DAVE HARDY: What The Clinton Library Reveals About Gun Control:

It was well worth the trip.

The first find was nothing less than staggering—a fax from Jody Powell, President Jimmy Carter’s press secretary, to George Stephanopoulos, Bill Clinton’s new press secretary, warning Clinton to back off from gun control because … it just doesn’t work.

“If there is an area that needs ‘new thinking,’ ‘rethinking,’ ‘a different kind of Democrat’ and all that, crime/gun control is it. From the outside this does not appear to be happening. What I hear and read sounds like the same old ideas being presented with the same worn-out rhetoric.

And Hillary’s still peddling it 20 years later. Plus:

“We have yet to propose anything that people think will make any difference. The people who are generally for gun control don’t make it a voting issue because it has no real impact on their lives. On the other hand, the inconvenience and hassle of wading through another round with indifferent and incompetent bureaucrats and the fear that this is only the first step toward more radical measures are quite real to people who own guns.”

Then came the real bombshell:

“Much as I hate to say it, the NRA is effective primarily because it is largely right when it claims that most gun control measures inconvenience and threaten the law-abiding while having little or no impact on violent crime and criminals.”

Powell then accurately predicted what the future would hold:

“I support registration in principle. But two questions need to be asked. Are the people causing the problem going to comply voluntarily? If not, do you have a way to effectively enforce compliance? If the answer is ‘no’ in both cases, consider whether the benefits are worth making Bob Dole majority leader.”

The cover sheet bore a handwritten note, showing that Stephanopoulos had sent the fax to President Clinton, with his own recommendation: “This makes a lot of sense. GS”

Somebody should ask him if he still feels that way, and if not, why not?

BETWEEN THE DUELING ORWELLIANISMS OF THE TSA AND UBIQUITOUS CNN, WHAT IS THERE TO LIKE? “Why do so many people hate US airports?”, asks the BBC.

(Via Maggie’s Farm.)

THE HILL: Hillary Clinton’s Likability Problem.

Allies of Hillary Clinton are confident she will win the Democratic presidential nomination, but they are worried about one big thing: her likability problem in the general election.

Clinton has rebounded from a rough spring and summer with a strong fall. And while her eyes remain on the primary, she is already testing general election themes against her possible GOP opponents as they do battle in what could be a drawn-out Republican primary.

Presidential elections are often decided on personality instead of specific policies. Along those lines, people in Clinton’s orbit are worried she doesn’t pass the would-you-like-to-have-a-beer-with-her test.
It’s a test she failed against then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in 2008. Throughout that cycle, Clinton stressed her “35 years of experience” while Obama pitched his “hope and change” message.

The likability test came up often on the campaign trail, most notably in the last New Hampshire debate that year when Clinton acknowledged Obama is “very likable.”

In a quip that may have cost him New Hampshire, Obama responded, “You’re likable enough, Hillary.”

Apparently, he was wrong.

RAHM EMANUEL, A LOUT WITH CLOUT: Breakfasting With Chicago’s Sociopathic Mayor.

FLASHBACK: “As far I know, Barack Obama is a reader, hopefully we will have a president who reads history and hopefully is not condemned to repeat it.”

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MAKE AN UNQUALIFIED PUTZ PRESIDENT: America at Obama’s End: Hope and change was the promise. What happened?

We are near the end of the seventh year of Barack Obama’s presidency, and by any measure the United States is a fractured nation. Its people are more divided politically than any time in recent memory. Personally, many are anxious, angry or just down.

Whatever Mr. Obama promised in that famous first Inaugural Address, any sense of a nation united and raised up is gone. This isn’t normal second-term blues. It’s a sense of bust.

The formal measure of all this appeared last week with the release of the Pew Research poll, whose headline message is that trust in government is kaput. Forget the old joke about the government coming to “help.” There’s a darker version now: We’re the government, and we’re here to screw you.

When you put the Chicago Mob into power, yeah.

YES. SILENCE IS TOXIC. We Need To Talk About Bear-Rape Culture.

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REALLY. FBI: ‘A Few Potential Things’ May Point to Terrorism in San Bernardino.

Question, did they wait to release information until after the evening newscasts?

I’M GOING OUT ON A LIMB AND SAYING NOT A TEA PARTIER: Multiple law enforcement sources in multiple agencies tell NBC News that one of the suspects in the San Bernardino shooting is Sayeed Farook.

UPDATE: “He was very religious. He would go to work, come back, go to pray, come back. He’s Muslim.”

YEP: The San Bernardino attack is sounding… weird.

THIS IS WHO THEY ARE. THIS IS WHAT THEY DO. Left Spends Day In Coordinated Attack on Saying “Thoughts and Prayers” For the Victims.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: How C. S. Lewis Predicted Today’s College Campus Craziness—in 1944.

PARTY ADVICE from Heather Havrilesky.

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SOME MODEST PROPOSALS TO REDUCE CARBON EMISSIONS: My USA Today column: The Climate Change Jet Set.

NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF ACADEME: Beacon Hill Institute chief: Obamacare study spiked by Suffolk U.

HEH: Check out the highest-rated comment on this WaPo column, “The American Dream? I thought so, until I had a baby and no maternity leave.”

“Just another first world, entitled diatribe. What??? You had to cut cable and drive an older car and only eat out once a week? The horrors!!! It sure is terrible that we live in a country where you couldn’t get months of taxpayer funded maternity leave to be with a child you chose to have while still eating out, watching HBO, and buying a new car.”

The author of the column is Carrie Visintainer, who is identified as the author of a book makes the commenter seem all the more right: “Wild Mama: One Woman’s Quest to Live Her Best Life, Escape Traditional Parenthood, and Travel the World.”

I blame our out-of-control culture of female privilege.

DEMOGRAPHICS: Korean County Achieves Its Goal: Less Birth Control, More Babies. Meanwhile, Europeans — and Chinese — are wishing they had achieved this 20 years ago.

WELL, THEY ARE DELICIOUS: Watch This Woman Deliver an Impassioned Speech on Behalf of the McRib.

PAULA BOLYARD IS updating reports on the San Bernadino shooting. But so far, nobody seems to know much.

WELL, THAT’S A RELIEF: Scientific American: Climate Change Will Not Be Dangerous for a Long Time.

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NOW THERE’S SOME KIND OF MASS SHOOTING going on in San Bernardino. As always early reports are confused, and may be wrong in many respects, so stay tuned.

FROM KATIE PAVLICH, A REMINDER: The Obama administration, not the NRA, sells guns to terrorists.