LOOK FOR THE UNION LABEL: Two UAW officials sentenced to prison for strike-related extortion.

Related: This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies.

JOEL KOTKIN: The Sun Belt’s Migration Comeback.

Along with the oft-pronounced, desperately wished for death of the suburbs, no demographic narrative thrills the mainstream news media more than the decline of the Sun Belt, the country’s southern rim extending from the Carolinas to California. Since the housing bubble collapse in 2007, commentators have heralded “the end of the Sun Belt boom.”

Yet this assertion is largely exaggerated, particularly since the big brass buckle in the middle of the Sun Belt, Texas, has thrived throughout the recession. California, of course, has done far worse, but its slow population growth and harsh regulatory environment align it more with the Northeast than with its sunny neighbors.

Moreover, the Sun Belt is poised for a recovery, according to the most recent economic and demographic data.

Read the whole thing.

SPECULATION: So the White House usually does a late-Friday document dump, releasing stuff that would make them look bad at the very lowest point in the news cycle. Tonight, the Friday before Christmas Eve, will be the lowest point of the year. Will they take advantage of that to release something really bad?

HOPE AND CHANGE: Merry Christmas America, Now Give Us Your Money – Love, EPA.

TODAY ONLY: TCL 40-Inch 1080p 60 Hz LCD HDTV with 2-Year Warranty, $259.99.

And it’s too late for delivery by Christmas, but Amazon is still running holiday “lightning deals” all day.

UPDATE: The TVs sold out. Sorry — you snooze, you lose on these deals.

ELEVEN IN TWO: I talk about the Higher Education Bubble on PJTV. Part of a series of two-minute pieces on the big stories of 2011.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): The American Dream Packs Its Bags. “For some, the prospect of old age relocation is exciting and optional; for others it may be necessary. Public pension funds and union schemes, from the state level to USPS, have been grossly over promised, under invested, and the rate of return badly overestimated. A combination of cheap airfares, high unemployment and crimped retirement savings will induce many to consider following the American dream beyond our shores. Moving away also keeps pesky college grads from prolonged squatting at mom and dad’s. Skype and email can keep you in touch.”

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: The EPA’s Mercury Madness. “The EPA thinks it’s worth spending billions of dollars each year to reduce already minuscule amounts of mercury in the outside air. So why is it trying to shove mercury-laced fluorescent bulbs into everyone’s homes?”

SHOCKING NEWS: Neil Munro: White House Using Fake Numbers In Payroll Tax Fight.

POLITICS: Bush Hatred Prevails Over Obama Love. “The legacy of the Left’s extreme Bush hatred, which led them to caricature Bush and scorn and misrepresent the great majority of his policies, policies they otherwise might have found reasonable, has had profound consequences for Obama. First, when he takes the same course of action that Bush took, however pragmatic it might be, he looks like a sellout to his most ardent supporters and he looks spineless or unprincipled to moderates. They begin to ask: What does Obama really stand for? Thus, second, Obama lost, quite early in his administration, a President’s most precious commodity: the trust of the American people. They no longer knew whether he said what he meant and meant what he said. And third, this puts him in a tough position entering the election contest. Obama can deliver the same soaring speeches, but soaring speeches swiftly turn sour when the speaker’s actions contradict his words.”

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN . . . OH, HELL, YOU KNOW THE REST: DOJ to America: we won’t reveal the circumstances under which you can be assassinated by us.

MAX BOOT: “Mission (Not) Accomplished” in Iraq. “If there is one thing we have learned about Iraq during the last decade, it is that violence is a direct reflection of the political process or lack thereof. When politics was dysfunctional in 2003-2007, violence skyrocketed. Once the success of the surge kicked in, the political process began to function again and various factions could resolve their disputes with back-room deals rather than with bombs and rockets. Now that U.S. troops have pulled out, the political process is fraying once again. Consider the events of just the past few days.”

PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Duncan Law School Sues ABA Over Denial of Accreditation.

MARKETS: GoDaddy supports SOPA, customers take business elsewhere. “Following GoDaddy’s announcement backing the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act, many customers have started to move their domains to other hosts. I guess that throwing your customers to the wolves isn’t a good business tactic.”

PAYROLL TAX MESS: “The Democrats have undermined their own arguments about the true nature of the Social Security program (turns out it really is a tax-based welfare program, not a dedicated, contribution-based retirement program), and that the Republicans either ought to take them up on it, or flip the thing one more time and pose as the principled champions of Keeping Social Security Solvent.”

ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION: For Bloggers at Risk: Creating a Contingency Plan. How to deal with government intimidation and suppression.

SITEMETERENFREUDE? Hey, my traffic isn’t down.

THE RON PAUL PORTFOLIO: ”This portfolio is a half-step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and nine-millimeter rounds.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Especially lately.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: The big legislative failures of 2001 are the bills that passed: “The farm bill (pork), the airline subsidy bill (pork), and the antiterrorism bill (bureaucratic wishlists largely unrelated to actual antiterrorism). In the words of Bob Dole, ‘sometimes a little gridlock is a good thing.’ Here’s to more in 2002.”

AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Sporting Goods.

HAPPY SOLSTICE!

THE ANCHORESS finds love.

THE REPRISE OF EUROPEAN ANTISEMITISM:

For many Germans, the EU is deemed vital to ensure that their own country never again repeats the horrors of the past. That was presumably what lay behind Chancellor Merkel’s remark, when the euro started to implode, that it was imperative for the EU to be saved because without it there would again be war in Europe.

This was indeed the foundational vision of the EU (and its predecessor body) in the wake of World War Two – that to ensure the peace in Europe, Germany had to be tied down like Gulliver in Lilliput, and the best way of doing this was to bind it into Europe by indissoluble economic and political ties.

It was a noble vision; but it was fundamentally flawed, I would suggest, for three main reasons. First, the erosion of national self-government inescapably involved in the EU project does not enshrine democracy but results instead in rather less of it. Second, as the euro implosion has so graphically demonstrated, trying to fashion one supranational entity out of disparate nations is intrinsically incoherent and ultimately self-destructive.

And third, the EU has done nothing to diminish the Judeophobia which led to the Holocaust in Europe. Indeed, the obsessional malice towards Israel has provided cover for a resurgence of the oldest hatred within the graveyard of European Jewry. As Giulio Meotti reports, Jews are being expelled from academia across Europe.

My worries about the EU continue to come to fruition, alas.

MERRY CHRISTMAS in Pereiraville.

PROGRESS: NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design. “”The NY Times has an article about the U.S. NRC commission approval of the design of Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactor for the U.S., clearing the way for two American utilities to continue the construction of projects in South Carolina and Georgia. The last time a nuclear power plant in the US entered service was 1996.”