JOHN HAYWARD: The Bitter Wastes of Politicized America.

The rest of us should consider the contemptible behavior of people like Hoyer as we watch the expansion of politics into every area of our lives. The government grows; the private sector diminishes; everything becomes a political act. Soon you will see the phrase “none of your business” become an antique aphorism, as quaint as telling someone to “dial” a telephone number. Everything is everyone’s business now. That’s what Big Government means.

That’s what America signed up for by re-electing Barack Obama, who is more dedicated to the contraction of the private sphere than any predecessor in living memory. He appears to sincerely believe that government control is necessary to achieve virtue. But the conduct of our political leadership doesn’t seem terribly virtuous, does it? It’s not even very polite.

No, the bigger the government gets, the nastier our political class becomes.

SO GIVE THEM GUNS: “‘It’s wrong to stop girls from going out’ of the house… but there’s little choice because the city is so unsafe for women.”

HEH: Infirm, concussion-stricken Secretary of State jets off to Caribbean resort for New Years Eve bash with media celebs.

Related: Guy makes crappy YouTube video, Hillary Clinton ends up drinking away a concussion in the tropics. #ButterflyEffect.

UPDATE: The Facebook mockery continues:

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Judge rebuffs feds’ secret arguments on no-fly list. “A federal judge in California has rejected the Obama administration’s effort to use secret arguments and evidence to defeat a lawsuit relating to the so-called no-fly list designed to keep suspected terrorists off of airline flights.”

#NARRATIVEFAIL: California gun sales jump; gun injuries, deaths fall. “Gun deaths and injuries have dropped sharply in California, even as the number of guns sold in the state has risen, according to new state data. Dealers sold 600,000 guns in California last year, up from 350,000 in 2002, according to records of sale tallied by the California Attorney General’s office. During that same period, the number of California hospitalizations due to gun injuries declined from about 4,000 annually to 2,800, a roughly 25 percent drop, according to hospital records collected by the California Department of Public Health. Firearm-related deaths fell from about 3,200 annually to about 2,800, an 11 percent drop, state health figures show.”

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SOMEHOW I HAD MISSED THIS: Brian Kelsey on the Tennessee Virtual Academy.

GREG MANKIW: Wishful Thinking And Middle-Class Taxes. “Ultimately, unless we scale back entitlement programs far more than anyone in Washington is now seriously considering, we will have no choice but to increase taxes on a vast majority of Americans. This could involve higher tax rates or an elimination of popular deductions. Or it could mean an entirely new tax, such as a value-added tax or a carbon tax.” I’m willing to scale back entitlement programs that much. . . .

NEWS YOU CAN USE: You Can Literally Throw Your Negative Thoughts Away. “According to new research in Psychological Science, writing down your negative thoughts and tossing them in the garbage can erase your bad mood.” What about posting them on a blog?

IT’S NO DUMBER THAN AN “ASSAULT WEAPON” BAN: Swaziland Outlaws “Rape-Provoking” Clothing. In both cases, you’re blaming inanimate objects instead of treating humans as moral agents.

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A RARE JOURNALISM SIGHTING: CNN Confronts Jesse Jackson Over Chicago’s High Gun Violence Despite Draconian Gun Laws.

OUCH: Nebraska Jews Recall Senator Chuck Hagel as “Unfriendly” and “Unmovable” on Israel, “Didn’t Give a Damn About the Jewish Community.”

THE ATLANTIC: This Is What Teachers Learning to Shoot Guns Look Like.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: Vladimir Bukovsky, The Greatest Subversive of Our Times.

A WHITE HOUSE PETITION TO Pardon David Gregory and others for violating D.C.’s gun laws as they violate the Second Amendment.

HOW TO SELL COMIC BOOKS. Bottom line, your target audience is now Howard Wolowitz, not Danny Dunn.

MARK STEYN: Laws Are For Little People. And Not David Gregory.

This is, declared NYU professor Jay Rosen, “the dumbest media story of 2012.” Why? Because, as CNN’s Howard Kurtz breezily put it, everybody knows David Gregory wasn’t “planning to commit any crimes.”

So what? Neither are the overwhelming majority of his fellow high-capacity-magazine-owning Americans. Yet they’re expected to know, as they drive around visiting friends and family over Christmas, the various and contradictory gun laws in different jurisdictions. Ignorantia juris non excusat is one of the oldest concepts in civilized society: Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Back when there was a modest and proportionate number of laws, that was just about doable. But in today’s America there are laws against everything, and any one of us at any time is unknowingly in breach of dozens of them. And in this case NBC were informed by the D.C. police that it would be illegal to show the thing on TV, and they went ahead and did it anyway: You’ll never take me alive, copper! You’ll have to pry my high-capacity magazine from my cold dead fingers! When the D.C. SWAT team, the FBI, and the ATF take out NBC News and the whole building goes up in one almighty fireball, David Gregory will be the crazed loon up on the roof like Jimmy Cagney in White Heat: “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” At last, some actual must-see TV on that lousy network.

But, even if we’re denied that pleasure, the “dumbest media story of 2012” is actually rather instructive. David Gregory intended to demonstrate what he regards as the absurdity of America’s lax gun laws. Instead, he’s demonstrating the ever greater absurdity of America’s non-lax laws. His investigation, prosecution, and a sentence of 20–30 years with eligibility for parole after ten (assuming Mothers Against High-Capacity Magazines don’t object) would teach a far more useful lesson than whatever he thought he was doing by waving that clip under LaPierre’s nose.

To Howard Kurtz & Co., it’s “obvious” that Gregory didn’t intend to commit a crime. But, in a land choked with laws, “obviousness” is one of the first casualties — and “obviously” innocent citizens have their “obviously” well-intentioned actions criminalized every minute of the day. Not far away from David Gregory, across the Virginia border, eleven-year-old Skylar Capo made the mistake of rescuing a woodpecker from the jaws of a cat and nursing him back to health for a couple of days. For her pains, a federal Fish & Wildlife gauleiter accompanied by state troopers descended on her house, charged her with illegal transportation of a protected species, issued her a $535 fine, and made her cry. Why is it so “obvious” that David Gregory deserves to be treated more leniently than a sixth grader? Because he’s got a TV show and she hasn’t?

Pretty much.

CHANGE: Mattel and Hasbro ‘terrified’: Do kids want gadgets more than toys?

The 2012 holiday season may have been the worst for retailers since the financial crisis, with sales growth far below expectations, forcing many to offer massive post-Christmas discounts in hopes of shedding excess inventory. While chains like Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Gap Inc are thought to have done well, analysts expect much less from the likes of Barnes & Noble Inc and J. C. Penney Co. . . .

While hot toys such as certain Mattel Inc Barbie dolls performed well, toymakers worry that traditional children’s gifts may lose out long-term to high-tech gadgets.

“The top two guys, Mattel and Hasbro, they are terrified,” Sean McGowan, managing director of equity research at Needham & Company, told the Financial Times. “They should be terrified, but the official party line is they’re not terrified.”

They should be.

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FASTER, PLEASE: Culprit behind osteoarthritis pain identified.

The researchers assessed development of pain-related behaviors and concomitant changes in dorsal root ganglia (DRG), nerves that carry signals from sensory organs toward the brain. They found that a chemokine known as monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP)-1 (CCL2) and its receptor, chemokine receptor 2 (CCR2), are central to the development of pain associated with knee OA. . . .

Mice that lack Ccr2 (knockout mice) also developed mechanical allodynia, but this began to resolve from eight weeks onward. Despite having severe allodynia and structural knee joint damage equal to that in normal mice, Ccr2-knockout mice did not develop movement-provoked pain behaviors at eight weeks.

Interesting, though this appears to be just one piece of the puzzle.

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POINTS AND FIGURES: The Multiplier Effect of Government Spending Is Zero, So Lower Spending After The “Fiscal Cliff” Won’t Hurt The Economy.

I LIKE SPICY FOOD, BUT I’M DRAWING THE LINE HERE: Spicy Soup Burns a Hole in Man’s Stomach. “The man ate something called mala soup, which means ‘numbing hot.’ Which also apparently means ‘will burn a hole in your stomach.’ The man chose the spiciest version of the soup, and had to be rushed to the hospital because he began throwing up blood.”

THE GREATEST SCIENCE PHOTOS of the year.