AT AMAZON, Still Time To Shop Amazon’s Last-Minute Deals.

Plus, Shop Amazon Gift Cards.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN is a bit more personal than usual: Finding the good in my dad’s final days.

I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Scientists Are Getting Nervous About Italian Supervolcano.

Uplift started in 2005, and an alert level for the volcano was raised in 2012, requiring seismic monitoring, AFP reports. Recent years have seen increases in minor seismic activity and ground deformation. On Tuesday, researchers published a study in Nature stating that the caldera is nearing a “critical degassing pressure” that “can drive volcanic unrest toward a critical state.” It’s still impossible to say when another eruption may occur, but researchers are hoping to spur more research and monitoring at Campi Flegrei for the sake of the residents of nearby Naples, for whom an eruption “would be very dangerous.”

At least it’s not Yellowstone.

NUTRITION: Antibiotic-Tainted Seafood From China Is Making Its Way to American Tables.

Imported farm-raised seafood from China is tainted with antibiotics and often salmonella, U.S. regulators say, and the tainted fish is making its way to American tables.

The problem is, Asian fish farmers often supplement their fish feed with feces from pigs and geese, which contain harmful bacteria and antibiotics that have a direct impact on the seafood we eat. According to the latest research, up to 90 percent of the antibiotics administered to pigs pass through their urine and feces.

The U.S. Department of Commerce slapped a 112 percent tariff on Chinese shrimp, effective 2005, but unfortunately, Chinese suppliers have found ways to get around that.

Caveat emptor.

HEALTH: Vet Catches Bird Flu From Cat.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Software Dreams Up New Molecules in Quest for Wonder Drugs.

HAVEN’T WE ALL HAD DAYS LIKE THIS? Pennsylvania man, 89, heads out to store, ends up in Alabama.

We’re lucky: another 400 miles, and Pennsylvania Man could have ran into Florida Man, thus causing the destruction of the universe as we know it.

TERROR: Virginia Man in Military-Heavy Area Was ‘Moving Closer’ to Committing ISIS Attack, Says FBI.

A man living in the heart of Virginia’s military powerhouse area, who the FBI said purchased an AK-47 after the San Bernardino terrorist attack and was close to committing his own attack, has been charged with attempting to support ISIS.

Lionel Nelson Williams, 26, of Suffolk, Va., a Virginia-born U.S. citizen who also went by the name Harun Ash-Shababi, was arrested there Wednesday.

According to the affidavit, the FBI was tipped off in March that Williams was posting ISIS content and lectures from late al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki on his Facebook page — with Williams’ own commentary including “The Jihad (the struggle) doesn’t end just because it stops feeling good” — and had recently “acquired” an assault rifle.

“It’s time for me to take a stand. I stand with #Dawlah’. If that means you want nothing to do with me, then fine,” Williams publicly posted on his page in mid-March, leading the FBI to interpret this as a pledge of allegiance to ISIS. Four days later, he shared a video with the comment, “I love the Mujahideen the world over. Youtube/Facebook had the gall to delete it sometime ago, but somehow it’s been remade/reuploaded. Allahu Akhbar!”

Good work by the FBI.

GOOD: New Ebola Vaccine Gives 100 Percent Protection. “In a scientific triumph that will change the way the world fights a terrifying killer, an experimental Ebola vaccine tested on humans in the waning days of the West African epidemic has been shown to provide 100 percent protection against the lethal disease. The vaccine has not yet been approved by any regulatory authority, but it is considered so effective that an emergency stockpile of 300,000 doses has already been created for use should an outbreak flare up again.”

OBAMA’S MIDNIGHT REGULATION EXPRESS: The goal is to issue more rules than the new administration could ever repeal.

Kimberly Strassel:

Perhaps nothing has more underlined the Obama arrogance than his final flurry of midnight regulations. With each new proposed rule or executive order, Mr. Obama is spitefully mocking the nation that just told him “enough.”

The technical definition of a midnight regulation is one issued between Election Day and the inauguration of a new president. The practice is bipartisan. George W. Bush, despite having promised not to do so, pushed through a fair number of rules in his final months. But Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were more aggressive, and Mr. Obama is making them look like pikers.

Mr. Obama has devoted his last year to ramming through controversial and far-reaching rules. Whether it was born of a desire to lay groundwork for a Clinton presidency, or as a guard against a Trump White House, the motive makes no difference. According to a Politico story of nearly a year ago, the administration had some 4,000 regulations in the works for Mr. Obama’s last year. They included smaller rules on workplace hazards, gun sellers, nutrition labels and energy efficiency, as well as giant regulations (costing billions) on retirement advice and overtime pay.

Since the election Mr. Obama has broken with all precedent by issuing rules that would be astonishing at any moment and are downright obnoxious at this point. This past week we learned of several sweeping new rules from the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, including regs on methane on public lands (cost: $2.4 billion); a new anti-coal rule related to streams ($1.2 billion) and renewable fuel standards ($1.5 billion).

The fundamental transformation will continue until January 20.

THE SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE: The Nazis Fought the Original War on Christmas.

Who knew? Other than everyone who read Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism eight years ago, that is. But it’s good to see this sort of thing in the Smithsonian’s house organ. Or as author Dave Shiflett quipped over a decade ago in National Review, “A shocking story has been revealed: Adolf Hitler was not a Christian after all. Instead, he hoped to destroy Christianity.”

To borrow a line from another 19th-century born socialist God killer, as a reminder of the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce — while killing time before engineering the next tragedy — I found that above quote in a post of mine from right around this time in 2012. A few years before Angela Merkel turned the lights out on 21st Germany, Yahoo was reporting that “A minister in Angela Merkel’s government has sparked a pre-Christmas row among Germany’s ruling parties by suggesting God be referred to with the neutral article ‘das’ instead of the masculine ‘der.’”

But then, political correctness is what governments do in order to ignore their nation’s real, structural problems.

CINEMA: Film student stalks his phone thief, makes a thrilling documentary.

IF YOU DON’T SUPPORT NUCLEAR POWER, SHUT UP ABOUT “CLIMATE CHANGE:” Lamar Alexander and Sheldon Whitehouse: To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power.

NOW HE’S HACKING OUR POST-ELECTION! Putin to Democratic Party: You lost, get over it.

That was how Putin answered a question Friday about whether Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election in favor of Donald Trump at the Russian leader’s nationally televised annual news conference

“Democrats are losing on every front and looking for people to blame everywhere,” Putin said in answer to a Russian TV host, one of 1,400 journalists accredited to the marathon session. “They need to learn to lose with dignity.”

The Kremlin leader pointed out Republicans had won the House and Senate, remarking “Did we do that, too?”

Did you ever dream you’d live in an age when the leaders of two of the most powerful countries on Earth were also two of the world’s most powerful troll artists?

YES. NEXT QUESTION? In Trump and the New Anti-Semitism, Roger Simon asks, has the definition changed to being too pro-Israel?

SO WE HAVE THAT GOING FOR US. WHICH IS NICE. Pharrell on Trump Win: Millennials and Women Will ‘Save This Planet’

MY USA TODAY COLUMN is a bit more personal than usual: Finding the good in my dad’s final days.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1324: Ways & Means Committee Seeks Information From IRS About Continued Targeting Of Organizations Based On Political Beliefs — This Time, Pro-Israel Groups.

WISHING YOU AND YOURS: Happy Hoax-idays!

Jim Geraghty:

Surely, the world has genuine hate crimes. But a lot of the most covered ones in recent weeks have turned out to be hoaxes. A Jewish family is not fleeing Lancaster County after a backlash to their complaint about their school’s Christmas play. A drunken man did not threaten to set a Michigan woman’s hijab on fire. The November burning of an African-American church and spray-painting of “Vote Trump” was committed by an African-American parishioner. That Manhattan Muslim teen who claimed she was attacked by three drunks who called her a “terrorist” on the subway while lots of New Yorkers stood and watched? Hoax. (The hoaxer’s sister later went on Facebook and criticized the police for being excessively skeptical: “It became super clear to me these past two weeks that the police’s first instinct is to doubt your story and try to disprove it.”

That “YouTube prankster” who claimed he was thrown off the plane for speaking Arabic? Other passengers say he was being disruptive and was only thrown off for repeatedly shouting.

Read the whole thing.

Uber Moves Self-Driving Car Test to Arizona After Regulatory Defeat In California.

The startup on Thursday said it would begin a test of the self-driving vehicles early next year in Phoenix, and it sent journalists photos of the vehicles leaving a warehouse hauled by a big rig. Uber touted the support for its experiment of Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, who had issued a statement telling Uber “California may not want you, but we do.”

Uber’s announcement came less than a day after the California Department of Motor Vehicles said it would revoke the registrations of 16 Uber vehicles because the company refused to apply for a $150 permit for autonomous cars. Uber had said the permit shouldn’t be required for its cars, and it had invited San Francisco customers to hail the vehicles in defiance of regulators over the past week before capitulating.

Your low-regulation red states are much friendlier to innovation than bureaucratic hellholes like California.

TRUMP TAKES ON THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: Trump tweet pits Boeing, Lockheed against each other. As a friend says on Facebook, a lot of people in both parties would be in favor of this, if it weren’t Trump doing it.

THE DEMOCRATS TURN ON OBAMA:

The rising stars of the Democratic Party have been airing criticisms of President Obama lately, covering them with only the thinnest of veils. . . .

Obama is truly the great uniter. First he united the Arabs and Israelis in a repudiation of his Middle East policies, now he’s united Republicans and Democrats in a repudiation of his policies at home. Almost everywhere you look, the gap between Obama’s stirring rhetoric and his underwhelming accomplishments is immense. One of the biggest failures was his inability to make the Democrats competitive in every state.

This stems from many things, but one is his apparent indifference to state government. He seems to think of the Federal government as the only level of government that really matters. It is especially telling that he has been missing in action while his home state of Illinois drifted into a state of advanced decay due to a worsening pension problem. Ditto his home city of Chicago, where racial polarization and financial decline have proceeded while the Obama White House was largely uninvolved. Great U.S. Presidents, and even good ones, are usually rooted in local politics. They are citizens of real places, and they carry the concerns and the insights of those places into office. Obama was a member of the New York Times tribe, people for whom an absence of local loyalties is a sign of enlightenment.

Plus: “President Obama will no doubt have a lucrative and high-profile retirement. He’s younger than most Presidents, and he will be staying in Washington for the time being. But his immediate legacy is clearly a disaster for Democrats: in early 2017, the Party will control a minority of state houses and no branch of Federal government. With so little, it’s very difficult to regenerate and develop a farm system. The Democrats’ bench is already extremely shallow; it probably won’t get much more crowded over the next few years.”

As evidenced by the fact that Keith Ellison and Tom Perez count as “rising stars.”

HMM: Did Russia Just Test a Weapon in Space?

The apparent anti-satellite (ASAT) test largely escaped public notice. The Washington Free Beacon was the first to report on the weapon’s trial, on Dec. 21—attributing the information to unnamed U.S. government sources. CNN also pointed out the test, again citing anonymous U.S. officials.

Capt. Nicholas Mercurio, a spokesman for the 14th U.S. Air Force, which oversees space systems, declined to specifically comment on the reported Russian test. “We monitor missile launches around the globe,” Mercurio told The Daily Beast, “but as a matter of policy we don’t normally discuss intelligence specific to those launches.”

For the anti-satellite test, the Russians have a tidy cover story—that the rocket isn’t actually an anti-satellite weapon, or ASAT. Instead, it’s a meant for shooting down incoming ballistic missiles.
That is to say, the rocket that Russia tested on Dec. 16 could be a defensive rocket-killer, rather than an offensive satellite-killer. “My take is that it could be either,” Pavel Podvig, an independent expert on Russian strategic forces, told The Daily Beast via email. “It is difficult to say at this point.”

But in fact, there’s no meaningful difference between an anti-satellite weapon and a defensive missile-interceptor. The same basic hardware can do both jobs.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Josh Blackman: In punishing professor for wearing blackface, the University of Oregon crapped all over the First Amendment. Okay, that’s my headline, not his, but it’s true on substance.