I ALWAYS THOUGHT SURGEONS COULD BE EGOTISTICAL, BUT… Surgeon pleads guilty to burning initials into patients’ organs.

MIDDLE EAST: U.S. Displays Weaponry It Says Proves Iran’s Influence.

The exhibit included debris from what the U.S. said were the missiles used in attacks against Saudi Arabia, as well as a small explosive drone, another small missile and components used to make a self-propelled power boat filled with explosives that could target ships. A Saudi ship was attacked with such a weapon earlier this year.

U.S. officials pointed to components of the displayed weapons as proof that each was made by one of eight Iranian state-owned industries. Each of those firms, according to the Pentagon, are linked to Iran’s Ministry of Defense and its Armed Forces Logistics Agency, an arm of the ministry.

Ms. Haley noted the nine valves on the side of one of the missile components. U.S. officials maintain that only Iran produces missiles with nine valves.

All of the evidence the Pentagon disclosed was provided or loaned to the U.S. either by Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, according to U.S. officials. The embassies of those countries in the U.S. didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Houthi insurgents fired missiles into Saudi Arabia on July 22 and on Nov. 4, in the midst of the war in Yemen, prompting Saudi Arabia and the U.S. to accuse Iran of arming the rebel group and calling for international sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

The U.N. report, which was expected to be released Thursday, said international investigators had found the remnants of both missiles to have the same diameter as widely used Scud missiles.

Tehran got away with murder in Iraq under George W. Bush, and were let completely off the leash under Barack Obama.

Maybe times are changing.

HMM: Google-Friendly Sex Trafficking Bill Moves Out of House Judiciary Committee.

BUT OF COURSE: Conservative Student Group Defunded After Hosting Dennis Prager.

MARY KATHARINE HAM: The Sad People Who Watched ‘A Christmas Prince’ 18 Days In A Row Craft A Statement.

Names have not been changed to protect the innocent.

‘GUT-WRENCHING’: Salma Hayek shares HORRIFIC stories of ‘monster’ Harvey Weinstein.

BILL O’REILLY CLAIM: There’s Audio of Someone Trying to Bribe a Woman to Accuse Trump of ‘Untoward Behavior.’

JEFF DUNETZ: 18 Differences Between Chanukah & Christmas.

JON GABRIEL: End net neutrality. Federal meddling can’t improve the Internet.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, EXACTLY? FBI Officials Discussed ‘Insurance Policy’ Against Trump Presidency.

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok wrote in a cryptic text message to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer and his mistress.

“It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40,” Strzok wrote in the text, dated Aug. 15, 2016.

Andy is likely Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

Read the whole thing.

MICHAEL WALSH: Twenty Steps to Last Night’s GOP Disaster.

QUESTION ASKED: Can Democrats Take Back the House in 2018?

Mr. Moore was a seriously flawed candidate, controversial enough to have been tossed off his own state’s Supreme Court twice, and more recently accused of having made improper sexual advances on teenage girls. (He denies the allegations.) Thus, much of the loss to Mr. Jones will be laid at the candidate’s feet. Still, the loss is a huge blow to Mr. Trump personally. He now has backed three straight candidates for statewide office who have lost. And the implications are enormous. “The challenges the GOP faced remain and the finger pointing will only increase,” said Douglas Heye, a longtime top Republican congressional aide. “We remain bitterly divided.”

For Democrats, the victory in a state they never dreamed of winning just a few months ago delivers a jolt of energy—and, perhaps as important, could encourage balky donors who have left the party’s national machinery seriously underfunded this year. Perhaps most encouraging for Democrats, the same coalition of voters that propelled the party to victory in Virginia last month also emerged in Alabama.

I’ve been arguing for a while now that the Republicans need to legislate as though there’s no tomorrow, and if they had, maybe things would have turned out differently in Alabama.

AND ANOTHER ONE: Netflix FIRES executive who told ‘Danny Masterson rape victim’ that the company ‘does not believe’ the actor’s accusers.

BRUCE BAWER: Rigging the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.

SPECIAL DELIVERY: Package of marijuana mysteriously delivered to Colorado Springs home.

Marian Goss tells 11 News the special delivery arrived at her door with a failure to deliver notice. Goss’ home was listed as the sender. The recipient was listed as an address in Virginia. Somehow, the package ended up at her home and she had no idea what she would find inside.

“I never thought in a million years that I would see what I saw in that box,” said Goss.

Goss opened the package because she feared it might be someone else’s Christmas present that was sent to the wrong house. She opened it up to find bundles of marijuana, stuffed in a dog food container, then into a cardboard box.

“It was in a dog food container, so we thought it was dog food,” Goss said. “But that’s not something you want to feed to your dog.”

Goss said she has no idea how it ended up at her house with her address on it.

“They attempted to deliver the package once and it came back to us, saying that it failed to be sent to the person in Virginia. It said that we are the sender and it came back to us, and we are definitely not the sender of that.

“I actually panicked.”

She thinks maybe someone else wanted to snag the box off her porch before she did.

Merry Christmas?

A COMPLETELY, TOTALLY, 100% UNBIASED AND NONPARTISAN INVESTIGATION, WE SWEAR, PART 1,000,008: “Trump Should Go F Himself” – Texts Leak From FBI Agents On Russia Probe, Hillary Emails Investigation.

HMM: Kim Jong Un’s Mount Paektu visit may signal big decision.

“It’s unlikely that Kim went up the so-called sacred mountain for fresh air. He is likely to have considered how he will formulate external policies after having declared the regime a nuclear state,” a Seoul-based source told Dong-A Ilbo.

Some have suggested the regime may shift its external policy to seek dialogue with the United States, after declaring itself a nuclear state with its Hwasong-15 ICBM launch on Nov. 29.

“Resorting to further provocations could be difficult for North Korea since further nuclear tests at the Punggyeri site have become impossible due to safety concerns and there is growing talk in the U.S. Congress of a pre-emptive strike,” a former diplomat told Chosun Ilbo.

However, other analysts believe these speculations are merely guesswork, noting how Kim visited a symbolic palace after the Hwasong-14 missile launch on July 4.

In short, Kimology is probably no better a predictor than Kremlinology ever was.

TYLER O’NEILL: 5 Things to Know About Doug Jones’ Victory Over Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate Race.

BILL GERTZ: Russia Sharply Expanding Nuclear Arsenal, Upgrading Underground Facilities.

Russia is aggressively building up its nuclear forces and is expected to deploy a total force of 8,000 warheads by 2026 along with modernizing deep underground bunkers, according to Pentagon officials.

The 8,000 warheads will include both large strategic warheads and thousands of new low-yield and very low-yield warheads to circumvent arms treaty limits and support Moscow’s new doctrine of using nuclear arms early in any conflict.

In addition to expanding its warheads, Russia also is fortifying underground facilities for command and control during a nuclear conflict.

That’s disconcerting.

BUT OF COURSE: Fusion GPS Paid Top DOJ Official’s Wife To Dig Up Dirt On Trump.

There is no part of this which does not stink.

IT’S THE SPENDING, STUPID: Feds Collect Record Taxes Through November; Still Run $201.8B Deficit.

Despite these record tax revenues, the federal government still ran a deficit of $201,761,000,000 for those same two months.

That is because the government spent $645,476,000,000 in October and November.

The $443,715,000,000 that the federal government collected in taxes in the first two months of this fiscal year was $12,873,120,000 more in constant 2018 dollars than it collected in the first two months of fiscal 2017 and $11,352,180,000 more than it collected in the first two months of fiscal 2016.

We’re on track for the second consecutive $600 billion-plus deficit, absent an economic downturn or major war.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Jones Wins, FBI Agents’ Shocking Trump-Hating Texts Revealed and Much, Much More.

PETER HASSON: Steve Bannon Blamed, Mocked After Roy Moore Loss.

“Luther Strange would have won in a landslide… Just too much crazy in nerve racking times,” influential news kingpin Matt Drudge wrote on Twitter following Moore’s loss. “There IS a limit!”

“This is a brutal reminder that candidate quality matters regardless of where you are running,” Steve Law, president of the Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC, said in a statement. “Not only did Steve Bannon cost us a critical Senate seat in one of the most Republican states in the country, but he also dragged the President of the United States into his fiasco,” Law said.

Democratic strategist Paul Begala mockingly thanked Bannon for making Democratic candidate Doug Jones’ victory possible.

“Special thanks to the genius strategist who did so much to make this happen: Steve Bannon,” Begala gloated.

Roger L. Simon predicted weeks ago that Bannon had overplayed his hand.

PROCUREMENT: A newly completed comprehensive Navy analysis says producing more Virginia-Class attack submarines on a much faster timetable is “achievable” and necessary.

The Navy report, titled The Submarine Industrial Base and the Viability of Producing Additional Attack Submarines Beyond the Fiscal Year 2017 Shipbuilding Plan in the 2017–2030 Timeframe, was delivered to Congress on July 5, 2017, Navy officials told Scout Warrior.

The current or previous status quo had been for the Navy to drop from building two Virginia-Class boats per year to one in the early 2020s when construction of the new Columbia-Class nuclear armed submarines begins.

The completed study, however, maintains that the Navy and industry can produce two Virginia-Class boats and one Columbia-Class submarine per year, increasing the current plan by one Virginia-Class boat per year.

Navy leaders have consistently talked about an expected submarine shortfall in the mid 2020s and that more attack submarines were needed to strengthen the fleet and keep stay in front of near-peer rivals such as Russia and China.

Maintaining a two-per year Virginia Class build-rate will help the Navy reach its goal of 66 SSNs, as identified in the December 2016 Force Structure Assessment, Navy officials added.

The Virginia-class attack boats have been a rare procurement success story for the Navy this century. The most recent boat completed — the USS South Dakota — was christened back in October. And even though it was built with new “acoustic superiority” technology and other innovations, was delivered on-time and on-budget.

BRIDGET JOHNSON: Transgender Military Recruits to be Accepted in New Year Per Court Orders.

Meanwhile, Bridget’s unexplained and unacknowledged Twitter banishment remains unexplained and unacknowledged by Twitter management.