MEMORIES: My First Time Scoring Heroin.

MILTON FRIEDMAN: Why we don’t need to throw the bums out. “It’s nice to elect the right people, but that’s not the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.”

Politicians are at best semi-autonomous. They mostly respond to external forces. If you want them to behave differently, change the correlation of forces. That can be done by taking over state parties, by primarying people, by changing the culture and all sorts of other ways.

IS WORKING OUT MORE IMPORTANT THAN WORKING? I dunno, but they go together. I find that if I cut back on working out — or reading fiction for that matter — in order to “get more done,” I usually wind up not getting any more done, but being sort of sluggish and out-of-sorts.

CHANGE: Pill Could Join Arsenal Against Bedbugs. “And it’s not as if the drug is rare and dangerous. It’s already in thousands of American households: ivermectin, the active ingredient in the beef-flavored Heartgard Chewables that kill heartworm in dogs.”

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Employers Must Offer Family Care, Affordable or Not. “In a long-awaited interpretation of the new health care law, the Obama administration said Monday that employers must offer health insurance to employees and their children, but will not be subject to any penalties if family coverage is unaffordable to workers.”

So under the Affordable Care Act, care doesn’t have to actually be, you know, affordable. Gotcha.

KEN ANDERSON: Legal Infrastructure for Driverless Cars, and Comparisons Between the Law and Ethics of Self-Driving Cars and Autonomous Weapon Systems.

GREG MANKIW: The President Rejects Bipartisanship: “The fiscal deal struck last night makes one thing clear: President Obama must have really hated the recommendations of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission that he appointed. The commission said that we needed to reform entitlement programs to rein in spending and that increased tax revenue should come in the form of base broadening and lower marginal tax rates. The deal appears to offer no entitlement reforms, no tax reform, and higher marginal tax rates. After all the public discussion over the past couple years of what a good fiscal reform would like like, it is hard to imagine a deal that would be less responsive to the ideas of bipartisan policy wonks.”

Obama wants to punish people. That’s what they left out.

WHAT CAN I SAY, IT’S A CURSE: Are You Too Attractive For Work?

CONGRATULATIONS! Andrew Klavan’s novel, A Killer In The Wind, is featured on Amazon as one of the Best Books Of The Month.

WELL, THIS HARSHES THE NARRATIVE: Study Suggests Lower Mortality Risk for People Deemed to Be Overweight. “The report on nearly three million people found that those whose B.M.I. ranked them as overweight had less risk of dying than people of normal weight. And while obese people had a greater mortality risk over all, those at the lowest obesity level (B.M.I. of 30 to 34.9) were not more likely to die than normal-weight people.”

But remember, most of the anti-obesity crusading isn’t really about health, it’s about not wanting to look at fat people. So this won’t change much.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Testing and improving scaffolded DNA origami for molecular nanotechnology.

TWO SETS OF RULES: David Gregory walks free while Iraq vet was jailed.

It’s been more than a week since police in Washington, D.C., opened an investigation into NBC’s David Gregory’s possession of a “high-capacity magazine” that’s prohibited in the District on on national TV. Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier’s spokesman refused Monday to respond to whether Mr. Gregory had even been interviewed yet. This is a rather curious departure for a city that has been ruthless in enforcing this particular firearms statute against law-abiding citizens who made an honest mistake.

In July, The Washington Times highlighted the plight of former Army Spc. Adam Meckler, who was arrested and jailed for having a few long-forgotten rounds of ordinary ammunition — but no gun — in his backpack in Washington. Mr. Meckler, a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, says he had no idea it was illegal to possess unregistered ammunition in the city. He violated the same section of D.C. law as Mr. Gregory allegedly did, and both offenses carry the same maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.

Mr. Meckler was charged with the crime and was forced to accept a plea deal to avoid the cost and time of a protracted legal fight.

Gregory has juice. In the Obama era, it’s all about having juice.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Poll: As a new year begins, more worry than hope. “A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds Americans showing the wear and tear of four years of economic angst, and a waning belief in the resilience of the American dream. President Obama faces a less hopeful nation than his recent predecessors at the beginning of their second terms.” Hey, it’s not like people weren’t warned.

RICHARD EPSTEIN: When Government Takes You Hostage.

NICK GILLESPIE: Why Fiscal Cliff Deal is Terrible – But Will Lead to Lower Spending and Smaller Government.

UPDATE: Conn Carroll:

Remember, Obama’s first offer was for a $1.6 trillion tax hike and an infinite debt limit hike. Boehner countered with $800 billion. The final deal was for only $600 billion.

How is that not a “win” for Republicans?

MORE: Was the left taken to the cleaners? “The Democrats have made the Bush tax rates permanent for 98 percent of the public, which Republicans couldn’t even do when they controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency.”

Yeah, but there’s this rule: Anything less than a 100% victory for the GOP is instead a major victory for the Dems, according to all Democrats and most Republicans.

STILL MORE: Bob Krumm is very unhappy.

FROM THE FOLKS AT LUCKYGUNNER.COM, Ammo Stats for 2012. It was a good year to be in the business. . . .

MICKEY KAUS: How Republicans Can Go On Offense.

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Deborah Jones Merritt: Are Law Schools Like A&P and NASA? “The final report on Columbia’s crash noted that ‘[e]xternal criticism and doubt’ only ‘reinforced the will to “impose the party line vision on the environment, not to reconsider it.”‘ NASA’s executives, in other words, responded with perfect groupness: Bonded by their past success, they rejected any criticisms with hostility. Legal education, unfortunately, shows all of the signs of groupness.”

AT AMAZON, markdowns in Bedding.

Also, today only: Amazon Instant Video: Own 22 Popular Movies in HD for Under $5 Each, or SD for Under $4 Each.

WHEN YOU CAN’T TRUST THE NUMBERS: Higher Education Bubble Update: Another Rankings Fabrication. “Tulane University has admitted that it sent U.S. News & World Report incorrect information about the test scores and total number of applicants for its M.B.A. program. The admission — as 2012 closed — made the university the fourth college or university in that year to admit false reporting of some admissions data used for rankings. In 2011, two law schools and one undergraduate institution were found to have engaged in false reporting of some admissions data.”

If I were the House Republicans, I’d be holding hearings on higher education — both the scandals, and the cost explosion — and grilling university presidents.

INDIA BUS RAPE AFTERMATH: Hundreds of women inquire about gun licences following woman’s murder, showing the lack of faith in law enforcement. Smart move. And if enough women carry guns, this sort of thing won’t happen much.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Big Bloat On Campus: An F For Effort on Holding Down Tuition.

At the University of Minnesota, the number of employees with “human resources” or “personnel” in their job titles has grown from 180 to 272 since the 2004-05 academic year. Since 2006, the university has spent $10 million on consultants for a vast new housing development that is decades from completion. It employs 139 people for marketing, promotions and communications. Some 81 administrators make $200,000 per year or more.

In the past decade, Minnesota’s administrative payroll has gone up three times as fast as the teaching payroll, and twice as fast as student enrollment. Oh, and tuition more than doubled in that same period, to more than $13,000 per year.

These facts and figures, gleaned from a fascinating article in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, are depressingly typical of American higher education, where administrative payrolls and other non-teaching costs have been growing rapidly — without any obvious commensurate benefit for students.

To the contrary, the bloat on many U.S. campuses is now a significant cause, along with cutbacks in state spending, of the surge in tuition, which, in turn, is an obstacle to upward mobility for an entire generation of young Americans.

Do tell.

IT IS AN UN-TREATY: Russia Abandons Kyoto Protocol. And, of course, Canada has already announced its withdrawal.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama Spreads Chicago Style Divisions Through American Politics.

President Obama can call on all sides to please, pretty please, come together for the good of the country. Just before he ignites yet another self-serving, unnecessarily bitter crisis to keep opponents feuding. And then calls on all sides to reject their politics of division.

Which, by the way, is how the Democrat mayors of Chicago’s machine have managed to rule the Windy City for eight decades, by keeping their party’s feuding factions feuding and unable to coalesce behind an alternative to the Big Guy in City Hall. The Big Guy now is Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who’s actually a tiny fellow who has what Chicago prizes, clout.

But the seeping Chicagoness of the nation’s politics is probably coincidence.

Divide, weaken, and rule. And if the place you rule goes downhill, that’s not as important as that you are the one who rules.