VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Crashing And Burning In 2013.

“IT’S ALL ABOUT THE NEUTRALIZATION OF MALENESS.”

THE RISKY BUSINESS of paternity leave.

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ILYA SHAPIRO: President Obama’s Top 10 Constitutional Violations Of 2013. Hey, the year’s not over yet.

THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW: Officer who forced dozens of anal cavity searches for fun gets only 2 years in prison. “This gentleman violently inserted his finger into dozens of victims’ anuses. Sometimes his friends held guns to the victims’ heads to force them to comply. Why was he sentenced to just two years in prison? Because he was an officer with the Milwaukee police department!” Tar and feathers are an appropriate remedy, if the justice system can’t police itself.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: The real gender war is against boys.

Lost in all the noise about helping girls achieve their potential is a growing body of evidence that boys are in trouble. It’s the real “gender gap.” Consider this: A recent study by two MIT economists found that men, not women, are less likely to graduate from high school and finish college. As a result, the study said, “over the last three decades, the labor market trajectory of males in the U.S. has turned downward along four dimensions: skills acquisition, employment rates, occupational stature and real wage levels.”

The authors say the declining economic value of men and the rise in women’s achievement contributes to the breakdown of the American family by making marriage less valuable. Then, with more out-of-wedlock births and single-parent households headed by women, the lack of a male role model hurts boys in particular, both economically and academically.

This isn’t a new finding: Multiple studies over the past 40 years have shown that boys suffer more than girls from divorce because they tend to externalize their reactions and act in ways that make them more likely to cause trouble at school or get arrested. Simply put: Boys need fathers to learn how to become men. And too many of them don’t have one.

The social cost of this is not just the obvious burden from spiraling welfare and prison populations — a 2008 study estimated that family fragmentation cost taxpayers more than $112 billion a year — but in the lost potential as well.

What to do? The first step to solving a problem is recognizing that one exists. And in this case that means ignoring all the political nonsense about a “war on girls” and “war on women,” and taking a serious look at whether the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. The research indicates this is so.

Read the whole thing.

ROLL CALL: Members of Congress Buy Xmas Gifts with Campaign Funds.

SO I GUESS THIS EXPLAINS THOSE LATE CHRISTMAS DELIVERIES? The NSA Actually Intercepted Packages to Put Backdoors in Electronics.

Take, for example, when they intercept shipping deliveries. If a target person, agency or company orders a new computer or related accessories, for example, TAO can divert the shipping delivery to its own secret workshops. The NSA calls this method interdiction. At these so-called “load stations,” agents carefully open the package in order to load malware onto the electronics, or even install hardware components that can provide backdoor access for the intelligence agencies. All subsequent steps can then be conducted from the comfort of a remote computer.

These minor disruptions in the parcel shipping business rank among the “most productive operations” conducted by the NSA hackers, one top secret document relates in enthusiastic terms. This method, the presentation continues, allows TAO to obtain access to networks “around the world.”

So does this mean UPS, Fedex, and USPS are cooperating with this? Because that would be illegal.

WAPO: 2013 is the year that proved your ‘paranoid’ friend right.

IRONY IS DEAD: David Brooks To Teach Humility At Yale.

NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY: You can mark 2013 as the year feminism officially lost all meaning. “Which is why, by the way, it’s so puzzling to see women of a certain age still rallying around Hillary Clinton. If you’re Hillary or Huma Abedin or Lis Smith and you think that getting in with a slime-bucket is a good idea for your own life trajectory, well be our guest. But you could have accomplished that without ­feminism.”

USA TODAY: NSA Targets Foreigners, Catches Americans.

THE HILL: Regulatory Fights Loom Large.

Battles lines are being drawn for a series of upcoming clashes over new regulations on the horizon in 2014.

The year promises to be chock full of contentious fights over scores of new rules stemming from ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank and a host of other laws.

Many of the provisions have already drawn fire, and opposition to high profile measures on the environment and healthcare is sure to increase ahead of the midterm elections. Republicans will point to the efforts as “job killing” overreach from President Obama, and some Democrats have already begun to distance themselves from controversial regulatory efforts.

Some lawmakers and public interest advocates, meanwhile, have launched another attack against the executive branch, claiming that delays or weakened new rules have harmed the public.

A Republican would face much more pushback in court. People on the right lack the left’s legal infrastructure.

THAT’S OKAY COMRADE, JUST SHOW THEM YOUR INTERNAL PASSPORT: America’s Internal Checkpoints: Refuseniks fight back against feds demanding papers.

NOT TO MENTION THE RACIAL INEQUALITY: “I notice President Obama hasn’t come out decrying the inequality that exists in the NBA. And it’s much, much worse than published salaries indicate. With endorsements, investments, personal appearances, and whatnot, Bryant is closer to a hundred million dollars a year, which means he makes about 5,000 times as much as poor West (who’s between teams).”

WITH THIS ADMINISTRATION, THE KEY QUESTIONS USUALLY ARE: CMS claims December enrollment surge, leaves key questions unanswered.

bout 1.1 million Americans picked a plan through the federally run health insurance exchange as of Dec. 24 as part of President Obama’s health care program, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Sunday.

But the announcement, which came in the form of a blog post from CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner, left many key questions unanswered.

To start, the figure doesn’t reveal how many people actually paid for health plans as of Dec. 24. Though payment is what typically makes enrollment official, up to this point, CMS has counted people as being “enrolled” if they merely went through the process of picking a health care plan.

Additionally, CMS still hasn’t provided a demographic breakdown of those who have signed up for insurance through the exchange, which is a key metric for measuring the success of Obamacare, because the exchanges need a critical mass of young and healthy individuals to offset the cost of covering older and sicker enrollees and those with pre-existing conditions.

If the news were good, they’d be trumpeting it. They’re not trumpeting.

JERRY POURNELLE: Credentials and a few words for junior officers.