ARISTOCRATS, then and now. Plus ca change . . .

A CHEERFUL LOOK AT THE ECONOMY, from Tim Cavanaugh. “So make it a lean Christmas. You’re gonna need those Krugerrands.” Uh oh.

IN THE MAIL: From Sasha Abramsky, Inside Obama’s Brain.

GERARD VAN DER LEUN on the subtle rewards of last-minute shopping.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Process of passing health care a debacle. “Congressional Democrats started out with a CBO score they wanted, and worked backward to the bill. They’ve been pretty explicit about the fact that no one wants this actual bill; rather, the plan is to pass basically anything, and then go and totally rewrite it when the budget spotlight is off. I’m not aware of any other piece of legislation that was passed this way. Essentially, the Democrats have finished the process of gaming the CBO scores. They’re now meaningless. You don’t pass a piece of legislation that bears any resemblance to what you intend to end up with; you pass a piece of legislation that gets a good CBO score, and then go and alter it piece by piece. . . . At every step, the bill is probably more likely to get worse than to get better. At any rate, passing a bill based on either a meaningless CBO score, or the notion that it can be rewritten to spec at some later date, is not a process for generating good legislation.”

THE IMPACT OF THE TIGER WOODS SCANDAL on his charities.

ILYA SOMIN: The Myth of an Expert Consensus on the Constitutionality of an Individual Mandate. “It probably is true that more constitutional law scholars believe that the mandate is constitutional than believe the opposite. But this simply reflects the fact that most constitutional law professors, like most other academics, are overwhelmingly left of center.” At most there’s a consensus that courts will abrogate their responsibilities.

OKAY, IF YOU’RE STILL LOOKING FOR LAST-MINUTE GIFTS, you pretty much will have to visit an actual store. Or send an Amazon gift card. They have printable ones. . ..

RASMUSSEN: 29% Say Economy Getting Better, 47% Say Worse. Plus this: “Overall, just 13% say they’re spending more on gifts this year compared to a year ago. Sixty-six percent (66%) are spending less. Ten percent (10%) did most or all of their shopping online while 49% did not of it in that manner.”

AGAIN: BlackBerry Breakdown Puts Users In An Uproar.

ROSS DOUTHAT: “The argument about what went wrong with California is really an argument about the future of America.” Let’s make sure it doesn’t turn out like California, okay?

THE ENGINEERS WHO SAVED CHRISTMAS. A column of mine from a few years ago that’s held up pretty well.

THE WAGES OF OBAMACARE: A fast-spreading Joker epidemic. It’ll be harder to stop than H1N1!

ANN ALTHOUSE: I say Obama never intended to close Guantanamo.

PETER WEHNER: The Culture Of Corruption. “When it comes to the public outrage that will emerge based on the deals that took place to secure passage of the Senate health-care bill, the degree of tone-deafness among Democrats is nothing short of startling. . . . These people strike me as hermetically sealed off from how most of the rest of the country view this subject. As these backroom deals become more and more widely known, anger will swell up among voters. It is bad enough to jam through a bill on a strict party-line-vote against overwhelming opposition from the public; for it to have happened only because various Members of Congress were (legally) bribed will magnify the intensity of the opposition. And for politicians to take such obvious pride in the pay-off will make things even worse. The populist, anti-Washington wave out there, which is already quite large, will only grow, and grow, and grow.”

MICKEY KAUS: Healthcare: The CBO’s Alternate Universe. Plus this: “Tip for Timid Pundits: The prediction that Democratic health care bill will not reduce the deficit over the long run is about as safe a year-end prediction as you could make. Even with all the budget gimmickry, it wouldn’t help cut the budget much–Jon Cohn has the unconvincing graphs to prove it!”

IOWAHAWK CHANNELS CAPRA: It’s A Wonderful Bill.

REPORTING FROM TODAY’S anti-ObamaCare protest outside Claire McCaskill’s office.

More coverage from Michelle Moore.

WILL 2010 BE the year of bankrupt governments? The trouble with socialism is, sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.

HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN, JIGGITY-JIG. Hope you had a nice Festivus!

MAYO ON MEDICARE.

A SMALL, BUT TELLING, example of government waste.

HAVING A VERY CHARITABLE CHRISTMAS.

JOHN SCALZI: The Winners and Losers of ’00s SciFi Movies.

BEST MOVIES OF THE DECADE.