SHE’S STILL GOT IT: Voyager 1 just fired up some thrusters for the first time in 37 years.

Voyager 1 is an important vessel. It’s the fastest spacecraft we’ve got, traveling at around 11 miles per second. It’s also the farthest. Its twin, Voyager 2, is nearly 11 billion miles away from the Sun, pushing through the last layer of our host star’s influence on the space around our system. But Voyager 1 is over 13 billion miles away from the Sun, and has the incredible distinction of being the first human-made object to enter interstellar space.

Yet even from that great distance, the probe still sends messages back to Earth. That’s where the thrusters come in. For decades, a set of thrusters has served to set out tiny, split-second pulses to keep the craft’s antenna pointed toward us. Now those thrusters are getting old, and it’s taking more effort to make Voyager 1 move. The solution? See if the TCM thrusters—which on the one hand haven’t been worn out by constant use over the last few decades, but on the other hand haven’t even been turned on — could take on some of the legwork.

“The Voyager flight team dug up decades-old data and examined the software that was coded in an outdated assembler language, to make sure we could safely test the thrusters,” Chris Jones, chief engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, said in a statement.

It takes 19 hours and 35 minutes for a signal from Voyager 1 to bounce back to Earth, but after a day of waiting the scientists confirmed that the hardware had fired right up.

Incredible.

GOOD OLD-FASHIONED LOVER BOY: “X Men” Director Bryan Singer Fired from Freddie Mercury-Queen Movie.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? University to Place 400 Cameras on Campus to Catch ‘Hate Crimes.’

HMM: Congress Stalling Trump Ambassadors, Harming U.S. Effort to Combat N. Korea, Conduct Diplomacy.

Amid a global showdown over North Korea’s repeated and increasingly dangerous nuclear tests, Republican leaders in the Senate have declined to hold a vote on several of President Donald Trump’s picks for U.S. ambassador, most notably Richard Grenell, the former U.S. spokesman at the United Nations who was tapped in September to serve as the next American ambassador to Germany.

With no indication that Congress will move in the near future to confirm Trump’s picks, congressional and administration insiders are expressing growing concerns that the holdup is interfering with U.S. attempts to rein in North Korea’s nuclear program, according to multiple sources who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon about the situation.

What’s the holdup, Senator McConnell?

FLORIDA WOMAN: Former Dem Congresswoman Sentenced To Five Years In Prison On Corruption Charges.

Former Florida Democratic Rep. Corrine Brown was sentenced to five years in federal prison Monday on number of charges including tax fraud and tax crimes.

A judge sentenced Brown to five years in prison and a 3-year supervised release. Brown will be forced to surrender to authorities sometime after Jan. 8., according to CBS 47.

The jury convicted Brown of stealing money from a fake charity, One Door For Education. The “charity” was supposed to give scholarships to children who could not afford school but instead the Democratic congresswoman used the donations to go on trips and purchase expensive items. She also used the money to host parties.

Five years seems lenient.

EXPLAINER: Five things to know about Trump’s national monuments order.

Here’s one:

Trump eliminated about 84 percent of Bears Ears and nearly half of Grand Staircase-Escalante, but that doesn’t mean the land will be sold to private owners.

The parts of the monuments that are no longer protected are still owned by the federal government, mostly the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management.

That means any proposals by private companies to develop the land, mine on it, drill for oil or natural gas or other major activities, will have to go undergo environmental and other reviews.

Grand Staircase-Escalante had been eyed in the 1990s for a potential mine. At Bears Ears, the main new activity may simply be grazing.

Oil and gas producers frequently want to increase drilling on federal land, but the industry says it’s not interested in the Bears Ears land.

The formerly protected lands in Utah are also unlikely to get into private hands anytime soon. Zinke has made a point of pushing back strongly against conservatives who want to sell large parcels of federal land or give them to states, and Trump has agreed with him.

The Feds own huge swathes of land in the Western states, which should be auctioned off to pay for the transition to privatized Social Security and Medicare — and anything left over applied to debt.

THE NEW EUROPE: French City Cancels Christmas Market, Can’t Afford € 20,000 in Security Costs After ISIS Attacks.

INTRODUCING FLORIDA OPPOSSUM: Opossum breaks into liquor store, gets drunk on bourbon.

FLORIDA MAN, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Cross-dressing Indianapolis man gets 80 years for ambush that injured two.

CLAIM: IRS Losing $458 Billion a Year but Not Trying to Collect It.

I’d like to know exactly who is getting away with not paying their “fair share.”

HEALTH: This everyday hygiene habit could reduce your risk of throat cancer by MORE THAN one-fifth, study finds.

Brushing your teeth could slash your risk of developing throat cancer by more than one-fifth, new research suggests.

Higher levels of certain bacteria that are linked to gum disease increase an individual’s likelihood of developing the condition by 21 percent, a US study found.

It is unclear whether it is the bacteria themselves or gum disease that leads to foodpipe tumors.

Researchers argue their findings highlight the importance of good oral hygiene, including brushing teeth twice a day and regular dentist visits, to maintain people’s dental health, as well as avoiding other health complications.

Brushing produces even better results if you’re hoping to kiss your significant other.

BUT THE NARRATIVE: The world’s astonishing dependence on fossil fuels hasn’t changed in 40 years.

There are few ways to understand why. First, most of the world’s clean-energy sources are used to generate electricity. But electricity forms only 25% of the world’s energy consumption. Second, as the rich world moved towards a cleaner energy mix, much of the poor world was just starting to gain access to modern forms of energy. Inevitably, they chose the cheapest option, which was and remains fossil fuels.

So yes, we’re using much more clean energy than we used to. But the world’s energy demand has grown so steeply that we’re also using a lot more fossil fuels than in the past.

“Dependence” is a terrible, perhaps even hateful word to describe poor people using the ready availability of cheap energy to help life themselves out of poverty.

MERKEL’S GERMANY: Relatives of Berlin Christmas Market Victims Pen Angry Letter to Merkel.. “In the letter, they accuse Merkel of not taking the time to offer her personal condolences or writing them a letter.”

You can’t make al-Europe without breaking a few eggs.

CHANGE:

Full story here.

THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: Twitter Admits It Doesn’t Understand Its Own Policies, After Suspending PJ Media Terror Expert.

PROCUREMENT BLUES: Navy Doesn’t Have Enough Warships to Train Marines for Combat.

THINK DIFFERENT™ (*VOID WHERE PROHIBITED): Apple’s Tim Cook ‘Proud’ to Work With China to Censor Internet.

RICH LOWRY: But Gorsuch … and Other Excellent Judicial Picks … and a Tax Cut … and Major Deregulatory Actions … and Immigration Enforcement … and the End of the Individual Mandate … and a Roll Back of the HHS Mandate …

I’ve never quite understood why anti-Trump conservatives would be so slighting about Gorsuch. He will presumably be a bulwark of the Constitution long after Trump has departed the White House three or seven years from now and is tweeting as a private citizen again. Bushies used to count George W. Bush’s two Supreme Court nominees as a central part of his domestic legacy, understandably (and Bush completely blew one of his nominations before getting it right). Trump is half-way there, with lots of time on the clock.

Also, it’s simply not true that all we have to show from the Trump administration is Gorsuch. The legislative agenda has been limited by the fact that Republicans have only 52 votes in the Senate. This is what pushed the GOP toward doing two big health and tax bills through reconciliation. When the health-care bill failed (Trump contributed to this failure, but there were lots of other factors, too), it seemed they could get nothing this year. Now, it appears very likely that they will get the tax bill, which includes a rifle-shot elimination of the individual mandate. And the administration has been steadily reversing the executive aggrandizements of the Obama administration.

Trump has governed so far as more of a Republican and conservative than I expected.

Once you get acclimated to the tweeting, most of the rest has been a pleasant surprise.

YOU DON’T SAY: North Korea likely getting help with nukes, rockets from China or Russia.

Don’t leave out Iran.

JOURNOLISM: CNN’s Self-Congratulation Orgy After Trump’s Latest Attack Only Illustrates His Point.

Since the inauguration, CNN has largely given up any pretense of objectivity about the Trump presidency. Its panels of commentators heard throughout a typical day rarely contain even a token Trump supporter to balance liberal critics and conservatives who also despise the president. Most news stories about Trump come in as an outrage a day featuring whatever outrageous tweet or utterance (on Monday it was his ill-timed reference to Sen. Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahantas” during a ceremony honoring Native American World War Two vets).

But early on the network’s reporters and on-air personalities decided that they were not prepared to treat anything the president did or said as defensible or even a matter of opinion. Most CNN discussions of Trump consist of reporters, guest commentators, and hosts agreeing with each other about the awful nature of whatever he has done or said. They frame most stories about Trump and his administration as an outrage about which decent people cannot agree to disagree.

Were this limited to the network’s opinionated hosts, especially those in prime time like Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon, who compete with the even more liberal personalities on MSNBC as well as the conservative talkers on Fox, it might be considered defensible in this hyper-partisan age. But the same spirit extends into the work of its on-air reporters, who might otherwise be expected to give us, as the graphic behind Blitzer on Monday proclaimed, “facts first.”

Provided they fit the narrative, of course.

DRILL, BABY, DRILL: GOP Senate Opens ANWR to Oil Drilling.

CHANGE: The US May Add THAAD Missile Systems On The West Coast.

Two congressmen told Reuters the Pentagon was looking into new locations to deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, systems. THAADs would likely be the most efficient in shooting down incoming ballistic missiles similar to the one North Korea tested in late November.

Those THAAD deployments won’t happen right away, though.

The Missile Defense Agency, a unit within the Department of Defense, told Reuters it had no orders to place new THAAD systems on the West Coast. Additionally, the outlet notes no funding for the system was included in the 2018 defense budget plan.

Congress needs to act as though time is of the essence — because it is. It’s already past time to employ Austin Bay’s “return of serve” option for neutralizing North Korea, and Pyongyang appears to be gearing up much faster and more seriously than we are.

BYRON YORK: In Trump-Russia probe, was it all about the Logan Act?

There’s too much meat here to give you a proper excerpt, so instead I’ll just urge you to Read the Whole Thing™.

THIS IS WHAT IS KNOWN AS A DISTINCTION WITHOUT A DIFFERENCE:

The Palestinians have been offered a generous peace on more than one occasion, but as Abba Eban noted in 1973, have also never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Nothing has changed since then, except perhaps for a President willing to act accordingly.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Flynn, RUSSIA, Comey, Holder, Nunes, The FBI and Much, Much More.