IN THE MAIL: From lawyer Leighton Rockafellow, Final Option, Diminished Capacity: A novel of legal suspense and Immaculate Deception.

IT’S NOT CHARITY WHEN YOU EXTRACT OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY AT GUNPOINT: When “I Can” Becomes “You Must.”

POLITICO: DEMOCRATIC SOUTH FINALLY FALLS. “For Democrats in the South, the most ominous part of a disastrous year may not have been what happened on Election Day but in the weeks since. After suffering an historic rout — in which nearly every white Deep South Democrat in the U.S. House was defeated and Republicans took over or gained seats in legislatures across the region — the party’s ranks in Dixie have thinned even further. . . . Protected by a potent mix of gerrymandering, pork, seniority and a friends-and-neighbors electorate, Democratic state representatives and senators managed to survive through the South’s GOP evolution—the Reagan years, the Republican landslide of 1994 and George W. Bush’s two terms. Yet scores of them retired or went down in defeat earlier this month. And at least ten more across three states have changed parties since the election, with rumors swirling through state capitols of more to come before legislative sessions commence in January. . . . Democrats lost both chambers of the legislature this year in North Carolina and Alabama, meaning that they now control both houses of the capitol in just two Southern states, Arkansas and Mississippi, the latter of which could flip to the GOP in next year’s election.”

NUMBER OF THE WEEK: 492: The number of days since the average borrower in foreclosure last made a mortgage payment. “In other words, people who default on their mortgages can reasonably expect, on average, to stay in their homes rent-free more than 16 months. In some states such as New York and Florida, the number is closer to 20 months.” Seems calculated to make people who are struggling to make their payments feel like suckers. “Millions of Americans still are paying their mortgages even though they owe more than their homes are worth. The more banks’ backlog grows, the more likely they are to join it, adding to the already giant pile of foreclosures weighing on the housing market.”

Just fertilizing the fields for middle-class anarchy.

PETER INGEMI: Pay No Attention to Those 63 Tea Party Victories in the Congress.

BLACK FRIDAY WEEKEND markdowns on jewelry.

AN IRISH BAILOUT DEAL, AND MORE: Will The EU Drop A ‘Shock & Awe’ Announcement Tonight To Stop The Crisis? I’ve been shocked at their incompetence for quite a while. And awed by their dishonesty. Does that count?

UPDATE: Krugman’s chickens come home to roost? Nah, whatever happens he’ll say they should have done more. It’s worth it for the umbrella photoshop, though.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED REPUBLICAN WE’D HAVE A BIBLE-READING “CHRISTIANIST” IN THE WHITE HOUSE. And they were right! Obama: I pray every night, read the Bible.

Praying and reading the Bible are part of his everyday life, President Obama said in a wide-ranging interview broadcast Friday.

Speaking with Barbara Walters, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama also described how they involve their daughters in daily prayer.

“Michelle and I have not only benefited from our prayer life, but I think the girls have too,” the president told Walters. “We say grace before we eat dinner every night. We take turns.”

Those people who told me what would happen if I voted Republican sure are right a lot.

UPDATE: Jim Treacher emails: “Remember Jesusland?” This was Ken Layne after the 2004 elections:

I’ve got a big problem with Jesusland. If you want to worship the ghost of a jew from the Roman Empire, that’s cool. Enjoy it! But when you people and your bizarre mystery cult claim the goddamned president as your prime convert who rules by the voices in his head, I call bullshit.

I guess we all live there, now. Change!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Yes, I did see this coming.

PORTLAND: Saved in spite of itself? “In 2005, leaders in Portland, Oregon, angry at the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on terror, voted not to allow city law enforcement officers to participate in a key anti-terror initiative, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. On Friday, that task force helped prevent what could have been a horrific terrorist attack in Portland. Now city officials say they might re-think their participation in the task force — because Barack Obama is in the White House.” Good point. There’s never a threat to civil liberties so long as there’s a Democratic President!

LOOKING FOR WAR ON TERROR NEWS? Check out Fred Pruitt’s Rantburg.

JOHN MAULDIN: Why it doesn’t feel like a recovery. “There is a theme to a lot of the positive news we’ve been getting lately: it is positive, but not by much. Normally at this time in a recovery we would be seeing 4-5% (or more!) GDP growth and some real recovery in employment.”

DR. GINA LOUDON: Fear Factor: Sarah Palin and 2012.

BLACK FRIDAY RETAIL SALES UP, but only by 0.3 percent. “Shoppers crowded stores on Black Friday but spent only a little more than last year on the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, data released Saturday shows. . . . Meanwhile, online merchants saw a 16 percent revenue spike, according to research company Coremetrics.” Not sure if the online increase is counted in the retail-sales number.

CHANGE: The Triumphant Return Of Hayek. (Via NewsAlert). “In a sign of the times, some of the most popular videos on YouTube this year are satires on economic policy; the latest lampoons the Fed amid a growing feeling that policymakers are committing what economist Friedrich Hayek called the ‘fatal conceit’ in micromanaging the economic cycle.”

YOU DON’T SAY: Undocumented UCLA law grad is in a legal bind.

HARBINGER IN HAMTRAMCK: The bankruptcy lesson from a Detroit suburb.

More bad news out of Michigan: Facing a $3 million deficit on its $18 million budget, the Detroit suburb of Hamtramck is seeking permission to file bankruptcy. Other towns may not be far behind.

Hamtramck suffers from high unemployment and falling income, but its budget problems go deeper than the recession. The town began running million-dollar deficits 10 years ago due to union contracts that would make Greeks blush. City workers were entitled to annual wage increases at four times the inflation rate and eight paid weeks of vacation each year. That’s in addition to 15 paid sick days, three paid emergency leave days, three paid personal days and one paid birthday.

In 2000 the state appointed an Emergency Financial Manager who in five years managed to balance the budget by cutting the city work force, privatizing services and selling bonds. He got the unions to renegotiate some benefits by promising retirement service credits and promotions, but that set the city up for future pension woes.

Fast forward and the city again teeters toward bankruptcy. Workers still receive five weeks paid vacation and their health plans have no co-pays or deductibles. City health costs have risen nearly 40% this year and are expected to shoot up another 40% next year. Pension costs have climbed 36% in a year. . . . While many cities blame their deficits on the recession, their insolvency is the natural result of politically dominant public unions. By allowing workers to collectively bargain, states and cities have ceded control of the public purse to workers whose main interest is enlarging government. Hamtramck is a harbinger of bankruptcies to come, and a case study in why politicians from FDR to Fiorello LaGuardia opposed the creation of government employee unions.

They’ve only almost run out of other people’s money.

SHOULD TEA PARTIERS TARGET OPRAH as part of their campaign against big businesses who supported Obama?

PARASITES: The bedbugs of New York turn up in BBC studios.

GEORGE WILL: Our puritanical progressives.

Concern for children’s sensibilities is admirable. The coarsening of the culture is a fact with many causes, but its consequences are unclear. And it can bring out a Puritan streak in progressivism.

The lawyer for the video-game industry warned the Supreme Court that “the land is awash” with contemporary versions of Anthony Comstock (1844-1915), the crusader for censorship of indecency, as he spaciously defined it. “Today’s crusaders,” the lawyer said, “come less from the pulpit than from university social science departments, but their goals and tactics remain the same.”

Progressivism is a faith-based program. The progressives’ agenda for improving everyone else varies but invariably involves the cult of expertise – an unflagging faith in the application of science to social reform. Progressivism’s itch to perfect people by perfecting the social environment can produce an interesting phenomenon – the Pecksniffian progressive.

The important thing is the pleasure to be derived from running other people’s lives. “Perfecting” is beside the point.

UPDATE: Some earlier thoughts of mine on progressives and puritanism.

RECRUITING ROBOTS FOR COMBAT. Just remember that the model should be Bolos, not Terminators. . . .

THEY COME NOT TO PRAISE CAESAR: Look who’s calling Obama racist. “Cornel West is Professor of Religion and African American studies at Princeton University.”

READER BILL RICKORDS WAS SURPRISED TO SEE THIS IN THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE: It’s time for Democrats to give in on voter ID bill.

THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE: A EuroZone Breakup?

THE FISCAL TRAP: “Most of the baseline assumptions about the size of our debt assume that today’s exceedingly low interest rates continue. If they don’t—even if rates just return to the average of the past 20 years—the picture looks far more grim. . . . As Lindsey points out, if the current very low rate continues, and our fiscal policy basically follows the track laid out by the president’s last budget, then the interest on the debt 10 years from now will be a little over $350 billion. If the rate goes back to the 20-year average, however, interest on the debt 10 years from now will be more like $1.15 trillion. Again, no small difference. Indeed, it is enough to make some prominent elements of our deficit debate seem a little ridiculous.”

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH points out the obvious.