WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Heads Up. California Starts No Notice Gun Confiscation On January 1.

DOING SOMETHING ABOUT SPACE WEATHER.

AT AMAZON, fresh Year-End Deals.

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Man charged with setting Houston mosque fire was a devout attendee. “According to a charging instrument released by the Harris County District Clerk, Moore told investigators at the scene that he has attended the mosque for five years, coming five times per day to pray seven days per week.”

With a jihadi beard. You know, the good news is that without fake hate crimes, we’d hardly have any hate crimes at all.

BURGLARS JUST WANT TACOS — brilliant repurposing of security camera footage as a restaurant commercial.

Best part — the thugs who broke in must be steaming about being mocked so badly, and this witty video going viral only increases their chances of being caught.

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN JURISDICTIONS SUCH HELLHOLES OF FINANCIAL INSOLVENCY? Puerto Rico Says It Will Default on Some Bonds.

IT’S A SHOW ABOUT NOTHING: Barack Obama’s last year in office as TV satire (as if it wasn’t already), as scripted by Stephen Miller:

There are really only so many times you can show the main character of a long-running series going golfing before the audience stops caring and jumps to something new. Already there is talk of how producers can possibly insert Obama as a supporting character into future spinoff shows, including the upcoming 2016.

Season Seven, aptly titled “The Fu**-It List” in reference to a line of dialogue recited by the president (played by Barack Obama), started out with promise. We saw him jamming out in front of a podium wearing Dr. Dre’s “Beats” line of headphones and sitting down with some kooky new characters, possibly in an attempt at gaining viewers from the coveted 18–24 demographic.

As the season continued, its plot became fixated on a catastrophic refugee crisis, though scriptwriters bizarrely opted out of having the president (played by Barack Obama) deal with it head on, choosing instead to show the audience a simpler story of him trekking through Alaska.

The cinematography of those episodes last season was no doubt breathtaking, but the writers once again chose to rely on the overused past plot device of having him pull out a selfie stick instead of undergoing real character development. It’s almost as if the character of the president (played by Barack Obama) has become a one-line caricature simply hoping to ride out the final season of the show.

​As falling ratings have shown, audiences are tired of the same old shtick and are ready to move on.

I know I am — and pace Miller’s comments above, I’m praying that industry showrunners won’t try the Fred Silverman-esque stunt of plugging Barry Stinson into another spin-off.

FREE-RANGE KIDS, LOS ANGELES 1938: This video, made to support plans for sidewalks, shows kids from Samuel Gompers Junior High School—back then it was apparently uncontroversial to name a school for a labor leader—walking home or, in a few cases, riding doubled-up on bicycles.

[jwplayer mediaid=”222694″]

BEST TV OF 2015: Reason‘s Glenn Garvin ranks his favorite shows and explains why so few network programs got canceled.

BILL COSBY FACES SEX ASSAULT CHARGES IN PENNSYLVANIA’S MONTGOMERY COUNTY, NBC’S Philadelphia affiliate reports:

Cosby was charged Wednesday with sexually assaulting a woman at his suburban Philadelphia home 12 years ago — the first criminal charges brought against the comedian out of the torrent of allegations that destroyed his good-guy image as America’s Dad.

Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman charged Cosby, 78, with three felony counts of aggravated indecent assault, including that Cosby assaulted his victim while she was unconscious and without consent, according to court documents.

“Upon examination of all of the evidence, today we are able to seek justice on behalf of Mr. Cosby’s victim,” said incoming District Attorney Kevin Steele, who currently serves as first assistant district attorney.

It’s the first criminal case against Cosby over his conduct with women, which has received new scrutiny in the past year. The case sets the stage for perhaps the biggest Hollywood celebrity trial of the era and could send the 78-year-old Cosby to prison in the twilight of his life and barrier-breaking career.

Related: Rob Long on “The Cosby Mysteries” from the April issue of Commentary. Read the whole thing.

UPDATE [from Glenn]: Seeing a lot of this kind of thing on Twitter today:

UPDATE [From Ed]: Further thoughts on the charges against Cosby today, and background on the likely complainant, from Ed Morrissey.

IN 2015, the commercial spaceflight industry had a great year.

YOU LIKE US, YOU REALLY LIKE US: Veteran blogger Doug Ross’s annual “Fabulous 50 Blog Award Winners” lists InstaPundit as a winner of his “Best All-Around Blogging” and the recently redesigned PJ Media as one his “Best Op-Ed Blogs,” and we wanted to say thanks.

(Thanks to Glenn for letting me sit in on the best jam session on the Internet and for the Insta-readers for their perceptive comments to my posts. And also thanks to lead editor Aaron Hanscom for making the trains run so smoothly at PJM.)

I’M NOT SURE THAT ANYBODY — STEPHEN GREEN, EVEN — COMBINES LOVE FOR ALCOHOL WITH GEEKINESS ENOUGH FOR A BB-8 Ice Mold.

MY BROTHER WORKED AT WENDY’S WITH A GUY WHOSE LIFE GOAL WAS TO OWN A FIERO. HE ACHIEVED IT! The Pontiac Fiero Was a Misunderstood, Misfit Love Letter to American Backroads.

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FASTER, PLEASE: Researchers see promising results in treating age-related decline in muscle mass and power. “Myostatin inhibits skeletal muscle growth. The humanised monoclonal antibody LY2495655 (LY) binds and neutralises myostatin. We aimed to test whether LY increases appendicular lean body mass (aLBM) and improves physical performance in older individuals who have had recent falls and low muscle strength and power.”

NO, BUT WE’RE GETTING CLOSER: We’re still not really in the space age. “If it meets its design goal the SpaceX Falcon 9 will cost $250 per lb to put into low Earth orbit (LEO). That is about a tenth of the price of competing alternatives. Suppose Elon Musk succeeds in getting the price done that far. Suppose he goes even farther and hits $100 per pound. Will we be in the space age yet? Nope.”

The more progress we make, the more progress we will make next.

JOHN PODHORETZ: This Is Just The Bloodletting The Republican Party Needs. “Now they’re making news, and in the right way — by airing their differences when it comes to policy.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 965.

TRUMP’S IDEAS: FROM CRAZY TO POLICY IN JUST A MONTH. GOP moves to pause refugee acceptance over background checks.

A group of Senate Republicans wants to largely pause the acceptance of Syrian and Iraqi refugees until the administration meets a wide-range of hurdles aimed at bolstering background checks.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) has introduced legislation that would block the administration from accepting or resettling the refugees until the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Director of National Intelligence have determiend that each refugee has passed a background check ensuring that they aren’t a national security threat and haven’t supported a terrorist organization.

Kirk also wants the DHS inspector general and the comptroller general of the United States to, separately, review the certifications and give their findings to Congress. and for DHS to give a quarterly report to Congress on the number of refugees who tried to enter the United States and how many were given certifications.

Kirk’s legislation—which is backed by five other Senate Republicans—comes after an end-of-year spending bill didn’t address the refugee issue. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has pledged to move legislation on the refugee acceptance program during the first quarter of next year, though it’s unclear what proposal he would have the Senate take up.

Kirk’s legislation would also require the FBI, the DHS and the Director of National Intelligence to clarify within six months how the administration plans to enhance its screening for refugee applicants, including reviewing social media. He also wants to know if any changes were made after two al-Qaeda supporters entered the United States in 2009 as Iraqi refugees.

Stay tuned.

DON SURBER: Pundit Of The Year: Dilbert Creator Scott Adams.

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ROGER SIMON ON SEX, LIES, CLINTON, AND TRUMP:

More importantly, times have changed and morality with it. I don’t think Bill, and certainly Hillary, would want Juanita Broaddrick brought up at a time when, on our campuses,  even an unwanted kiss is legally considered rape, thanks to Title IX. Can you imagine how many instances of what is called “unwanted touching” could come out of the woodwork now if Bill started to pick a fight with Trump? It’s hard to imagine Clinton making it through Georgetown or Yale Law under today’s rules, or even through his freshman year.

The truth is Bill’s relationships with women are the product of another era, one that is fading remarkably fast in the rear view mirror.  There is little tolerance these days for his kind of behavior — no more winking — not in the USA anyway.  Clinton’s well known hypocritical wagging of the finger at the television to swear to us that he “never had sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky” may not have looked terrific back when he did it, but today it would seem downright repellent.  Imagine it being played again and again next to a Hillary commercial.

Doubtless Donald Trump has not been a saint, but there is a big difference between him and Bill.  The Donald may often be rude.  He may be a thin-skinned bloviator.  But he’s not a creepy hypocrite.  In that sense he’s the opposite of the Clintons, both of them.

Lastly, what if Trump were to raise the Jeffrey Epstein case?…. whoa.

Read the whole thing.

Related: I haven’t watched Sex, Lies, and Videotape since it was first released on home video, but as I recall, Steven Soderbergh’s debut was noted for the long dramatic pauses in its dialogue. And whatdayaknow: “Liberal Guest On FOX Speechless When Asked If Bill Clinton Has Abused Women (Video).” Everything old is new again!

WE PRINTED AN OBVIOUS LIE, WE HURT PEOPLE, BUT WE DON’T WANT TO PAY DAMAGES: Rolling Stone wants lawsuit over debunked gang-rape article dismissed.

Rolling Stone Magazine’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit by three former members of the fraternity maligned by the publication in a now-retracted article alleging a gang rape.

The three former members of the University of Virginia chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity claim in their lawsuit that they were easily identified as potential rapists in Rolling Stone’s expose. The students claim their names and hometowns were listed online following the article, and that their “names will forever be associated with the alleged gang rape.”

Attorneys for Rolling Stone dispute this, writing “No reasonable reader would understand from the article and the proffered extrinsic evidence that plaintiffs are identified as the perpetrators.”

The article didn’t provide the real names of any of the alleged attackers (the main perpetrator turned out to not even exist). But the fraternity members allege that enough identifiable information was provided that friends, family members and other students were able to figure out who might have been the rapists.

One of the suing students had the bedroom at the top of the first flight of stairs at the fraternity house, which was deemed “the mostly likely scene of the alleged crime,” according to the lawsuit. The three students say they were interrogated and harassed by the people they knew (as well as reporters and online commenters) after they were identified. . . .

Barely a month after the article was published, it was retracted with an editor’s note. In April 2015, the Columbia Journalism Review released its findings into what went wrong in the reporting.

Since then, three lawsuits have been filed against the magazine. One from the three fraternity members, one from a U.Va. dean who was named in the article and one from the Phi Kappa Psi chapter as a whole. The fraternity house was vandalized in the wake of the article.

I hope this ends like in The Verdict, where the jury comes back to ask the judge if it can award more in damages than the plaintiff asked for.