ASTRONOMY: Comet ISON Finally (Maybe) Almost Visible to Naked Eye.

THIS COULD BE A GAME-CHANGER: Koreans say graphene supercapacitors are ready for electric cars.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Amazon Christmas Store. Trees, decor, and more. Also, the Amazon Hanukkah store.

Plus, gifts under $50.

And as you do your shopping, a reminder: InstaPundit is an Amazon affiliate. When you do your Christmas/Hanukkah shopping — or any other shopping — through the Amazon links on this page, including the “Shop Amazon” tab at the top or the searchbox in the right sidebar, you support the blog at no cost to yourself. Just click on the Amazon link, then shop as usual. It’s much appreciated!

ABOVE THE LAW: Justice Clarence Thomas Speaks, And Oh, What A Speech. “I quit my job impetuously, packed up a U-Haul, and moved to Washington. One thing led to another and I wound up on the Court. It was totally Forrest Gump.” Plus this:

Judge Sykes: Stare decisis doesn’t hold much weight with you?

Justice Thomas: Oh it does. But not enough to keep me from going to the Constitution.

Indeed.

MICHAEL SILENCE: ACA: The reviews are in, and they ain’t pretty; hometown paper says ‘demolish’ Obamacare.

BIPARTISAN! 39 Democrats Break With Obama to Pass Upton ‘Fix.’

IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN NANOTECHNOLOGY, check out the 2014 Foresight Technical Conference, in Palo Alto this February.

GET ‘EM WHILE THEY LAST: Kindle Countdown Deals.

BUSH, OBAMA AND KATRINA: Blue Schism: CNN, DNC Chairwoman Rebut New York Times. Quoth Donna Brazile: “Bush came through on Katrina.”

Nobody’s saying that about Obama on ObamaCare.

FASTER, PLEASE: Team grows large graphene crystals that have exceptional electrical properties.

NAPOLEON’S ADVICE TO THE GOP: “Never interfere with an enemy when he’s in the process of destroying himself.”

FASTER, PLEASE: Cheap Hydrogen From Sunlight And Water.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s House Of Cards. “Just how big of a problem is inflation in Venezuela? The implied annual inflation rate in Venezuela is actually now in the triple digits, coming in at a whopping 283%, as shown in the chart below. What’s more, the implied monthly inflation rate has now ramped up to 36%, as shown in the chart below. That’s dangerously close to the hyperinflation threshold of 50% per month. This is due to an accelerating depreciation of the bolivar, reflecting Venezuelan’s deteriorating economic outlook.” The same actions produce the same results. And something that can’t go on forever, won’t.

THERE’S SOMETHING TO BE SAID FOR MINDLESSNESS, TOO, AT TIMES: Is Mindfulness Good For Everything? For example, I’m not a golfer, but I’m a lot better golfer after two or three beers.

THIS COULD BE A VERY BIG DEAL: Photons detected without damage: Technique to sense particles without changing their quantum states holds promise for quantum networks.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 7 Winter Essentials To Keep In Your Car.

JONAH GOLDBERG: Obama In The Dark: Dems Have Only Themselves To Blame For ObamaCare Quagmire.

You can’t let Congress off the hook for the underlying driver of this calamity: the lie that “if you like your health plan, you can keep it. Period.” This is now beyond dispute, though there’s still some squabbling about the “L” word itself. It wasn’t a lie, Obama and his defenders insist, it was simply an “incorrect promise,” in the words of the New York Times. I somehow doubt that locution would provide much cover for an adulterer who tells his wife, “Honey, I didn’t break my wedding vows. That was just an incorrect promise.”

But whatever label you want to put on that untruth, Obama wasn’t alone in offering it. Moreover, even though the legislation may go by the moniker “Obamacare,” the fact is the president didn’t write the law. Congress did, specifically congressional Democrats, with virtually no Republican input.

They won.

STAGES OF DENIAL: The NYT acknowledges Obama’s in trouble by reminding us that Bush was really, really bad. Remember?!!

At the website front page the teaser headline — which is also the headline in the paper version — is: “As Troubles Pile Up, a Crisis of Confidence for Obama.” But if you click to the article, the headline becomes “Health Law Rollout’s Stumbles Draw Parallels to Bush’s Hurricane Response.”

I can think of a whole bunch of non-parallels:

1. Bush’s political party didn’t design and enact Hurricane Katrina.

2. Bush didn’t have 5 years to craft his response to the hurricane.

3. Bush didn’t have the power to redesign the hurricane as he designed his response to it.

4. The Republican Bush believed he could not simply bully past the Democratic Mayor of New Orleans and the Democratic Governor of Louisiana and impose a federal solution, but the Democrat Obama and his party in Congress aggressively and voluntarily took over an area of policy that might have been left to the states.

5. The media were ready to slam Bush long and hard for everything — making big scandals out of things that, done by Obama, would have been forgotten a week later (what are the Valerie Plame-level screwups of Obama’s?) — but the media have bent over backwards for years to help make Obama look good and to bury or never even uncover all of his lies and misdeeds.

6. If Bush experienced a disaster like the rollout of Obamacare, the NYT wouldn’t use its front page to remind us of something Bill Clinton did that looked bad.

Read the whole thing.

NICK GILLESPIE: How Pot Legalization Is Losing After Winning. “Not only are pot taxes likely to be sky high, various sorts of restrictions on pot shops may well make it easier to buy, sell, and use black-market marijuana rather than the legal variety. That’s a bummer all around: States and municipalities will collect less revenue than expected, law-abiding residents will effectively be denied access to pot, and the crime, corruption, and violence that inevitably surrounds black markets will continue apace.”