SURPRISE: WaPo: Sting operations reveal Mafia involvement in renewable energy.

PETER SUDERMAN: Obama’s Progressive Vision: A World Without Political Opposition.

UPDATE: Okay, on the one hand this was a big error. On the other hand, it sure explains the last four years. . . .

HANS VON SPAKOVSKY: About That DOJ Lawyer Who Booed Paul Ryan.

Related: Chairman Paul Ryan, Meet DOJ Lawyer Daniel Freeman. “Come budget time, maybe your committee can boo back.” Cut their travel and conference budget. That’s what’ll be noticed.

REMEMBERING Michael Bellesiles’ Fraudulent Anti-Gun Scholarship, and Jim Lindgren’s Debunking of Same.

Here’s something I wrote about Bellesiles’ fraud — and his media/academic enablers — over a decade ago. Garry Wills did finally admit he’d been fooled.

I TRY TO PLUG READER BOOKS, and introduce people to new and interesting stuff, but there’s only so much I can do. If you want to broaden your exposure, check out the books & book review section at Helen’s Page.

ED DRISCOLL: Neville Again: Obama Promises ‘Peace in Our Time.’ “Where’s his umbrella?”

AT AMAZON, New Year’s markdowns on Men’s & Women’s Athletic Shoes.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Out Of The Mainstream: The NRA has a higher approval rating than the president because it’s more in sync with Americans’ beliefs.

MITT ROMNEY AS NOSTRADAMUS?

The last two weeks should go down as a period of vindication for former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and earn him the nickname, “soothsayer of the Western World” — a modern-age Nostradamus.

On Jan. 14, Chrysler’s CEO acknowledged that Jeeps would be built in China, confirming a statement that unfairly earned Romney the moniker “liar of the year.”

Score one.

Then, when forces linked to al-Qaida captured the government-held town of Konna, Mali, on Jan. 10, they drove home a statement Romney made during the second presidential debate in Boca Raton, nearly three months earlier.

“With the Arab Spring came a great deal of hope that there would be a change towards more moderation and opportunity for greater participation on the part of women and — and public life and in economic life in the Middle East,” he said then. “But instead we’ve seen in nation after nation a number of disturbing events.”

Describing violence in Syria and Libya, he added this kicker: “Mali has been taken over, the northern part of Mali, by al-Qaida-type individuals.”

This prompted, according to TheCommentator.com, a Bill Maher tweet: “Mitt, you do know that most of America thinks Mali is one of Obama’s daughters, right?” What far-left loon Maher doesn’t seem to understand is that it doesn’t matter if he knows what Mali is, so long as our president does.

Score two.

This week saw another Romney prediction come to pass — that a re-elected Obama would infringe on our Second Amendment rights.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Reader Brent Sims writes: “Sorry, it is less like Nostradamus and more like Cassandra. Why do I think it’s just the beginning?” Yes, Cassandra was always right, but it was her curse that no one would listen.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Novel Solar Photovoltaic Cells Achieve Record Efficiency Using Nanoscale Structures.

WHEN YOUR CRIMINAL PLANS INCLUDE A “GETAWAY DONKEY,” you might want to just rethink.

A READER EMAILS: “If the RNC had any clue whatsoever — and I assume they don’t — then they’d be ruthlessly organizing a ‘homegrown’ grassroots movement to force Al Franken into supporting a scary, scary assault weapons ban. (Axelrod would.) The fact that they haven’t already demonstrates that national Republican leaders are a buncha frakkin’ dilettantes.”

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: CIA Drone War in Pakistan Exempt From Coming Drone “Playbook.”

Back when Mitt Romney (remember him?) looked like he might’ve been on his way to becoming the next president of the United States, Barack Obama and his team at the White House scrambled to put together some kind of rules for the use of drones to pursue targeted killings. Though Obama made drone warfare a centerpiece of his counterterrorism effort, relying far more heavily on the tactic than his predecessor George Bush ever did, codifying the process didn’t become an urgent concern until it actually looked like Obama’s presidency may have been coming to an end.

It didn’t of course, and Obama instead began his second term this weekend. It wasn’t his own inauguration that forced the codification of drone rules along, though, but the nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA. Requiring confirmation by the Senate, the nomination provided the opportunity for senators to choose to question the White House’s drone war. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has asked Brennan to outline the rules for the use of drones in targeted killings. What’s known about the use of drones publicly indicates a “due process” almost entirely self-contained in the White House that’s seemingly immune from disclosure.

Funny, I’d swear that we used to have an antiwar movement that called for war crimes tribunals over stuff like this. I wonder where they went?

UPDATE: Kathy Kinsley emails:

Except for Cindy Sheehan (who I both dislike for her stance, and admire because she’s just not quitting), they all seemed to melt into thin air in late 2008. Perhaps because the anti-war protesters in Lyndon Johnson’s era recalled who won after they made him unpopular?

Peace with honor? I don’t think so. I can forgive Nixon’s Watergate, but I will NEVER forgive him Saigon’s helicopters.

I always suspected that the “antiwar” movement was just a shameful partisan ploy. And I was pretty much right, with the exceptions barely worth mentioning.

Oh, that goes for the press people who covered them, too.

PRO-FRACKING DOCUMENTARY Frack Nation premieres tonight.

MIKE BLOOMBERG WILL BE GOING AFTER THE SANDWICHES NEXT: In Convenience Stores: More Food, Fewer Cigarettes. “Sandwiches are the new cigarettes, at least as far as 7-Eleven is concerned. Traditionally a reliable source of profit for convenience stores, cigarette sales are waning—and food, from fresh fruit to mini-meals, is rising to take its place.”

THE REAL WAR ON WOMEN: Melissa Gira Grant: An unholy alliance of feminists, cops, and conservatives hurts women in the name of defending their rights. “How have we arrived at this point, that in the name of ‘protecting’ women, or even ensuring their ‘rights,’ feminists are eager to take away their jobs and health care? Ramos, Steinem, and their allies deliberately conflate sex work and what they now call ‘sex trafficking’ for their own reasons, not to advance the rights of sex workers. The result is—or should be—an international scandal.”

CHEAPER THAN TILE: Couple glues 60,000 pennies to bedroom floor. Kind of labor-intensive, though: “Thus began four months of painstaking work they dubbed ‘pennying,’ which involves laying down a special glue that acts like grout and individually placing the pennies heads up on the floor of the 380 square-foot room.” Though with Spotify Premium and Pinot Noir, not terribly hard labor.

SO IF YOU WERE OFFLINE DURING THE LONG HOLIDAY WEEKEND, you know, having a life or something, you may have missed that my Due Process When Everything Is A Crime piece is now out. It’s gotten some interesting commentary at The Atlantic, and from Randy Barnett and Roger Kimball. (Bumped).

WORSE THAN THE BEDBUGS? Michael Bloomberg’s Worst Legacy: The Debt Bomb. “When the mayor took office in 2002, the total outstanding debt of the city was $55.2 billion. This year, the Citizens Budget Commission estimates the total reached $110 billion. The increase: 100%! . . . Now the bill is coming due.”

UPDATE: Reader Steve Schubart writes: “If at the beginning of his term the debt is represented by a 16oz cup of soda, the current debt would be a 32 oz cup of soda!” Overindulgence comes in many forms.

And another reader reports: “By the way, last weekend not only was there the usual armed sentry outside Mayor Bloomberg’s private home, but he was being warmed by not one but two 3 foot tall electric resistance space heaters. As you like to say, I don’t want to hear a word about my carbon footprint.”

THERE SEEMS TO BE A REVIVAL OF INTEREST IN Randy Barnett’s Bill of Federalism.

I’d go further and institute a third house of Congress whose members are elected and whose only power is to repeal legislation. You can see me talk about it in this video of my speech at Harvard Law School last year, or you can read about it in this short law review article.

MORE “SMART DIPLOMACY,” I GUESS: U.S. gift of F-16 fighters headed to Egypt, despite Morsi’s harsh rhetoric.

AT AMAZON, gift cards galore.

Also, Men’s leather A-2 bomber jacket, 50% off.

UPDATE: Reader Phil Manhard writes about the leather jacket: “I’m looking for the Nick Gillespie signature model.” That one costs extra, I’m sure.

TOO MANY STUDENTS, TOO FEW JOBS — It’s Not Just Law Schools. “Let’s not forget that there are lots of people out there exploiting students these days. A while back, I observed that academics tend to describe the job market as an improbably Dickensian welter of exploitation, a description which matches only one job market: their own.”

IN FORBES: Why Doctors Should Not Ask Their Patients About Guns. “Doctors already have a professional and legal responsibility to notify the authorities if they believe patients pose an imminent threat to others or themselves. But routine inquiry about gun ownership goes far beyond this obligation. Such inquiries will instead only offend and alienate many responsible gun owners, compromising the trust essential to the doctor-patient relationship. Doctors should not put themselves in a position where patients view them as willing (or unwitting) agents of the government working against their interests.”

UPDATE: Reader Steve Kellmeyer writes: “I thought the government wasn’t supposed to interfere in the doctor-patient relationship?” Only for abortions.

THIS IS COOL: Diving Deep Into Danger.

Today it is an economic and even geopolitical necessity for oil companies, in order to maintain pipelines and offshore rigs, to send divers routinely to depths of a thousand feet, and keep them at that level of compression for as long as a month at a time. The divers who do this work are almost entirely male, and tend to be between the ages of twenty-five and forty. Were they any younger, they would not have enough experience or seniority to perform such demanding tasks. Any older, and their bodies could not be trusted to withstand the trauma. The term for these extended-length descents is “saturation diving,” which refers to the fact that the diver’s tissues have absorbed the maximum amount of inert gas possible.

I enjoy diving, but I wouldn’t want to do this kind of work. Though if I were hiring astronauts for orbital construction work, I’d start with these guys.