HMM: The Ron Paul surge is bigger trouble for Barack Obama than Mitt Romney.

BLUE ON BLUE: Dennis Kucinich Will Challenge Marcy Kaptur.

IAIN MURRAY AND JIM BENNETT: Britain’s Future Lies With America, Not Europe: Welcoming Britain back into the North Atlantic economic community would be a win-win for all involved. “The European Economic Community (EEC) for which the British signed up in a 1975 referendum—a community of free trade and cooperation, not supranational bureaucracy—is long gone. Worse, even today’s less-palatable EU will soon no longer be on offer. Sometime in the next few years at most, Britain will likely face the choice between immersion in a powerful centralized European mega-state and full exit.”

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ED DRISCOLL: ‘Tears for the Tyrant’: North Korea Fights Hard to Prevent a Preference Cascade.

JUST AS A REMINDER, I’m repeating this graphic from James Pethokoukis’s The 7 Most Illuminating Economic Charts of 2011, illustrating the gap between Obama’s promises and performance on the stimulus and unemployment.

PREJUDICE AND HIRING IN ACADEMIA: 8th Circuit Re-institutes Discrimination Lawsuit by Unsuccessful Republican Faculty Candidate Against Iowa Law School Dean.

LIFE AMONG THE BARBARIANS: Tennessee tourist arrested for bringing pistol into 9/11 Memorial.

A tourist from Tennessee waltzed into one of the most secure sites in the city — and politely asked a cop if she could check her weapon.

Instead, she was dragged out in cuffs.

Now, Meredith Graves, 39, is facing at least three years in prison for thinking New York’s gun laws are anything like those in the Bible Belt.

Graves, a fourth-year medical student, showed up at the memorial on Dec. 22 to pay her respects during a trip north for a job interview.

She didn’t realize that the loaded .32-caliber pistol in her purse would be a problem until she saw a sign at the site that read, “No guns allowed,” sources said. “She remembered she had the gun on her,” a source said. She walked up to a security guard and said, “I have this gun. Where can I check it?”

Under Mayor Bloomberg, New York’s nothing like the Bible Belt, of course — it’s much less civilized and much more repressive.. And just like black people visiting the South in the 1930s, gun owners today need to realize that irrational prejudice and legal persecution are a risk when visiting these benighted places. This is why we need national civil rights laws to protect gun owners wherever they go. This is a topic I discuss in my Second Amendment Penumbras piece, forthcoming in the Southern California Law Review. I also note that a patchwork of confusing (often even to law enforcement) and overlapping laws regulating the exercise of a fundamental right is a burden on the constitutionally recognized right to interstate travel. At the very least, they should warn you when you’re entering a repressive regime.

UPDATE: Reader Mark Kaulius writes: “Perhaps a boycott by all gun owners of New York is called for.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Rob Crawford emails: “What’s the purpose of the no guns sign at the Memorial? Shouldn’t the sign be posted at the state border?”

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Obama’s New Tax On The Poor. And the stupid. You’d think he’d show more loyalty to his constituents. “The Obama Justice Department quietly issued a legal opinion – just before a long Christmas weekend – that allows states to set up nonsports Internet gambling. The opinion upends decades of contrary decisions, but its real effect will be on the poor (and young) who suffer the most from gambling.”

I’m all for legalizing Internet gambling, and pretty much any consensual activity, but I note the contradiction between this and the Obama Administration’s generally nannyist behavior. They’re looking to protect you from yourself — unless, you know, there’s a buck to be made by looking the other way.

JOHN HAWKINS: The Ten Biggest Failures of 2011.

SHELDON RICHMAN: Congress, Obama Codify Indefinite Detention: Where is the “progressive” outrage? “President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.”

They told me if I voted for John McCain . . . .

THIS SOUNDS INTERESTING: Pacific Time on Target: Memoirs of a Marine Artiller Officer, 1943-1945. With Jack McCall involved — whose last book on World War II in the Pacific was excellent — it’s bound to be good.

COMIC RELIEF: Anthony Weiner Wanted Threesome With Another Man, According To Mistress.

MASSACHUSETTS: Scott Brown ready to fight, draws ‘line in the sand.’

OVERRATED: Is The Obama Boomlet Over? “It appears that the Obama boomlet may have been overrated. In the Gallup Poll, Obama has dropped back to 44/48. In Rasmussen’s Approval Index, Obama, after a week or so of slightly less gloomy numbers, is back to an ice-cold -18.”

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH ADMITS THE TRUTH: Hugo Chavez’s cancer is entirely our doing.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: Antisemitism and Anti-Americanism.

UPDATE: The link to the Steyn column in that old post has succumbed to link-rot, but here’s one that works, thanks to reader Randy Beck.

And can I just say that the next President should pick Mark Steyn as Secretary of State? Wouldn’t that be fun?

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MORE BAD GUN JOURNALISM, this time in the Denver Post. They’ve issued a correction, at least. But note the snotty responses from the busted reporter. This unrelenting approach, however, is precisely how to deal with reporters who do shoddy, dishonest work.

EUROPE: Lagarde Rings A Euro Alarm Bell. “Lagarde’s comments come amidst fresh evidence that Europe’s financial crisis continues to worsen. Last week, the European Central Bank provided €489 billion ($US633 billion) in three-year loans to cash-strapped European banks, but figures released overnight show that European banks have turned around and deposited a record €452 billion with the ECB. This is stark evidence that the European interbank lending market remains crippled, and that banks would rather earn the meagre 0.25 per cent interest rate that the ECB pays on depots, rather than running the risk of lending to other banks at much higher interest rates.”

ERICK ERICKSON: No Surprise, Iowa Social Conservatives Are About To Shoot Us All in the Foot Again. Well, vote how you want in the primaries, just don’t take your ball and go home if your guy doesn’t win. Remember, even if Zeeba wins the nomination, she’s better than Obama.

UPDATE: Related: The Great Conservative Blogger Freak Out Of Iowa 2011.

GOOD QUESTION: The Law School Bubble: How Long Will It Last if Law Grads Can’t Pay Bills? “In 2010, 85 percent of law graduates from ABA-accredited schools boasted an average debt load of $98,500, according to data collected from law schools by U.S. News & World Report. At 29 schools, that amount exceeded $120,000. In contrast, only 68 percent of those grads reported employment in positions that require a JD nine months after commencement. Less than 51 percent found employment in private law firms.” Something that can’t go on forever, won’t.

I’M NOT SO SURE THEY’LL GET THAT CHANCE, BUT WORTH NOTING: The Obama Administration Is Planning A Second-Term Attack On Gun Rights.

A PLUG-REQUEST FROM READER RICK WILKES:

My daughter Rebecca asked me to send this along to you “just in case” you had the urge to post it. We home schooled Rebecca (she’s now in college) and this book she started when she was 11. She finished her last revision this summer, and we self-published it through Amazon Kindle and Amazon Createspace. Amazon is even making it FREE for Amazon Prime members right now… (we learned about Prime from you when it was first introduced, and it just keeps getting better.)

Well, here you are: It’s King Mertagon’s Box. Like he says, it’s free for Prime members, and just $2.99 for everyone else.