BREAKING: Amtrak Train Derails Onto Highway Near Seattle.

FLASHBACK: Al-Qaeda Targets D.C. to Boston Line, Hazmat Cargo Trains in DIY Derailment Guide.

MORE: Multiple fatalities reported.

JAIME MCINTYRE: 5 things you should know about Trump’s new national security strategy.

Here are four:

What role does the strategy play in shaping policy? Think of the National Security Strategy as a mission statement, one that translates the president’s vision into a series of practical principles that serve as guide to policy decisions on everything from involvement in foreign wars to immigration law. In a recent speech, national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster called it “a dramatic rethinking of American foreign policy from previous decades.”

What are its guiding principles? The full strategy will be released Monday in conjunction with the president’s remarks, but McMaster has already sketched its four pillars in broad terms. They are: Protecting the homeland, advancing American prosperity, preserving peace through strength, and enhancing American influence.

Who wrote it? The NSS is largely a product of the National Security Council, including McMaster, his outgoing deputy Dina Powell, and Nadia Schadlow, a close confidant of McMaster. But the document was fashioned with input from experts inside and outside government, including members of Congress, think tanks, and industry CEOs.

How is it different? Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. focused on the “big 4 plus 1,” which is threats from China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, plus terrorism. The Trump strategy also names China and Russia as “revisionist powers,” and North Korea and Iran as “rogue regimes.” But it also defines the threats in terms of economic competition, not just military strength.

Almost anything would be an improvement over prostrating ourselves in almost every way imaginable to protect and enrich Iran’s mullahs regime.

ROGER SIMON: The Tax Bill and Freud’s Narcissism of Small Differences.

BRIDGET JOHNSON: What Religion is a Libertarian? Party Wants to Find Out.

The party opened an online poll to get a feel of their faith makeup, in the spirit of the holiday season. In additional to denominations of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikh, Buddhist, agnostic, atheist, etc., Wiccan, Druid and Pagan are included among the choices.

“We have freedom of religion in the United States and more than 100 religions flourishing. Religious groups aren’t at war with each other inside America. People see that freedom of religion works,” said executive director Wes Benedict in an email inviting party supporters to share their beliefs.

“In religion, as in all things, Libertarians are a diverse group. I think this is one of the great beauties of Libertarianism. We have devout Christians working side-by-side with staunch atheists working side-by-side with Jews and Muslims and pagans and people of every other religious conviction,” he added.

It’s much easier for people to get along when no one is pushing for compulsory conformity.

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 1684: Fallout From Allegations Of Tea Party Targeting Hampers IRS Oversight Of Nonprofits.

DIRTY LITTLE SECRET: Coal Is Fueling Bitcoin’s Meteoric Rise.

Eight 100-meter-long metal warehouses in northern China are a case in point. Bitmain Technologies Ltd. runs a server farm in Erdors, Inner Mongolia, with about 25,000 computers dedicated to solving the encrypted calculations that generate each bitcoin. The entire operation runs on electricity produced with coal, as do a growing number of cryptocurrency “mines” popping up in China.

The global industry’s power use already may equal 3 million U.S. homes, topping the individual consumption of 159 countries, according to the Digiconomist Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index. As more bitcoin is created, the difficulty rate of token-generating calculations increases, as does the need for electricity.

“This has become a dirty thing to produce,” said Christopher Chapman, a London-based analyst at Citigroup Inc.

Where’s the outcry from Silicon Valley?

ALL WITHIN THE STATE, NOTHING OUTSIDE THE STATE, NOTHING AGAINST THE STATE: Venezuela Will Force Bitcoin Miners to Register With the Government.

No one will be surprised to hear the Venezuelan government isn’t too keen on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Since Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can’t be regulated or controlled by the government in any official capacity, they could damage the country’s brittle economy even further. As a result, the government has imposed new rules for anyone mining cryptocurrency.

To be more specific, all miners will now be taxed and required to register with the government. Being taxed is not entirely illogical, but the registration requirement is pretty worrisome, to say the least. The government shouldn’t need to know who is doing what in regards to crypto trading and mining. Nevertheless, authorities want to know who is mining, where they are located, and what type of equipment they use.

That’ll put food back on the shelves.

AFTER CHARGES OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT, Alex Kozinski is retiring, effective immediately. Lefties will probably cheer, but it’s another 9th Circuit appointment for President Trump. I think Eugene Volokh would be an excellent choice.

HE ATTACKS TRUMP TO DISTRACT FROM WHAT’S HAPPENING AT HOME: Hey, Rahm — Lay Off Trump and Start Fixing Chicago.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Mueller Fake Firing, Obama Admin Gave Pass to Iranian Narcoterrorists and Much, Much More.

SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF THE NOT-SHOCKING: Linda Sarsour Accused Of Enabling Sexual Assault Against Woman Who Worked For Her.

FINANCIAL TIMES: Trump year one: better scorecard than predicted. Yeah, the tax bill, the ObamaCare mandate repeal, beating ISIS: It’s a start. Interesting to see the Financial Times making the attitude-pivot that Scott Adams predicted for December, right on schedule.

Related: Byron York: Amid firestorms, Trump has year of solid policy accomplishments. Can he keep going?

And even NeverTrumper Jay Cost grudgingly admits:. “As an opponent of Donald Trump during the Republican primary, and as somebody who voted for a third-party candidate in the general election, I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised by the policy output of this administration. Trump’s executive appointments have been mostly solid. His administration has taken seriously the task of staffing the judiciary with good conservative judges. Ditto rolling back Obama-era regulations. Obamacare repeal-and-replace failed, but that is as much the fault of congressional Republicans — who never fashioned a viable alternative — as of the Trump administration. Sweeping tax reform is set to be enacted. ISIS has been obliterated. The economy is doing well.”

But don’t worry, Cost adds: “And yet it is impossible to say that this year has been a successful one for the new administration.” Well, let’s see how things look in a year.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS: Anti-Trump Liberal Activist Group Pulls in Another $400,000 In Gov’t Grants.

Make the Road New York (MRNY), a New York City-based Latino immigrant group with nearly 20,000 dues-paying members, is closely linked to an $80 million dollar anti-Trump network and an approved funding group of the Democracy Alliance, a secretive liberal donor network.

MRNY has already hauled in millions of dollars in government grants. Between 2002 and 2014, the group was the recipient of more than $20 million in grants, the Washington Free Beacon previously reported. The amount that they received in 2015 and 2016 are not fully known, given the group’s most recently available tax form is from 2014.

According to USASpending, a site that tracks federal government grants, MRNY was given $725,000 in grants in 2015 and more than $4.4 million in 2016. However, figures on the site show only a fraction of the total amount in government grants the group has received in previous years as marked on their tax forms.

On August 10, MRNY was awarded another grant totaling $420,000 from the Department of Education, records show.

MRNY was behind the widely covered protests at the JFK airport following Trump’s initial travel ban. The protests, which were billed as spontaneous at the time, were later found to be in the works since one day after the presidential election.

Start stripping Washington of money and power and this sort of thing won’t be such a problem.

SCOTT JOHNSON: WHAT HAPPENED IN WISCONSIN: SEN. TIFFANY COMMENTS.

HYPOCRISY IS THE TRIBUTE THAT VICE PAYS TO VIRTUE: “Hours after apologizing for lecturing public-radio reporter Karen DeWitt about sexual harassment, Gov. Cuomo held his birthday fund-raising party — with ex-President Bill Clinton as the star guest. Oops.”

Plus:

New York’s own Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has made “believing the women” her core issue. She led the carefully orchestrated denunciations that forced out Sen. Al Franken, and she’s even continued standing by the Columbia University “Mattress Girl” long after the woman’s claims were totally debunked by her own text messages.

But Gillibrand wound up having to partly walk back her slam of Bill Clinton. After she said he should have resigned the presidency over his intrinsically exploitative affair with a White House intern, Clintonite Philippe Reines slammed her for ingratitude — noting that the Clintons helped her rise to her current high office.

And Gillibrand dutifully backed off — clarifying that, if the nation had today’s awareness back then, Clinton’s conduct would’ve been inexcusable. Got it?

She’s awful, even by the low standards of Senators from New York.

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HE’S NOT SAYING IT’S ALIENS… ACTUALLY, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT HE’S SAYING: Former Blink-182 member Tom DeLonge hints Pentagon UFO disclosure is only the beginning: ‘There’s a lot more s–t coming.’

According to DeLonge, disclosures like Saturday’s report are “only the tip of the spear,” and further “confirmation” of extraterrestrial life will continue to trickle out.

DeLonge claims the U.S. government has not only known about the existence of alien life for decades, but that they’ve also been actively experimenting with alien technologies.

And while this information has largely been hidden from the general public, DeLonge wants to lead what he believes will be an international – and perhaps, one day, intergalactic — conversation about how these soon-to-be-declassified technologies can benefit mankind.

One such innovation is what DeLonge refers to as “engineering the space-time metric,” which is being developed by Dr. Hal Puthoff, a longtime government physicist and a current To the Stars partner.

“It’s like a time machine,” DeLonge said. “You get into this craft and you turn it on — boom! — you’re in China in one minute as a ball of light.”

The speedy travel is nice, but manifesting as a ball of light does make it more difficult to enjoy the local cuisine.

CUI BONO: Don Surber: #MeToo helps the media clear dead wood. “In dragging out in public a case quietly settled 18 years ago, Comcast now has a reason to cashier him. How convenient. Matthews may soon join a list of over-55 television presenters bounced like a Bernie Madoff check this year. . . . In all four cases, their employers knew about the sexual harassment for years and looked the other way. . . . Sexual harassment is just the excuse to can them. Age is the reason management wants them gone. What a drag it is getting old.”

Related: There’s More Than One Way To Purge.

IT’S A BADLY RUN AIRPORT IN A BADLY RUN CITY, BUT THIS NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED: Atlanta Airport Blackout Sends Message to Terrorists: America Is Unprepared: A single-point failure makes the world’s busiest airport go dark for hours and traps thousands of passengers. It’s what phase one of an attack could look like.. “There has never been a single-point failure of this magnitude in any major airport in the U.S. All the essential systems seem to have lacked backup—or, in the language of the bureaucrats, redundancy.”

Meanwhile, who did come through in a crisis? Chik-Fil-A.

MICHAEL WALSH: How Much Does the ‘New York Times’ Hate Donald Trump?

WE’RE #11! Well, coming in just behind Victor Davis Hanson is good enough for me.

SILENCE IS GOLDEN: NBC silent on whether MSNBC’s Chris Matthews could face other sexual harassment accusations.