC POLL: ObamaCare approval down to 36%.

READERS WRITE IN CHRIS DODD for “financial villain of the decade.”

BOB OWENS: Violence Policy Center Makes It Up as They Go Along — Again. “Would you trust the statistical and factual reporting acumen of an organization that can’t even tell the difference between someone being dead or alive?”

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: On Iran, a bipartisan message to Obama: Act now.

TN HOMEOWNER shoots, kills burglar. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away!

DID THE WAPO blow the snowball-fight coverage?

ANN ALTHOUSE STANDS UP for separation of Church and State.

ROGER KIMBALL: Pictures worth a thousand words.

SHOCKER: Left Now Admitting Obamacare Full of Budget Gimmicks.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: CopenCabana. “The Welt article doesn’t paint a very sympathetic picture of the President, but it’s not at all clear who won the round. The Financial Times says that China ‘treasures’ the agreement, despite being cast as the villain of the conference and defended itself from the charge it had abandoned the Third World. In exchange for what?”

MARKDOWNS ON computers and accessories.

D.C. POLICE CHIEF: Officer Was Wrong to Pull Gun At Snowball Fight.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Our Coming Medicare Debacle. “Medicare cuts range from easy to hard, and we just used up the easiest ones–cuts which, if you’ll notice, weren’t all that easy. Doing this bill means it will be even harder in the future to cut Medicare, because the cuts we will have to make will almost definitionally mean deeper service cuts, and greater political controversy. . . . So we aren’t done talking about healthcare. We haven’t even really started. Our budget problems loom as big as ever, and we just used up both political capital, and some of our stock of tax increases and spending cuts, to pay for something else.”

THE GHOST OF THE LAUGH TRACK survives.

SPENDING THE HOLIDAYS stripping. “When a customer complains that he’s ‘just not feeling’ the spirit, well, a quick smother of my cleavage relieves him of his grinchiness.”

SENATOR BEN NELSON GETS Nebraska backlash on health care vote.

JONATHAN ADLER ON ClimateGate and the Politicization of Peer Review: “What these and other episodes reveal was that there was a concerted effort to stage-manage the appearance of an ironclad consensus at the expense of the scientific process. Rather than make an open and honest argument that, despite persistent uncertainties, there is substantial theoretical and empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that human activity is contributing to a gradual warming of the atmosphere, they focused on squelching dissenting scientific views, corrupting science in the process.”

LISA KATAYAMA: Was it cruel to let poor kids in India play with my iPod? No, it was probably inspiring.

RESEARCH SHOCKER: Dogs better than human walking companions. “No surprise here. Oh, and cats aren’t getting you any exercise.”

THINK TANKS and the reporters who heart them.

MARKDOWNS OF 50% AND MORE on sports and outdoor stuff.

REASON TV: ObamaCare and Mission Creep.

RICHARD EPSTEIN: Why The Reid Bill Is Unconstitutional.

CORY DOCTOROW: Solve my story’s Mars-voyage physics-problem!

CODE TEA: Tea Parties Go Home! All Politics Is Local!