DICK CHENEY ON THE NEW REP. CHENEY: ‘If She Wants My Advice, She’ll Ask for It:’ Former vice president accompanies daughter Liz for her swearing in to House.

TYLER O’NEIL: 7 Desperate Liberal Lies About Trump’s Education Pick Betsy DeVos.

Chuck Schumer has already promised to drag out Trump’s cabinet confirmation process for months, so really this story is just the warmup.

THE HILL: Why Republicans took aim at an ethics watchdog.

The failed attempt by Republicans to rein in an independent ethics office was the culmination of years of mounting frustration on Capitol Hill.

While House Republicans backed down Tuesday from their effort to tighten oversight of the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), the complaints about the office are unlikely to subside in the new Congress.

Lawmakers in both parties have griped about the OCE since its creation in 2008, saying the office’s powers are overly broad and can be used for partisan purposes.

Some of the Republicans behind the failed effort to bring the OCE under congressional oversight had been investigated by the office in the past, according to Politico, including Reps. Blake Farenthold (Texas), Peter Roskam (Ill.) and Sam Graves (Mo.). Farenthold’s investigation was ultimately dropped by the ethics office.

And while Democrats gleefully attacked Republicans Tuesday for seeking to change the OCE, they too have chafed at its approach to investigations.

If it’s so bad, make getting rid of it a bipartisan thing. After all, the Congressional Black Caucus tried to gut it in 2010:

The Office of Congressional Ethics, a powerful symbol of Democrats’ promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington, is in danger of having its power stripped after the midterm elections.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have led the charge, airing complaints about the aggressive, independent panel in a private session with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month, and they’ve drafted a resolution that, if approved, would severely curtail the panel’s power.

So why are so many racists “gleefully” attacking Republicans now?

QUESTION ASKED: Can the Democrats Start from Scratch?

Look at the Democratic Platform. The preamble has a decent paragraph about stagnant wages, wealth gaps, and Americans feeling like the “system is rigged.” But if you look for an overall vision or statement of values you’ll have to make do with this: “Democrats believe that cooperation is better than conflict, unity is better than division, empowerment is better than resentment, and bridges are better than walls. It’s a simple but powerful idea: we are stronger together.” As the reader may have noticed, these aren’t really ideas, let alone powerful ones. They’re barely slogans. Who disagrees that “cooperation is better than conflict” or that “empowerment is better than resentment”? As for “bridges are better than walls,” okay, that’s deep. I happen to prefer my bathroom to have walls rather than bridges, but progress is progress. Let me also suggest adding “up is better than down,” “light is better than heat,” and “spoons are better than forks.”

In my lifetime, conservatives seem to be more prone than liberals to manifestos. A self-serving explanation for this among liberals would be that manifestos are the work of ideologues and cranks. But the simpler reason is that avatars of prevailing opinion don’t need manifestos. Liberals produced them during the George W. Bush years but got out of the habit once they were back in the driver’s seat. Now it’s time to get back to them. Manifestos are the starting point for movements based on serious ideas, and never are they more crucial than when you’re out of power. So, for the Democrats, let 100 manifestos now bloom.

What’s missing from T.A. Frank’s prescription is the new leadership required to produce new results. But the Clintons are old and out of juice, the Democrat bench is as thin as it’s been in nearly a century, and Barack Obama and his hard-left coterie threaten more — much more — of the same.

That’s not the change Frank can believe in.

SURPRISE! Turkey extends emergency rule to maintain purge of Gulen supporters.

Emergency rule, first imposed in Turkey after an attempted putsch on July 15 and then extended in October, enables the government to bypass parliament in enacting new laws and to limit or suspend rights and freedoms when deemed necessary.

The extension, effective from Jan. 19, comes as Turkey reels from a series of attacks by Islamist or Kurdish militants, most recently on Sunday when a lone gunman shot dead 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub during New Year celebrations.

Ankara accuses Pennsylvania-based preacher Fethullah Gulen and his supporters, whom it terms the Gulenist Terror Organisation (FETO), of being behind the July coup attempt. Gulen denies the allegations.

It wasn’t “an attempted putsch.” It’s an increasingly successful purge.

IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP. THANKS, EGON. Nuclear experts to Trump: More than tweets are needed to stop North Korea.

BUT OF COURSE: Obama undermines Trump on civil rights with last-minute appointments.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY EDITION: Volokh: University Of Oregon’s Punishment Of Tax Prof Nancy Shurtz May Signal The End Of Free Speech For All Professors At All Universities.

AT AMAZON, deals on Educational Supplies.

Plus, save on Snow Removal gear and supplies.

MY VOTE GOES TO DANA LOESCH: Reader Poll: Who Should Replace Megyn Kelly.

Dana’s book, Flyover Nation: You Can’t Run a Country You’ve Never Been To, captured the essence of the 2016 election.

MEANT TO DO THIS EARLIER TODAY BUT…: The StrategyPage Wars Update. I’ll link to this monster again tomorrow.

All media thrives on FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) and the scary headlines in 2017 will feature China (and the possible collapse of the economy there and the worldwide impact), South Asia (the threat of nuclear war between Pakistan and India) and East Asia (the crumbling North Korean dictator may have usable nukes in 2017 and might use them). Meanwhile the threat of Islamic terrorism activity in the West will remain a headline staple.

SASHA VOLOKH THINKS IT’S DANGEROUS for Trump to retain private security. Given the change in military technology and the state since Aristotle, I’m not sure the quotes are apposite.

But if you’ve read my paper on military coups in the United States, — and if you haven’t, go read it right now, what are you thinking? — you’ll know that private security for the President makes a coup much more difficult. But it’s not like anyone’s ever talked about that kind of thing. . . .

THEY VOTED OVERWHELMINGLY FOR TRUMP: The Scots-Irish As Indigenous People: “The academic ‘discourse’ about white privilege acknowledges rhetorically the reality of class differences amongst whites, but in practice this issue never realizes itself in any actionable manner.”

Plus:

All this leads to the strangeness of American in 2012 which might perplex outsiders. For example, Malia Obama, the daughter of two individuals with law degrees from Harvard, would be able to benefit from affirmative action,* because she lacks white skin privilege. In contrast, the child of a poor family from Appalachia who was white would not gain any preference, because by their nature as a white person they had the right of white skin privileged from which they benefited. You might assert here that there are points in favor for geographic and class diversity at elites schools. But from what I have read Thomas Espenshade’s work shows that elite universities tend to discriminate against rural and lower class whites (as well as Asians) to maintain diversity through admissions of sufficient numbers blacks and Hispanics. Note: well connected whites with high socioeconomic statuses are doing fine under the current dispensation.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: In the comments, a reference to David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed. Though as a single subject knockoff, Jim Webb’s Born Fighting: How The Scots-Irish Shaped America isn’t bad. I see Webb as a plausible 2020 Democratic nominee if the Democrats are smart, which is to say probably not . . . .

AT AMAZON, save in automotive Tools and Equipment.

Plus, deals in Generators and Portable Power. It’s blizzard season!

FALLEN ANGELS IS JUST A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL, RIGHT GUYS? RIGHT? GUYS? Greenland Enters 2017 Adding Extraordinary Amounts Of Ice And Snow. “Greenland’s ‘surface mass budget’ for winter 2016-2017 is already more than two standard deviations higher than the northern ice sheet’s mean snow and ice accumulation over the last 24 years.”

REMEMBERING: That Time John Kerry Defamed America and American Soldiers: Kerry worked to spread propaganda about U.S. atrocities in Vietnam.

A BIG LOSS FOR GEORGIA TECH AS ONE OF ITS MOST FAMOUS FACULTY MEMBERS, JUDITH CURRY, DECIDES TO LEAVE. But the real downer is why: “The deeper reasons have to do with my growing disenchantment with universities, the academic field of climate science and scientists. . . . At this point, the private sector seems like a more ‘honest’ place for a scientist working in a politicized field than universities or government labs — at least when you are your own boss.”

Plus: “At this point, I figure that I can reach more people (including students and young researchers) via social media.”

TRIGGERED: Man, 20, ‘yells “f*** Trump”, tries to choke himself and urinates on a state trooper’ after being arrested for disorderly intoxication at Disney.

NEWT GINGRICH: Trumpism Explained. “You want to be on permanent offense. You also want to dominate by saturation. There’s a remarkable parallelism.”

MAYBE OUR INFECTIOUS-DISEASE BUREAUCRACIES SHOULD SPEND MORE TIME ON INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND LESS ON PLAYGROUND AND FIREARM SAFETY: Measles Returns As A Killer.

The USA has suffered its first measles death in 12 years, according to Washington state health officials.

The woman’s measles was undetected and confirmed only through an autopsy, according to the Washington State Department of Health. The woman’s name was not released, but officials said she lived in Clallam County. . . .

Pneumonia is one of several serious common complications of measles and the most common cause of death from the virus, said William Schaffner, a professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville. Measles kills one or two children out of every 1,000 infected, according to the CDC.

It’s not surprising that the woman had no obvious measles symptoms; people with compromised immune systems often don’t develop a rash when infected with the virus, said Paul Offit, chief of infectious disease at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The woman’s death was a preventable, but predictable, consequence of falling vaccination rates, said Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development in Houston.

Measles has surged back in recent years as groups of like-minded parents have opted against fully vaccinating their children. Last year, 644 people contracted the virus.

You don’t want measles.

MY NEXT CAR WILL HAVE A BUNCH OF SEMI-AUTONOMOUS FEATURES, BUT I EXPECT THE ONE AFTER THAT TO BE SELF-DRIVING: 2017: The Year of Self-Driving Cars and Trucks. “Ford, Google, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, and Uber, among others, have all boldly declared that they will get fully autonomous cars and trucks on the road in the United States by 2021. At the end of last year the Uber-owned company Otto sent a Budweiser beer delivery from Fort Collins, Colo., to Colorado Springs by autonomous truck. Chinese Internet company Baidu, partnering with Foton Motor Group, introduced its sleek semi-autonomous Super Truck. Daimler tested a driverless truck platoon in Germany. The only place driverless cars don’t seem to be turning up anytime soon is India, where, according to Maruti Suzuki chairman R.C. Bhargava, autonomous cars will never be able to keep up with their make-it-up-as-you-go human counterparts.”

So far, the tech has consistently hit the roads earlier than I thought possible. I suppose that could hit a snag, but . . .

PAYBACK’S A… YOU KNOW: Congress to Freeze State Department Funds Until U.S. Embassy Moves to Jerusalem.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How Do You Dismantle a 90-Ton Whale? Start With a Strong Stomach and a Machete.

The blue whale is the world’s largest mammal, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to see or study. Unless you’re inside.

That is why Jacqueline Miller found herself clad in a hotel shower cap, fisherman’s chest waders and rubber boots, wading into the chest cavity of a deceased whale.

Wielding a machete, the mammal technician poked through the whale’s cavity in search of its heart vessels. It took lying on her side to sever pipe-size arteries and veins from the organ, which resembled a deflated swimming pool.

After a few machete swings, she was showered in whale fluid. No Ghostbuster suffered a greater indignity. “I was totally slimed,” she said.

When the corpses of two female blue whales floated into two Newfoundland seashore villages in 2014—their undersides partly preserved by the icy Atlantic—it presented a rare research opportunity and a question. How, exactly, do you disassemble a 90-ton whale?

The rest of the report is not for the faint of heart.

CHUCK SCHUMER: I wish we hadn’t triggered ‘nuclear option’

Oops.

Although to be fair, Schumer was opposed back then, too. Harry Reid left him with a Senate minority more diminished in its power to obstruct than it is in its numbers.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is modern traffic enforcement all about dollars instead of safety?