AT AMAZON, the Top Holiday Deals Countdown.

ANOTHER YEAR-END CHARITABLE DONATION CANDIDATE: Aside from the folks I mentioned last night, you may want to donate to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to help defend the libel suit against CEI and Rand Simberg by Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann.

BRENDAN LOY, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Why weren’t hurricane warnings issued for Sandy? “What would normally be of interest only to weather geeks — the fact that Superstorm Sandy probably made landfall last month as a ‘post-tropical cyclone’ rather than as a hurricane — is feeding a controversy over why government agencies issued no hurricane warnings. The hullabaloo involves the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Science, Space and Technology and the highest levels of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).”

NO, AND WE SHOULDN’T MAKE BUDGET DEALS THAT WAY, EITHER: The U.N. Shouldn’t Make Decisions About an Open Internet Behind Closed Doors. I’m pretty sure that the dictators’ club isn’t that enthusiastic about an “open Internet” though.

Those are just concerns about the process. When you look at some of the proposals themselves, it’s downright frightening.

If these proposals are adopted, we could end up with an internet that suits the interests of governments and large telecoms over those of billions of global internet users.

Well, that’s clearly what they want. It’s not like they have your interests in mind.

PROGRESS: New Small Fission Reactor for Deep-Space Missions Demonstrated.

COINCIDENCE: U.S Government Releases Once-Secret Watergate Files.

Obama Announces Enemies List: “I’ve Been Keeping My Own Naughty And Nice List.”

POST-ELECTION: Report: Security Clearances Revoked, Criminal Charges Pending For ATF Fast and Furious Officials.

HOW AMAZON SUCCEEDS BY EMBRACING CHAOS. As I used to say about my desk before I got neater, it’s not really chaos if you know where everything is.

MERCURY AND SOLACE: Probe Finds Hints of Ice At Mercury’s Poles. “You might have thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell of finding ice on Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. Now measurements by NASA’s Messenger spacecraft suggest there is about 100 cubic kilometres of frozen water at the planet’s poles – roughly enough to fill the Dead Sea.”

NANNY OF THE MONTH: Texas Schools Track Students with RFID Chips!

Tar. Feathers.

TECHNOLOGY: Augmented Light Bulb Turns a Desk Into a Touch Screen. “A computer that can be screwed into a light socket can project interactive images onto any nearby surface.”

ELIE MYSTAL NOT SO IMPRESSED with law deans who deny the problem.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama Fiscal-Cliff Posture Unserious And Dishonest. Ya think?

AT AMAZON, it’s the Kindle Daily Deal.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Economist: American universities represent declining value for money to their students.

A degree has always been considered the key to a good job. But rising fees and increasing student debt, combined with shrinking financial and educational returns, are undermining at least the perception that university is a good investment.

Concern springs from a number of things: steep rises in fees, increases in the levels of debt of both students and universities, and the declining quality of graduates. Start with the fees. The cost of university per student has risen by almost five times the rate of inflation since 1983 (see chart 1), making it less affordable and increasing the amount of debt a student must take on. Between 2001 and 2010 the cost of a university education soared from 23% of median annual earnings to 38%; in consequence, debt per student has doubled in the past 15 years. Two-thirds of graduates now take out loans. Those who earned bachelor’s degrees in 2011 graduated with an average of $26,000 in debt, according to the Project on Student Debt, a non-profit group.

More debt means more risk, and graduation is far from certain; the chances of an American student completing a four-year degree within six years stand at only around 57%. This is poor by international standards: Australia and Britain, for instance, both do much better.

At the same time, universities have been spending beyond their means. Many have taken on too much debt and have seen a decline in the health of their balance-sheets. Moreover, the securitisation of student loans led to a rush of unwise private lending.

Do tell.

POLL: Ivy League Students Oppose Race Preferences.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: A Free-Market Fix For The Copyright Racket. I favor a significant rollback of current copyright law. At some point, you’ve made enough money.

JAY LENO: Hey, Obama might be in trouble if journalists start asking questions. “Maybe it didn’t get very many laughs because it’s not a joke. The joke has been the lack of curiosity among the media class about the circumstances that led to their broadcasting a false narrative on their Sunday talk shows and printed in the media for days after the administration knew perfectly well that the sacking of the consulate was no spontaneous event.”

Meanwhile, a filmmaker is in jail because jailing him was politically convenient for the White House.

WELL, MAYBE THAT’S BECAUSE THEY’RE PORN STARS. Porn Stars Have Higher Self-Esteem Than You.

JENNIFER RUBIN: DON’T JUMP OFF THE CLIFF YET:

For now, however, Senate and House Republicans are playing it right. They have even got the mainstream media to notice how unreasonable Obama’s non-offer, offer is. (“no concessions”). Some even recognized that the president’s “offer” in response to the Republicans’ move on revenue was identical to his post-election opening bid.

In their own ways, Sen. Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the past couple of days rather expertly. McConnell’s reaction to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s ludicrous proposal — laughter — was exactly right. It is a joke, and rather than railing at specific parts, a guffaw nicely communicates to voter how un-serious the president is at this point.

Likewise Boehner’s more-in-sadness-than-in-anger tone after his call with Obama keeps his party from becoming unhinged and keeps a respectful dialogue with the president. Even more so, his retort to Sen. Harry Reid’s threatened and ill-conceived filibuster threat (it is only meaningful if the other body is in Democratic hands, Harry) made the point that whatever the merits, it is a childish, destructive obsession that won’t get Dems anything when filibuster-insulated legislation is declared “dead on arrival” in the House. (“Any bill that reaches a Republican-led House based on Senate Democrats’ heavy-handed power play would be dead on arrival.”

The GOP’s message this week to the Dems can be summed up in two words: Grow up. Only after the president has definitively shown that the Democrats prefer the politics of adolescence should the GOP begin passing out parachutes for the group jump over the cliff.

Indeed.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: China Doubles Down. Your Move, Mr. President?

FOREIGN POLICY: Rwandan Ghosts: Benghazi isn’t the biggest blight on Susan Rice’s record. “Her role in shaping U.S. policy toward Central Africa should feature high on this list. Between 1993 and 2001, she helped form U.S. responses to the Rwandan genocide, events in post-genocide Rwanda, mass violence in Burundi, and two ruinous wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” The important thing is that the war and genocide didn’t politically damage her boss.

IS THE CARBON TAX a stalking-horse for a VAT?

HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA?

It is symptomatic of the national condition of the United States that the worst humiliation ever suffered by it as a nation, and by a US president personally, passed almost without comment last week. I refer to the November 20 announcement at a summit meeting in Phnom Penh that 15 Asian nations, comprising half the world’s population, would form a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership excluding the United States.

President Barack Obama attended the summit to sell a US-based Trans-Pacific Partnership excluding China. He didn’t. The American led-partnership became a party to which no-one came.

Instead, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, will form a club and leave out the United States.

I’m not sure Barack minds this diminution in U.S. power and prestige.