NOAH ROTHMAN: The Death Rattle of Obama’s Foreign Policy Record:

The members of Barack Obama’s administration in exile have become conspicuously noisy of late—even more so than usual. Former CIA Director John Brennan accused Donald Trump and his administration of engaging in “outrageous,” “narcissistic” behavior typical of “vengeful autocrats” by threatening proportionate retaliation against countries that voted to condemn the United States in the United Nations, as though that were unprecedented. It is not. James Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence, all but alleged that the president is a Russian “asset.” Perhaps the most acerbic and incendiary series of accusations from the former Democratic president’s foreign-policy professionals were placed in the New York Times by Obama’s national security advisor, Susan Rice. In her estimation, America has abdicated its role as a “force for good.”

It’s no coincidence that these overheated condemnations accompany abundant evidence that the Trump administration is finding its legs. As the last administration’s undeserved reputation as sober-minded foreign policy rationalists is dismantled one retrospective report at a time, its jilted members are lashing out. . . .

Barack Obama was inarguably the least Atlanticist president since the end of World War II. Within a year of Russia’s brazen invasion and dismemberment of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, Obama scrapped George W. Bush-era agreements to move radar and missile interceptor installations to Central Europe. In 2013, the last of America’s armored combat units left Europe, ending a 69-year footprint on the Continent. By 2014, there were just two U.S. Army brigades stationed in Europe. The folly of this demobilization became abundantly clear when Vladimir Putin became the first Russian leader since Stalin to invade and annex territory in neighboring Ukraine.

A year later, Putin intervened militarily in Syria, where U.S. forces were already operating, resulting in the most dangerous escalation of tensions between the two nuclear powers since the end of the Cold War. Putin’s move in Syria should not have come as a surprise; Barack Obama outsourced the resolution of the Syrian conflict to Moscow in 2013, if only to avoid making good on his self-set “red line” for intervention in that conflict despite the norm-shattering use of WMDs on civilians. Even Rice’s chief complaint about Trump, his failure to condemn Putin’s brazen intervention in the 2016 election, didn’t elicit a reaction from Barack Obama until the final month of his presidency.

By contrast, and to the surprise of just about everyone, the Trump administration has been tough on Russia. Trump has ordered harsh sanctions on Moscow’s Iranian allies for violating United Nations resolutions—a course the Obama administration declined to take even if it allowed Hezbollah terrorists with direct links to Putin to operate with impunity.

Read the whole thing. Plus: “Even as early as March of 2017, it was clear that the Obama administration’s foreign-policy professionals were quite insecure about how posterity would remember their stewardship of American interests abroad. They had every reason to be.”

SHOOTINGS IN HARRISBURG: Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico identified the shooter as 51-year-old Ahmed Aminamin El-Mofty at a news conference late Friday night.. He was targeting police officers.

10 OF MARK HALPERIN’S VICTIMS RESPOND TO MIKA BRZEZINSKI:. “We would ask for Ms. Brzezinski for higher standards of editorial judgment, compassion and human decency.”

Good luck with that.

SCOTT ADAMS SMILES: Mitch McConnell ‘warming up’ to Trump’s Twitter habit: ‘I haven’t been a fan until this week.’

SADLY, WHOEVER REPLACES HER WILL BE WORSE: Poll: Dianne Feinstein Vulnerable to Insurgent Democrats in 2018.

GET A JOB AND PAY FOR YOUR OWN: Here’s what women can do to ensure continued access to contraception. The notion that “access to contraception” requires someone else to pay for it is embarrassing.

MORE ON THIS CASE FROM JONATHAN ADLER: Federal Court Dismisses First Emoluments Clause Case Against President Trump: A federal district court in New York concludes none of the plaintiffs could demonstrate standing in CREW v. Trump.

Plus, an I-told-you-so victory lap for Ann Althouse.

SCOTT ADAMS: How to Determine If You Should Talk About Politics in Public. “As a public service, I put together a list of predictions that various people made about Trump that you can use to evaluate your own predictive powers. Count the number of items on the list that you once predicted would be true.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Man’s Guide To Wrapping Christmas Presents. “Learn to be the king of wrap. There is none higher. Sucker present-wrappers will call you sire.”

Heh, indeed.™

WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!! Sarah Hoyt publishes the left’s Diaries from Taxcutmaggedon.

HMMM: Terror Attack in Pennsylvania’s State Capital?

TOO LATE TO MAKE TUCKER CARLSON’S HOT 100 LIST: CNN’s Don Lemon Accuses Trump of ‘Merry Christmas’ Dog Whistle Conspiracy.

More or less so than Thomas the Tank?

FLASHBACK: Trump Tax Plan Has No Shot of Passing in 2017, Obama Official Says.

THEY WEREN’T WRONG: ‘The next generation are going to have a very difficult time’: 1991 video of the Queen and Ronald Reagan discussing economics over coffee goes viral as fans of The Crown go mad for vintage Royal clips.

The footage begins with the former president asking if the coffee being served is decaffeinated. The Queen calls replies ‘No, it’s ordinary’ before calling over a waiter to request some, then telling Mr Reagan ‘We try our best. It’s coming.’

Their conversation then turns to economics. Mr Reagan, who finished his second term as president in 1989, told the British monarch: ‘Now if you’ve got two thirds… paying for the bureaucrats and give only one third to the needy people, something’s wrong there.’

The Queen responded by saying that ‘democracies are bankrupt’ because of such policies.

‘But you see all of the democracies are bankrupt now, because of the way the services have been planned for people to grab,’ she told him.

Yep.

SHOCKINGLY, IT’S ANOTHER 9:30 OPEN THREAD. You know what to do.

ANN ALTHOUSE ON THE CORNEL WEST/TA-NEHISI COATES TWEETFIGHT.

NORMALIZING IMPEACHMENT: Do the Dems plan to impeach Trump if they take the House in 2018? “In that case, expect impeachment proceedings to become the norm whenever the House is controlled by one party and the presidency by another, unless the president is enormously popular. Republicans could have brought plausible articles of impeachment against President Obama, whose regard for the Constitution was intermittent and contingent. If Hillary Clinton were president, the articles of impeachment would write themselves.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Here’s Tucker Carlson’s handy list of 100 racist things from 2017. Is your favorite on the list?

The insanity of the identity politics-obsessed left becomes increasingly apparent as you work your way through the list. It’s a reminder that the goons carrying tiki torches and pretending to be cast members in a revival of Triumph of the Will in Charlottesville aren’t the only group in America utterly obsessed with skin color. When I reviewed Mark Lilla’s The Once and Future Liberal back in September, I asked “Can the Left Escape the Identity Politics Trap?” The answer, at a minimum, is not anytime soon.

21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: As Africa grows more prosperous, obesity grows as a problem.

AT AMAZON, Top Deals at the Holiday Toy List.

Plus, save big on Last-Minute Deals.

WELL, THIS IS NEWS: Sessions orders DOJ review after report Obama administration gave Hezbollah a pass.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is launching a review of a law enforcement initiative called Project Cassandra after an investigative report was published this week claiming the Obama administration gave a free pass to Hezbollah’s drug-trafficking and money-laundering operations to help ensure the Iran nuclear deal would stay on track.

The Justice Department said in a statement to Fox News that Sessions on Friday directed a review “to evaluate allegations that certain matters were not properly prosecuted and to ensure all matters are appropriately handled.”

“While I am hopeful that there were no barriers constructed by the last administration to allowing DEA agents to fully bring all appropriate cases under Project Cassandra, this is a significant issue for the protection of Americans,” Sessions said in a written statement. “We will review these matters and give full support to investigations of violent drug trafficking organizations.”

According to a bombshell exposé in Politico on Sunday, an elaborate campaign led by the Drug Enforcement Administration, known as Project Cassandra, targeted the Lebanese militant group’s criminal activities.

But when Project Cassandra leaders, who were working out of a DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, Obama Justice and Treasury Department officials delayed, hindered or rejected their requests, according to Politico.

Stay tuned.

HYPOTHESIS: RICHER MEMBERS OF BOTH SEXES GO TO THE GYM, BUT MEN BULK UP AND WOMEN SLIM DOWN. Women’s weight drops as income rises — but not men’s.

Alternatively, richer women slim down to attract richer men, richer men . . . work harder to become richer still to attract richer women.

GUT REACTION: Repeated food poisoning triggers chronic disease.

BLESS THEIR HEARTS: CNN Labels ‘Thomas the Tank Engine,’ ‘Paw Patrol’ as ‘Fascist’ Cartoons.

“Why kids love ‘fascist’ cartoons like ‘Paw Patrol’ and ‘Thomas,'” wrote parenting writer Elissa Strauss, a regular contributor to CNN.

Strauss noted that “Thomas the Tank Engine” has been labeled “a ‘premodern corporate-totalitarian dystopia‘ in the New Yorker, imperialist and sinister in Slate, and classist, sexist, and anti-environmentalist in the Guardian.”

“And yet people—presumably parents—spend $1 billion on ‘Thomas’ merchandise every year,” she marveled.

“Paw Patrol,” Strauss wrote, is “equally polarizing,” with outlets like BuzzFeed complaining about “instances of gender and social inequality that go unchecked on the show.”

“Nevertheless, ‘Paw Patrol’ is ubiquitous,” she added. “Branded merchandise featuring Ryder and the gang outsells most other television shows, according to recent data from the Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association.”

“It’s tempting as a parent—especially those of us who are aghast at contemporary politics—to be disturbed by the notion of our children tuning in for a regular dose of primary-colored authoritarianism,” she wrote.

Great – the first time anyone at CNN rails against “primary-colored authoritarianism,” and it’s concerning a show about a toy train.

But hey, let’s assume that CNN actually believes that Strauss’s argument is true. If so, counterculture icons Ringo Starr, Peter Fonda, Alec Baldwin and the late George Carlin have a lot to answer for. Will anyone at CNN ask the three surviving celebrity hosts why they were promoting crypto-fascism?