OOPS: Feinstein Torture Report Polling Badly.

It turns out, however, that about half of Americans, who’ve been witnessing bomb attacks and barbaric beheadings, are just fine with the nasty CIA questioning and see real value in preventing future losses of American lives in unprovoked and unanticipated attacks. Rasmussen Reports this week surveyed 1,000 likely voters and found that 49% agreed with both Republican and Democrat former intelligence chiefs that such questioning produced valuable information that protected the country.

A similar percentage (47%) believe such aggressive interrogation methods should be used against these captives. Thirty-three percent were opposed while 20% claimed to be unsure.

Forty-nine percent of Democrats oppose enhanced interrogation. But those types evenly divide on whether the information gathered is valuable regardless.

Among Republicans and independents, the lines are clear. A majority of GOP members (64%) and a plurality of independents (48%) are good with water-boarding etc.

While 69% of Republicans and 46% of unaffiliateds believe valuable intel comes from them. The more that respondents have followed the Feinstein report and its torture allegations, the more value they see in such severe interrogations.

Interestingly, you get similar results from this YouGov poll. Interestingly, if you click through to the crosstabs there you find that more women than men think the Feinstein report has hurt American national security.

So was releasing the report (1) A partisan tactic that fizzled because the Dems didn’t know how it would poll; (2) A base-rallying technique; or (3) A bold act of principle done in the face of known unfavorable polling?

Meanwhile, most damning in the YouGov poll is that hardly anyone, of any gender or party, thinks the CIA is under the control of the President and Congress.

GLEICHSCHALTUNG! Next Time You Visit a National Park, You Might Get a Lecture on Climate Change.

Ettling has spent his summers working as a park ranger at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon for nearly a decade. He is on a mission to teach visitors that man-made global warming is real. But climate change can be a touchy subject. So Ettling devised a strategy. When a park visitor casts doubt on global warming, he makes an appeal to their pocketbook.

“I try to shift the conversation away from polar bears and ice caps,” Ettling says. “I tell people there are a lot of things they can do to save money on their electric bill that will also help the environment. Usually, I can get through to them that way.”

Do they pitch ObamaCare, too?

I THINK I’M GETTING AN INKLING OF WHY BAR-FAILURE RATES ARE UP: UCLA law professor learns Ferguson-related exam question taboo. “Law school exams often present legal conundrums ripped from headlines of the day, but one UCLA law professor is apologizing for basing a test question on what is apparently a taboo subject — the fallout from the police shooting of a black man in Ferguson, Mo.” Grow up. It’s already hard enough to get a job in law without gaining a reputation for being hothouse flowers with pre-chipped shoulders.

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Plus, continuing Amazon’s 12 Days Of Deals. Browse and save!

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IT’LL BE HARD FOR THE RIGHT TO RESPOND IN KIND BECAUSE THERE ARE SO FEW LEFT-LEANING LEGISLATURES LEFT: Liberal group plots to catch GOP state pols being racist and sexist.

The leader of a group hoping to improve liberals’ fortunes at the state level revealed on Friday plans to start tracking conservative state legislators based on the assumption that “someone’s going to say something about black people” or women.

The comments came at the first ever conference of the State Innovation Exchange (SiX), the Left’s attempt to counter conservative policy successes that have followed Republican victories at the state level.

“We’re working with David Brock and Media Matters and American Bridge who have trackers that we can send out to monitor the debate on some bills that you all might be running,” Nick Rathod, executive director of SiX, said. “I think in many legislatures my understanding is that a lot of legislatures stream their floor debates but don’t necessarily transcribe it or capture it in any kind of way. And so we want to start capturing them on that. I think we know, someone’s going to say something about black people. Someone’s going to say something about women. Someone is going to say something.”

Hey, I’ve got an absurdly sexist — and probably racist — legislator from a red state for you right here:

I don’t keep up with football, except college football. Unless it’s Eli Manning or Peyton Manning. Eli and Peyton don’t do sexual assaults against people, other than their wives.

Run with it! What? Oh, right. . . .

DAVID HARSANYI: The GOP Establishment Needs To Get Over Its Fear Of Primary Fights. They’re not afraid of primary fights. They just prefer coronations.

NICK GILLESPIE: Journalistic Hypocrisy Over Hacked Emails vs. Celebrity Pics.

It was just a few months ago that everybody and his grandmother was truly livid—or at least feigned anger before firing up our search engines—when hackers released naked pictures of celebrities ranging from Jennifer Lawrence to Kate Upton to Dave Franco. Curiously, such outrage is almost completely missing in the media’s response to the massive hack attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment, which may be linked to the North Korean government and has dumped private emails, contracts, files of unreleased movies, and more all across the Internet.

This time around, there is unapologetic prurience at the chance to get a real behind-the-scenes look at an industry long notorious for its wicked, backbiting, and hypocritical ways. Big-shot producer Scott Rudin tells Sony co-chair Amy Pascal he thinks Angelina Jolie is “a minimally talented spoiled brat”? A-List director David Fincher is as difficult as Hitler was anti-Semitic? Tell us more!

Whatever the differences in public responses, the episodes underscore two basic points that are worth learning fast: First, nobody cares about other people’s privacy, especially if the divulged material is juicy enough. Second, privacy is itself a highly fluid concept that will have probably changed yet again by the time you finish reading this article. Once upon a time, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled that federal agents didn’t need warrants to tap phones. Privacy is invented more than it is discovered.

And if journalists didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.

HANNA ROSIN ON CAMPUS RAPE INVESTIGATIONS: Many women on campuses may want catharsis rather than rigorous justice, which is fine as long as no human beings are sacrificed.

I DON’T THINK HE SHOULD RUN. BUT IF HE DOES, HIS SLOGAN SHOULD BE “I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO.” As Romney Warned, Russian Nuclear Aggression Rises In Face of American Weakness.

PETER SUDERMAN: Jonathan Gruber is a Liar. Was He a Liar Under Oath?

He seems to have spoken “glibly” on multiple occasions.

As The Hill notes, in a late 2010 lecture to students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Gruber is a faculty member, he talked about the health law and described his role in its creation, saying, “Full disclaimer: I’m going to describe it objectively, but I helped write it.”

In another 2010 video, captured by C-SPAN and posted at Townhall, Gruber also noted his bias in favor of the law while claiming to have helped write it. “Once again, unabashed, I helped write the federal [health care] bill as well,” he said. That remark was made the same month that Obamacare was signed into law.

Two years later, Gruber hadn’t changed his story. In a now-infamous 2012 lecture on the law’s health exchanges at Noblis, Gruber not only said that states that don’t set up exchanges don’t have access to tax subsidies, he also referred to the “the one bit of the bill I actually wrote.”

The issue isn’t whether those statements were glib. It’s whether they were true. (Notably, when asked by Rep. Scott Desjarlais (R-Tenn.) whether other embarassing videotaped statements were lies or not, Gruber would only say that his remarks were “glib and thoughtless and really inexcusable.”)

There is no way to reconcile his multiple past statements with the statements he made this week while under oath. Either Gruber spent two years lying about his role in writing the law, or he was lying this week in his sworn congressional testimony.

Will the statute of limitations run before Attorney General Kurt Schlichter takes over DOJ under President Cruz?

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Study proves high heels do have power over men. I suppose this means they should be banned, in the name of equality.

BUT REMEMBER, IF YOU HAD ANY DOUBTS YOU’RE A “RAPE DENIALIST” OR SOMETHING: ABC: Witnesses ignored by Rolling Stone undermine another key part of “Jackie” narrative.

Related: As UVA Rape Story Falls Apart; Feminists Try to Save ‘Rape Culture’ Narrative. “Rape culture” is real. Just in places like ISIS’ Iraq or Boko Haram’s Nigeria, not on American college campuses. Strangely, feminists are completely uninterested in doing anything about those places.

GOVERNMENT BY CROMNIBUS: Blind, Deaf and Dumb. The important thing is that members of Congress get to reward donors without taking clear responsibility.

Related: House Quietly Passes Monstrous, Privacy-Invading Intel Bill.

CREEPING SHARIA: I’m Offended By The UK’s Porn Restrictions—And You Should Be Too.

WELL, THIS IS DISAPPOINTING: Ebola Vaccine Trial Halted Over Side Effects. “Researchers reported four cases of mild joint pain in the hands and feet in people who got the shot 10 to 15 days earlier; before the joint pain kicked in, a handful of subjects experienced mild fever. . . . The trial is scheduled to resume Jan. 5 in Geneva after the hospital is able to determine if the joint pain symptoms were ‘benign and temporary.'”

12 DAYS OF DEALS: Christmas Deals in Home Goods.

Also, $25 off the Kindle Fire HD7.

RICH VAIL COULD USE SOME HELP. I hit his PayPal.

SO I’VE RESISTED POSTING MUCH ABOUT THE DETAILS OF MY OWN WORKOUTS, because I don’t think there’s anything exceptional about them beyond what you can get from Rippetoe, and there’s nothing more boring than a middle-aged man going on and on about his workouts. But people keep asking so here’s a bit of background.

I thought I was overtraining this fall — felt sluggish, tended to just run out of gas at the end on the heavy lifts, etc. — and so trimmed back to fewer exercises, jettisoning the deadlift. This turned out, after a couple of months when I finally developed noticeable symptoms, to be a sinus infection, not overtraining, so now I’m gradually returning to the full routine. But at this point my lifts (all for 3 sets of 5) are: Squats: 280lbs. Overhead Press: 140lbs. Rows, 200lbs. Bench: 160lbs. I also do shoulder lateral raises, currently with a pair of 50lb dumbbells. These are respectable, but not anything to brag about, but I’ve come up quite a bit in the year or so that I’ve been doing the Rippetoe method with serious intensity. I only recently switched from dips to bench presses (I tend to avoid those because of a rotator cuff tear many years ago, but so far so good) and the rows have just been kind of stuck. I’m in the process of switching from the rows to the power cleans. I found those intimidating at the beginning but now they seem less so.

I don’t drink a gallon of milk a day. (Sorry, Rip, I just can’t do it.) I do drink a glass of the Cruze Dairy unhomogenized pastured whole milk before a workout though. It tastes as good as ice cream, and probably has as much butterfat. . . .

Helen measured me a while back, and since starting last year I had gained 3″ around my shoulders, 4″ around my chest, 2″ around my biceps, and 1/2″ around my waist. We didn’t measure legs, but my thighs are noticeably bigger around, and my butt is both bigger and differently shaped, which is going to necessitate a new cut of jeans — the Bill’s Khakis jeans I’ve worn for years now feel kinda tight in the thighs when I cross my legs. I’ve also found that some jackets, etc., don’t fit right any more, but I can live with that. My weight is up about 15 lbs., but most of that seems to be muscle. Sorry, no Geraldo-style shirtless selfies, though.

As I mentioned earlier, my blood pressure has stayed low, my resting heart rate is 62, and at my last checkup in September, my doctor pronounced my bloodwork “terrific” and my EKG “pristine.” This despite the fact that I’m currently doing no cardio at all except, occasionally, running stairs for 90-second intervals. No guarantee that you’ll see the same results if you try the Rippetoe approach, but it’s certainly worked for me. In particular, the computer-related aches and pains in my back, neck, hips shoulders, elbows, wrists, etc. are all gone. It would be worth it just for that, given how much I’m on the computer. . . .

UPDATE: Link was bad before; fixed now. Sorry!

JEFFREY KLUGER: Apollo 17 And The Case For Returning To The Moon.

By the way, his Apollo 13 book, Lost Moon, written with Jim Lovell, is terrific.

THE NEW LANGUAGE OF SEXUAL CONSENT: Newspeak.

HANK REARDEN, CALL YOUR OFFICE: New Aluminum ‘Foam’ Makes Trains Stronger, Lighter, and Safer.

AT AMAZON, deals galore at the Men’s Denim Store.

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Also, check out the Kindle Daily Deals. They’re new every day, you know. . . .

THE GOLDEN QUARTER: Some of our greatest cultural and technological achievements took place between 1945 and 1971. Why has progress stalled? The Greens and the Luddites got power, just as Nixon initiated the Regulatory Explosion that brought us OSHA, EPA, and various new regulatory regimes, even as money was being diverted to transfer payments to people who didn’t produce anything except votes — from funding the X-15 to funding Section 8. Not a formula for progress.

FREDDIE DE BOER: What progressives don’t want to talk about in the Rolling Stone scandal: A presumption of truth in every rape accusation is an impossible standard. And it’s doing real damage to the cause of fighting sexual assaults. It’s almost as if “fighting sexual assaults” isn’t progressives’ top priority.

WHO NEEDS CANARIES? Smartphones As Gas Detectors.