YOU DON’T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO SEE WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS: Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) resigns rather than face Mia Love again in 2014.

COMING TO YOUR CAR: Wiperless Windshields? “Of course, the Woking guys aren’t going to reveal how exactly the system works, but it’s likely an ultrasound-based concept. By integrating a transducer, waves abound 30kHz would bounce around making tiny vibrations, which would in turn bounce off rain and other road splatter. As cool as ‘sources inside the military’ sounds (we like the idea of Stephenson grilling some poor engineer), this is also the same tech your dentist uses to get the gunk off of your teeth.”

HAPPY FLU SEASON. Wash your hands or sanitize ’em. And get your flu shot.

QUESTIONING THE SAFETY of antibacterial soaps.

NEWS FROM THE RED-LIGHT CAMERA WARS: In 2013, red light camera use declined in the US for the first time. “There’s nothing wrong with using technology to improve traffic safety. What’s wrong with RLC is that the emphasis became on revenue instead of traffic safety early on, and that led to decisions on business models and locations and how they set up fines, warnings, education. That left a bad taste in people’s mouths.”

Yep. It’s all about revenues, not safety. But, then, that’s true of traffic enforcement generally.

WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY: Clothes Made Of 3D-Printed Chain Mail.

SOME PEOPLE MAY FIND THE ACCOMPANYING PHOTO DISTURBING: Severed Hand Reattached To Man’s Ankle. “A man who lost his right hand in an accident at work has had it successfully reattached after doctors grafted it to his ankle for a month.”

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THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF SWIMMING ARE NUMEROUS, BUT THERE’S A DISADVANTAGE: “It seems to stimulate appetite.”

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: US Army mounts high energy laser on a big truck for anti-mortar and anti-drone defense.

HMM: “First Direct Measurement of Infection Rates For Smartphone Viruses. Nobody has ever accurately measured the number of smartphones infected with malware. Until now.”

WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS: The “Sir Perky” Novelty Corkscrew. Looks, er, ready for action.

SPYING: Tone-Deaf At The Listening Post. “The NSA’s biggest strategic communications problem, however, is that they’ve been so walled off from the American body politic that they have no idea when they’re saying things that sound tone-deaf. Like expats returning from a long overseas tour, NSA staffers don’t quite comprehend how much perceptions of the agency have changed. The NSA stresses in its mission statement and corporate culture that it “protects privacy rights.” Indeed, there were faded banners proclaiming that goal in our briefing room. Of course, NSAers see this as protecting Americans from foreign cyber-intrusions. In a post-Snowden era, however, it’s impossible to read that statement without suppressing a laugh.”

The NSA’s biggest problem is that they don’t exist in a vacuum, but in the context of a massive wave of politicization and abuse of power in numerous other government agencies, from the IRS, to the Department of Justice and FBI, to the EPA. That being the case, their calls for trust fall on much more skeptical ears. Maybe they’re more resistant to politicization than other agencies. But maybe they’re not, and their immense power in the context of, say, a presidential campaign, is worrisome.

THE ROBOTS ARE COMING: Google’s Purchase of Boston Dynamics Means The Robots Are Coming To Your Home.

Fortunately, I have Robot Insurance from the Old Glory Insurance Company. For when the metal ones come.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Requiring “overt political action” on “climate change” as part of homework.

TRAIN WRECK: Obama’s Current Approval Rating Is The Ugliest Since Nixon. “President Barack Obama is ending his fifth year in office with the lowest approval ratings at this point in the presidency since President Richard Nixon, according to a new Washington Post/ABC poll released Tuesday. Obama’s approval rating in the poll stands at 43%. By comparison, President George W. Bush had a 47% approval rating at the end of the fifth year of his presidency. And all other Post-World War II presidents had approval ratings above 50% — with the exception of Nixon, who, amid the Watergate scandal, had a dreadful 29% approval rating.”

UPDATE: Pew: Liberal support for Obama at all-time low, worse than George W. Bush and conservatives. Just imagine what it would be like if the press treated Obama the way it treated Bush. Or Nixon, whom Obama more closely resembles.

ANOTHER UPDATE: ObamaCare Alone Didn’t Sink Obama. “Let’s be clear how rotten a year it has been even aside from the Obamacare fiasco. The president managed to get rid of only a sliver of the Bush tax cuts, to the dismay of liberals. He falsely predicted a catastrophe if the sequester occurred. He pleaded ignorance to scandals involving the Internal Revenue Service and spying on reporters. He pleased neither hawks nor civil libertarians in his half-hearted defense of NSA surveillance. His intransigence in the government shutdown hurt him as well (although not nearly as much as it did the Republicans). And his frighteningly erratic behavior on Syria and dangerous appeasement of Iran rattled Congress, our allies and the American people (who now give him negative reviews on foreign policy). Finally, while the economic has ticked up the vast majority of Americans (79 percent in the Post/ABC poll) still think we are in a recession and a plurality (45 percent) trust Congress more than the president to fix it. In essence, Obamacare broke the back of his already faltering presidency.”

TOM MAGUIRE DEFENDS JOHN KERRY: “I yield to no one in my low regard for John Kerry. However, in his own bumbling way, Kerry seems to be restating the US position on North Korea, which rejects accepting them as a nuclear state, and reprising a past intelligence assessment he offered while in Seoul last April.” If so, it’s kind of like Gerald Ford’s denial of Soviet domination in Poland — Ford wasn’t denying the fact, but rather emphasizing the United States’ view that it was illegitimate, but being Gerald Ford he spoke, well, about as badly as John Kerry. Smart Diplomacy!^TM

RICHARD EPSTEIN: The Constitution’s Vanishing Act. “For decades, Supreme Court justices have been rewriting key parts of our governing document.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 222.

“SMART DIPLOMACY” UPDATE: Saudi Royal Blasts U.S. Policy. “A leading Saudi prince demanded a place for his country at talks with Iran, assailing the Obama administration for working behind Riyadh’s back and panning other recent U.S. steps in the Middle East.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College Presidents Make a Killing While Schools Struggle.

Tuition revenue and enrollment for colleges are falling, but the people at the top aren’t feeling the pain. 2011 was a banner year for executive pay on campus, with college presidents raking in more money than ever before. Including bonuses and benefits, 42 presidents took home $1 million. Many of these presidents saw their pay double or triple over that year, according to data collected by the Chronicle of Higher Education. . . .

It may be true that higher salaries help attract better presidents, but with revenue sources getting weaker, most colleges should be looking for a ways to cut back, not spend more. Administrative spending, in particular, has always been a key driver of the exploding cost of college, and is where most of the cutting ought to begin as colleges tighten their belts. If lower-level administrators and faculty begin to feel serious cuts, these massive salaries for presidents will become much more difficult to defend.

Begin to feel? As I’ve suggested elsewhere, perhaps we need to think about outsourcing most higher education administration to low-paid, contract-worker “adjunct administrators.”

ROBERT VERBRUGGEN ON Whites’ Fear Of Being Labeled Racist.

PEELING THE ONION OF FAIL (CONT’D): A Gap In The Affordable Care Act. Actually, I don’t know if the omission of pediatric dental care is as big a flaw as this article — which seems like a plea from dentists for more subsidies — suggests.

HANS BADER: IRS Doubling Down On Critics:

Those rules restrict even truthful, nonpartisan criticism of IRS and bureaucratic wrongdoing by classifying it as “candidate-related political activity.”

For example, if an IRS official subjects citizens to incredibly burdensome demands for irrelevant information just to harass them for their political or religious beliefs, no 501(c)(4) group could later criticize that official’s nomination to be IRS commissioner, without engaging in restricted activity. That’s because the IRS’s proposed regulation defines even unelected government officials, like agency heads and judges, as “candidates” if they have been nominated for a position requiring Senate confirmation. The IRS’s proposed rules are an attack on the First Amendment that will make it easier for the government to get away with harassing political dissenters and whistleblowers in the future.

They don’t like being criticized. It gets in the way of junkets, graft, and political thuggery.