WINNING: Iraqi Christians return after IS amid safety concerns.

SHE CHOSE…POORLY: The Two News Stories that clarify Lorde’s decision to boycott Israel. “Since the singer announced two stops in Russia and one in Tel Aviv on Twitter last week, she was bombarded with calls for her to cancel the Israel show. Nobody seemed to have a problem with her concerts in Russia, that bastion of human rights.”

IT’S AS IF HE’S JUST SOME KIND OF PARTISAN POLITICAL HACK: The Hill:. NY attorney general has taken action against Trump, GOP 100 times in Trump’s first year.

STARSHIP TROOPERS: Army Tests New Super-Soldier Exoskeleton.

GOT AN AMAZON GIFT CARD FOR CHRISTMAS? Put it to use here!

ROGER KIMBALL: It was the best of years, it was the worst of years.

What happened in 2017 to mark it out as a year that will live in infamy? Dear Reader, I hope that you are sitting down. You will hardly believe the hideous truth. Quaff a bit of brandy. Have the smelling salts at hand. What was the unspeakable reality that sent almost the entire U.S. media, the academic establishment in toto, nearly all of Hollywood, and Democratic politicians from Washington state to Florida into hysterical mourning? Are you ready?  Steady on. Take a deep breath. OK, here it is. Someone those repositories of virtue did not favor was elected president of the United States in a free, open, democratic election. Can you believe it? Their candidate lost. Even worse, the opposing candidate was elected without their permission, over their strenuous objections, unremitting ridicule, and against their hermetically sealed certitude that such a thing was impossible, impossible Kemo Sabe!

Now you know the worst. The 2016 presidential election worked as the Constitution said it was supposed to work, not the way Hollywood millionaires, Ivy-educated pundits, angry feminists, or partisan opponents wanted it to work.

Read the whole thing.

DAVID SOLWAY: The Age of the Nothing Burger.

Van Jones, now at CNN, famously referred to the Trump/Russia collusion scandal as a “nothing burger,” in other words, a fantasy designed to serve a political agenda. But that particular scandal is only a kind of subset, a mere franchise of a much more comprehensive enterprise — namely, the ideologically driven perversion of fact. The nothing burger is the Big Mac of the Western appetite for dissembling truth in the interest of institutional deception.

Consider a representative few of the major issues and preoccupations of the contemporary era: global warming, gender fluidity, the Palestinian nation, rape culture, and Islam as the “religion of peace.” None of these entities exist in the way in which we have been instructed to understand them and none can justify the righteous fury they apparently inspire. They are all nothing burgers.

Indeed. But read the whole thing to find out how.

ROGER SIMON SEES DANGER IN 2018 FOR THE PARTY OF THE RICH — THE DEMOCRATS.

WELL, THAT WAS NICE: Trump Puts Out “Full Christmas Spread” For Law Enforcement Protecting Him Over Christmas.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: San Diego Teacher Thinks Citizenship Question Is ‘Racist,’ Refuses to Answer.

SHARYL ATTKISSON: “Eight high ranking Department of Justice and FBI officials have been removed, reassigned or are rumored to be leaving. They include the top FBI agents who worked on two of the agency’s most high-profile investigations in the past two years: the probe into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information as secretary of state, and the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Feminist Profs: selfies perpetuate classic ‘gender roles.’

A group of feminist professors recently discovered that Instagram selfies taken by women in college can reinforce “traditional gender roles.”

In a study led by Mardi Schmeichel, a University of Georgia (UGA) professor specializing in “feminist theory,” a team of professors analyzed 233 selfies that were posted in 2013 within 24 hours of the first UGA football home game of the semester.

Schmeichel and her team analyzed these selfies to see if they represented “the idealized symbol of the southern lady,” which they note is an aesthetic trope that “has had significant and enduring consequences on notions of femininity in the South.”

This symbol of the southern lady, they argue, is typified by students’ formal wear, soft and flowy dresses, a significant amount of jewelry, and clothes that emphasize “feminine curves without revealing what might be considered ‘too much’ skin.”

Bright red lipstick and white teeth are also considered emblematic of this southern aesthetic, Schmeichel argues.

After analyzing selfies posted in the time surrounding the first 2013 UGA home game, Schmeichel found that 25 percent of women who posted photos embody this harmful aesthetic.

“The clothing, makeup, posing and editing used in the southern lady images work together to achieve a hyperfeminine gender performance that differs significantly from the images of women in the other selfies,” Schmeichel laments.

“In the southern lady images, attention to a traditionally gendered performance has been emphasized,” Schmeichel writes, lamenting that “the southern lady images that circulate in these selfies reinscribe a traditional femininity organized around/on a binary.”

She also notes that students’ embodiment of femininity can be troubling.

“Harmful aesthetic?” That’s deeply insensitive and insulting to these students’ culture. I think the Bias Response Team needs to look into this.

LIZ SHELD’S BOXING DAY MORNING BRIEF: No Pension for McCabe and Much, Much More.

UNITED APOLOGIZES TO PASSENGER BOOTED FOR CONGRESSWOMAN:

[Sheila Jackson Lee D-TX], meanwhile, claims she did nothing wrong.

“I asked for nothing exceptional or out of the ordinary and received nothing exceptional or out of the ordinary,” she said in a statement this weekend.

“But in the spirit of this season and out of the sincerity of my heart, if it is perceived that I had anything to do with this, I am kind enough to simply say sorry.”

She’s “kind enough” to “simply” say she’s sorry to the DC teacher she smeared as a racist on the weekend before Christmas:

“Since this was not any fault of mine, the way the individual continued to act appeared to be, upon reflection, because I was an African American woman, seemingly an easy target along with the African American flight attendant who was very, very nice,” Jackson Lee said in the statement. “This saddens me, especially at this time of year given all of the things we have to work on to help people. But in the spirit of this season and out of the sincerity of my heart, if it is perceived that I had anything to do with this, I am kind enough to simply say sorry.”

Simon said Jackson Lee’s statement accused her of racism, adding: “I had no idea who was in my seat when I complained at the gate that my seat had been given to someone else,” she said. “There is no way you can see who is in a seat from inside the terminal.”

Flashback to a 2002 Weekly Standard article on “Sheila Jackson Lee, Limousine Liberal,” which contains multiple examples of her abusing airlines and accusing anyone who doesn’t treat her as a queen (“You don’t understand. I am a queen, and I demand to be treated like a queen.”) as racist:

Continental managers, however, feared reprisal and saw little they could do. “After medicine, airlines are the most heavily regulated industry in the United States,” says a lobbyist for a Texas-based carrier. “Every airline feels they have to kiss up to Congress; they always feel their livelihood is in Congress’s hands.” But in February 1998, things finally came to a head. On a flight home to Houston, Jackson Lee became enraged when flight attendants failed to produce the seafood special she liked. “Don’t you know who I am?” she reportedly thundered. “I’m Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. Where is my seafood meal? I know it was ordered!”

That outburst prompted a phone call to Jackson Lee from Rebecca Cox, vice president of Continental’s government affairs office in Washington and the wife of California Republican Chris Cox. The message? Straighten up and fly right, or don’t fly with us. Cox did not return calls seeking comment, but a member of Jackson Lee’s staff who fielded the call remembered Cox saying, “[Jackson Lee] screamed at the top of her lungs at least a minute. She embarrassed the flight attendants and the passengers in first class. And she embarrassed herself.” Cox then joked, “We have already given her the Delta Airlines schedule.” Jackson Lee got back on board with Continental, but not for long. In May 1999, as Continental flight 1961 prepared to leave Reagan National Airport in Washington, Jackson Lee became flustered when she couldn’t find her purse.

Thinking she had left it in the boarding area, she went back to search for it. Meanwhile, the plane pulled away from the gate. Moments later, her purse was found onboard. According to aviation lobbyists at the time, Jackson Lee demanded that she be let back on the flight. Airline employees explained that FAA rules prohibit planes from returning to the gate once they’ve taxied away, but Jackson Lee was unconvinced. She accused the gate staff of racism and demanded to see their supervisor, who was a black woman. Her purse, meanwhile, was unceremoniously dropped out of the cockpit window and ferried back to her.

A year earlier, at a March 2, 1998, reenactment of the march on Selma, an irate Jackson Lee called her scheduler in D.C. demanding to know why she hadn’t been given a ride to the event by the organizer, as a white colleague had been. According to the aide–who quit after just a month and a half on the job–Jackson Lee shrieked, “You don’t understand. I am a queen, and I demand to be treated like a queen.” It will come as no surprise to learn that Jackson Lee is regarded as one of the most difficult members of Congress for whom to work.

Jackson Lee’s issues involving travel and racism also extend into the final frontier:

During a 1997 visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, Jackson Lee, who was then serving on the House Science Committee and on the Subcommittee that oversees U.S. space policy, asked a guide whether the Mars Pathfinder would be able to show an image of “the flag the astronauts planted there before.” When it was subsequently pointed out that the flag to which she was referring was in fact the one that Neil Armstrong had planted on the Moon—not Mars—in 1969, Jackson Lee complained that she was being mocked by bigots. “You thought you could have fun with a black woman member of the Science Committee,” her then-chief-of-staff wrote angrily in a letter to the editor.

How bad have Jackson Lee’s gaffes been over the years? Even the left-leaning Daily Beast has goofed on  her worst moments: The Constitution Is 400 Years Old and More Pearls From Sheila Jackson Lee.

We have the worst political class in American history, to coin an Insta-phrase.

UPDATE: Jean-Marie Simon tweeted last night that “United has NOT apologized to me. On Dec. 23, a low level employee at call center said he was sorry on phone. Voucher I received was United’s idea of compensation for cancelling my flight and given it to Ms. Jackson Lee… SFC + NYP articles claim ‘apology’ from United and $500 as apology wrong. United phone agent apologized, no apology from corporate United. $500 voucher was from exasperated gate agent who originally offered $300 and gave me ultimatum to take the $500 or have plane leave w/o me.”

THE SCOTT ADAMS PIVOT CONTINUES: The Hill: Against the odds, Trump’s agenda owned 2017.

AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases, Updated Hourly.

Plus, new Kindle Daily Deals.

And, today’s Digital Deals.

CHANGE: Trump administration set to unveil $1 trillion infrastructure proposal in 2018.

PANIC AT THE WASHINGTON POST: “I’m sure Mueller believes his own press-clippings, but the public no longer does. The press, it seems, is beginning to realize this.”

Read the whole thing.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Whistleblowers worry about fate of spy agency ombudsman. “A decision to put the man who handles whistleblower complaints at U.S. spy agencies on administrative leave has raised worries on Capitol Hill that it’s part of a plan to hamstring the program that helps intelligence workers report waste, fraud and abuse. A top Republican said he is investigating. . . . Intelligence officials won’t say why Meyer was put on leave, but insist they support whistleblower programs. Whistleblower groups fear Meyer is being sidelined and his program is being weakened to reduce its effectiveness. In a letter to National Intelligence Director Dan Coats, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, referred to allegations that intelligence officials are taking steps to hamper the four-year-old program.”

More here.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: The Top 10 Verified Twitter Account Meltdowns of 2017.

DISGRACED EX-BUREAUCRAT RETREATS INTO FANTASY: Sally Yates: Watch Out For Ghosts At Mar-A-Lago.