MODERN SCIENCE WRITING leaves science behind. “Anyone who is willing to take off his partisan glasses will quickly come to the conclusion that both sides of the political spectrum—conservatives and progressives—are willing to throw science under the bus whenever it is politically expedient. It’s too bad that some members of the allegedly ‘watchdog’ media are too blinded by their own partisan affiliations to do their jobs properly.”

POOR CHOICE OF METAPHORS: Sen. Feinstein: US has to ‘bite the bullet’ and enact new gun-control restrictions.

Dianne, honey, when you “bite the bullet” and slash entitlements enough to balance the budget, we’ll talk.

EMILY MILLER: David Gregory’s Legal Jeopardy.

THEODORE DALRYMPLE: Sentimentalizing Serial Murder: A recent book exemplifies the erosion of moral judgment in Britain.

P.J. O’ROURKE: Dear Mr. President, Zero-Sum Doesn’t Add Up.

The worst thing that you’ve done internationally is what you’ve done domestically. You sent a message to America in your re-election campaign. Therefore you sent a message to the world. The message is that we live in a zero-sum universe.

There is a fixed amount of good things. Life is a pizza. If some people have too many slices, other people have to eat the pizza box. You had no answer to Mitt Romney’s argument for more pizza parlors baking more pizzas. The solution to our problems, you said, is redistribution of the pizzas we’ve got—with low-cost, government-subsidized pepperoni somehow materializing as the result of higher taxes on pizza-parlor owners.

In this zero-sum universe there is only so much happiness. The idea is that if we wipe the smile off the faces of people with prosperous businesses and successful careers, that will make the rest of us grin.

There is only so much money. The people who have money are hogging it. The way for the rest of us to get money is to turn the hogs into bacon.

Mr. President, your entire campaign platform was redistribution. Take from the rich and give to the . . . Well, actually, you didn’t mention the poor. What you talked and talked about was the middle class, something most well-off Americans consider themselves to be members of. So your plan is to take from the more rich and the more or less rich and give to the less rich, more or less. It is as if Robin Hood stole treasure from the Sheriff of Nottingham and bestowed it on the Deputy Sheriff.

But never mind. The evil of zero-sum thinking and redistributive politics has nothing to do with which things are taken or to whom those things are given or what the sum of zero things is supposed to be. The evil lies in denying people the right, the means, and, indeed, the duty to make more things.

Read the whole thing. Just remember: In a zero-sum society, the redistributors are a lot more important. . . .

UPDATE: Related: Playing the long game on the Fiscal Cliff.

TOM MAGUIRE ON FULL-CAPACITY MAGAZINE BANS: “My goodness – the drug cartels can make mini-subs. Will we really be able to stop determined criminals from buying steel boxes with springs?”

VIDEO MOCKS CELEBRITIES BY MIXING THEIR DEMANDS FOR GUN CONTROL WITH VIOLENT FILM FOOTAGE.

PROF. JACOBSON: It’s not as good as the Christmas Plan, but Joe Manchin’s CALM Act is worth consideration: Deprive Obama of the crisis he uses as leverage.

POWER: Mark Levin Audience Helped Defeat Boehner Plan B.

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TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT:

The Saudis provided — at a minimum — money to al Qaeda. I know it. Kleiman knows it. Graham knows it. You know it. The administration knows it. The Saudis damn sure know it. Al Qaeda knows it. The families of the victims know it. I’ll lay odds that my Chinese taxi-driver on the way home tonight knows it. Yet its classified?!?

What’s this, the betrayal that dare not speak its name?

If the Bush administration’s plan does not ultimately include regime change in Saudi Arabia, it is destined for failure and the President is going to lose a lot of supporters very quickly. This had all better be part of a brilliant Machiavellian strategy to oust the House of Saud, while Poppy Bush lulls them into a false sense of security by groveling before them for donations to that sanctuary for the needy and oppressed, Andover Academy.

Fracking may do for the Saudi problem what a decade of diplomacy, “smart” and otherwise, has failed to do.

UPDATE: Reader Matt Borcherding writes:

Terrorism is also a Iranian export, fueled by their oil money. Russia’s thuggism, including its invasion of Georgia, is paid for by their oil and natural gas exports. Here in the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela’s oil funds Marxist support if not outright terrorism. But the same argument still applies to all: cheap fracking and shale oil equals less money to the enemies of progress, democracy, and freedom.

Indeed.

IRON BUTTERFLY: IN-A-GADDA DA VIDA.

EARLIER TODAY, I LINKED this article from the Stanford Law Review Online. Several readers point out that it says: “The vulnerability of reporters’ confidential relationships became front-page news in 2005, when Judith Miller, a reporter for the New York Times, spent eighty-five days in jail before finally revealing to a federal prosecutor the identity of the confidential source who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative (her source turned out to be Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby).”

In fact, however, State Department official Richard Armitage, not Scooter Libby, was the source of the Plame leak. Yet this error persists.

PETER INGEMI: If gun owners are such dangerous nuts, why is the left so eager to provoke them?

CLAUDIA ROSETT: Girding For 2013. “Perhaps the most important bottom line in girding for 2013, is, if you care about capitalism and freedom, about a strong America and a safer, freer world, do not give up. There is a struggle of ideas going on here; and even when much seems lost — spun off the road, over the cliff — plenty may yet depend on even a few who keep the faith, and at the right moment, are ready with a plan.”

IT’S NOT BY ACCIDENT: The Egyptian president, Muhammad Morsi, is doing great damage to his country’s democracy.

MOSTLY DEAD IS STILL SLIGHTLY ALIVE: Obama Defends Chuck Hagel.

Related: James Hormel: I question the sincerity of Chuck Hagel’s ‘so-called apology.’

UH OH: And It’s Biden in the Fiscal Cliff Home Stretch. My own suspicion is that Obama expects the economy to tank in 2013 and wants to hit the cliff so he can blame the Republicans. Which is silly, but the press will go along as usual so it’ll probably work. Putting Biden in charge certainly doesn’t indicate a desire for success.

REPORT: Hillary In Hospital With Blood Clot. “She is expected back at her desk on Monday, Mr Reines said. Mrs Clinton is due to give evidence before a Congressional committee on 10 January in connection with the attack in September on the US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi.”

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CHANGE: Saudis Sweating Bullets As Energy Revolution Changes The Rules.

The US shale gas boom, drastically cutting the cost of gas, is shaking the foundations of the Saudi Arabian economic model—and more is coming. The highly profitable $100bn Gulf petrochemical industry is taking a hit as its biggest customer—the U.S.—is importing less and relying instead on domestic production.

US petrochemical companies, propelled by cheaper access to raw materials, are competing effectively against companies like the Saudi Basic Industries Corp (Sabic), the world’s largest chemical maker. Sabic also has some home-grown problems. The rapidly growing Saudi population wants to consume (subsidized) petrochemicals at home, air conditioning Saudi houses and running Saudi cars instead of exporting product abroad. Falling production, demand, and prices are beginning to hurt the once stalwart $89bn company. . . .

US gas prices have plummeted due to new techniques, known as fracking and horizontal drilling, developed to extract the vast deposits of shale gas in the North American bedrock. Production has jumped by nearly a quarter since 2000, reducing demand for Saudi gas. If China figures out how to exploit its own shale gas reserves the Saudis will have every reason to be nervous. The two pillars of the Saudi economy—oil and petrochemical exports—will both be on shaky ground.

But the changing energy landscape threatens more than economic consequences for the Gulf state. The US could surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading oil producer by 2020, and this could mean big changes for US foreign policy and the domestic economy.

Terroristic Islam worldwide is basically a Saudi export, fueled by Saudi money. The less Saudi money, the better.

AFTER A DECADE THAT NO ONE COULD NAME, Tuesday we’ll enter the ‘Teens!

ADVICE: If You’re Young, Don’t Give To Charity.

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RATHER UNCONVINCINGLY, Obama Channels John McCain.