SELF-DEFENSE: Uber Driver Thwarts Robbery Attempt by Fatally Shooting Would-Be Thief on Florida Causeway.

The driver, who had a passenger in his vehicle, was travelling to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

“At approximately 5:50 a.m. today, there was a gentleman operating an Uber and picked up a fare here in Aventura at one of the local condos,” Aventura police Sgt. Chris Goranitis told reporters Sunday, according to ABC affiliate WPLG.

The Uber driver’s vehicle was then cut off by a Dodge Caravan minivan on the William Lehman Causeway.

“The driver of the Caravan exited the vehicle and he had two firearms in his hands and he pointed them at the Uber driver and demanded items from the driver,” Goranitis said. “This was an attempted robbery. We don’t believe it was road rage.”

But the unidentified Uber driver was also armed, and he proceeded to fire at the would-be thief, police said. The suspect, who was not identified, was pronounced dead at the scene.

I get the feeling Uber won’t treat their driver kindly, but I hope I’m wrong.

Although the driver was licensed to concealed-carry, Uber bans firearms for riders and drivers alike.

PEACE IN OUR TIME: Iran to land first Airbus jet within weeks under sanctions pact.

“We have finalised negotiations with Airbus and any day we will be able to sign the deal in Tehran,” Deputy Roads and Urban Development Minister Asghar Fakhrieh Kashan told Reuters in a telephone interview. “We are expecting some final clearances and expect to sign today or tomorrow.”

The first Airbus A321 could arrive before the Jan. 20 inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has opposed the deal to lift most sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear activities, and well ahead of Iranian presidential elections in May next year.

What could go wrong?

NOT. GONNA. HAPPEN. Electoral college rebels speak out on a last-ditch hope to stop Trump.

21ST CENTURY CRIME: New York Man to Be Sentenced in Plot to Target Muslims With X-Ray Gun.

PRIVACY: Turkey blocks Tor’s anonymity network.

Turkey’s President Erdogan and the ruling AKP party are increasingly bent on silencing online dissent, and that now affects you even if you’re smart enough to evade typical censorship methods. Watchdog group Turkey Blocks has confirmed that Turkey is blocking the Tor anonymity network’s direct access mode for most users. You can still use a bridge mode for now, but there are hints that internet providers might be hurting performance even then. The restrictions come alongside a recent government ban on virtual private network services.

While this doesn’t completely shut off anonymity, it marks the start of a disconcerting chapter in the Erdogan regime’s bid to hold on to power. Previously, it was focused on blocking publicly available social networks whenever there are signs of unrest, making it harder for opposition movements to solidify and organize protests.

Turkey remains a member of a military alliance founded to defend one another from dictatorial control.

STUPID SHOULD HURT, AND I BET THIS HURT A LOT: A Florida man tried to rob a former WWE wrestler — and got body-slammed.

Florida Man was 2016 before it was cool.

PRESIDENT WHO?

Hey, President Donald Trump: Do you know where your bombs are falling? https://t.co/cqPjGBSuDY pic.twitter.com/ef88Yui1WK

— Salon (@Salon) December 15, 2016

It isn’t like anyone believed Salon was ruthlessly employing layers of editors and fact-checkers, but this headline is an egregious mistake still.

BILL WHITTLE: Fake News.

THE INTERNET OF YOUR CHILDREN’S THINGS: Hackers Are Targeting Kids’ Toy Accounts and Sitting on Their Personal Data Until It’s Useful to Them.

PRIVACY: Florida Court Rules Police Can Compel Suspect to Unlock Cell Phone.

A Florida Court has ruled that a man suspected of voyeurism using his iPhone must turn over his 4-digit passcode to police.

Even with a warrant, they couldn’t access the phone without the combination. A trial judge denied the state’s motion to force the man to give up the code, considering it equal to compelling him to testify against himself, which would violate the Fifth Amendment. But the Florida Court of Appeals’ Second District reversed that decision today, deciding that the passcode is not related to criminal photos or videos that may or may not exist on his iPhone.

That’s clever. Because the passcode is itself not “evidence” against he suspect, he isn’t really being compelled to incriminate himself. But the pass code is not a physical object rather it’s knowledge located in the suspect’s mind. The Florida court just ruled the police can have control over the things in your mind. A scary precedent.

Previously, courts have ruled that suspects must “give up” their fingerprints to unlock their phone, but not the combination or code. The difference between the two lies in a distinction between physical evidence, like a fingerprint and knowledge, like a phone code or password. “This interpretation sources back to the Supreme Court’s 1988 Doe v. U.S. decision, in which it ruled that a person may be compelled to give up a key to a strongbox, say, but not a combination to a wall safe,” explains Endgaget.

If a suspect smashed his phone before police could seize it, would that be “destruction of evidence,” even though there’s no way of knowing if any evidence was actually on the phone?

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Colorado school district votes to allow employees to carry guns.

The Board of Education for Hanover School District #28 voted 3-2 to approve the resolution on Wednesday night, said Mark McPherson, board president.

McPherson, who voted against the plan, said it was inspired less by the fear of a shooting rampage on campus than by the district’s remote location, some 30 miles from the nearest sheriff’s station.

“We had a board member who introduced the idea back in June who indicated he felt the need for this because of the distance and response time (from law enforcement) as well as all the (potential) trouble from marijuana grows,” McPherson said.

The written resolution, however, says in part that it was drafted “in light of recent events nationally,” apparently in reference to a string of shootings on school campuses.

There’s still a lot of common sense to be found in Colorado, once you get far away from the Denver-Boulder axis.

“HOMELAND SECURTY,” YOU KEEP USING THOSE WORDS: More states confirm suspected cyberattacks sourced to DHS.

The two states reporting the suspected cyberattacks were West Virginia and Kentucky.

“We need somebody to dig down into this story and figure out exactly what happened,” said Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp.

In the past week, the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office has confirmed 10 separate cyberattacks on its network over the past 10 months that were traced back to DHS addresses.

“We’re being told something that they think they have it figured out, yet nobody’s really showed us how this happened,” Kemp said. “We need to know.”

He says the new information from the two other states presents even more reason to be concerned.

“So now this just raises more questions that haven’t been answered about this and continues to raise the alarms and concern that I have,” Kemp said.

Through an open-records request, Diamant acquired the results of a survey Kemp asked the National Association of Secretaries of State to send to its members.

West Virginia wrote back, “This IP address did access our election night results on November 7, 2016.” Kentucky responded the same IP address “did touch the KY (online voter registration) system on one occasion, 11/1/16.”

In a letter this week, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson told Kemp the department sourced the mid-November activity in Georgia to a federal contractor conducting what he called “normal” internet searches on the Secretary of State’s website. But Kemp says there’s a problem with that answer.

“We haven’t been able to recreate this the way they explained it to us,” Kemp said.

This is far more disturbing than reports of a DNC hack.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: 5 Ways ‘Rogue One’ Is Better Than Anyone Expected.

I trust Christian enough to go see it on his recommendation, but more importantly my sons will divorce me if I don’t take them.

CYBER SECURITY: Russian hack almost brought the U.S. military to its knees.

Then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey was alerted to the attack by an early-morning phone call from the Director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Mike Rogers.

Now retired, Dempsey told CBS News in an exclusive interview that the attack was proceeding at an alarming speed. Within an hour, hackers had seized control of the unclassified e-mail system used by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, the organization of some 3,500 military officers and civilians who work for the Chairman.

In that time, the hackers seized the computer credentials of Dempsey and hundreds of other senior officers — the passwords and electronic signatures they used to sign on to the network. The only way to stop the attack was to take the network down.

The attack, which officials now blame on Russia, began with 30,000 e-mails sent to a West Coast university. Of those 30,000, four were forwarded to members of the Joint Staff and one was opened — allowing the hackers in. Since it was an unclassified network, the attack had no real intelligence value.

It was not spying, but a full-on assault whose only apparent purpose was to cause damage and force the Pentagon to replace both hardware and software, which took about two weeks to accomplish.

Moscow has got to cut this out, and at this point maybe only a massive counterattack on Russian systems would get that message across.

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: 12-year-old suspected of nail bomb attempt in Germany.

Federal German prosecutors are investigating a 12-year-old boy who allegedly attempted to set off a nail bomb at a Christmas market in the southern city of Ludwigshafen, officials said Friday.

The German-born son of Iraqi parents is alleged to have tried to set off the device at the Christmas market on Nov. 26, and again outside city hall on Dec. 5, Focus magazine reported citing security sources.

In the second failed attempt, a passer-by spotted the backpack containing the device and reported it to authorities. Inside they found a glass jar packed with material from firecrackers and with nails taped to it, Focus reported.

Police said it would have burned but would not have exploded.

Stephan Meyer, parliamentary spokesman on security issues for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc, confirmed the details of the report.

Good lord.

SUSTAINABILITY: Hikes In Cost of Housing Now 40% Higher Than Pay Increases.

Washington has been juicing the housing market ever since the last Washington-juiced housing bubble popped.

THROW THE BASTARDS OUT… WAIT, WHAT? Incumbent Reelection Rates Higher Than Average in 2016.

Looking over the down-ballot outcome, there’s one inescapable conclusion in a year that was defined by a political outsider, Donald Trump, winning the presidency: It was still a really good year to run as an incumbent in 2016, all things considered.

This election cycle, 393 of 435 House representatives, 29 of 34 senators, and five of 12 governors sought reelection (several of the governors were prohibited from seeking another term). Of those, 380 of 393 House members (97%), 27 of 29 senators (93%), and four of five governors (80%) won another term. These members of Congress and governors not only won renomination, but also won in November.

Those reelection rates are all a little bit better than the already impressive post-World War II averages.

One way to read this is that after throwing more than 900 Democrats out of office since 2010, the last place Americans really needed to clean up was the Oval Office.

But setting party aside, longterm incumbency has been a cancer on our body politic.

TESTING THE WATERS:

BREAKING: China's navy has seized an unmanned, underwater U.S. Navy vehicle in international waters of South China Sea.

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) December 16, 2016

More:

A Chinese Navy warship has seized an underwater drone deployed by an American oceanographic vessel in international waters in the South China Sea, triggering a formal demarche from the United States and a demand for its return, a U.S. defense official told Reuters on Friday.

The incident — the first of its kind in recent memory — took place on Dec. 15 northwest of Subic Bay just as the USNS Bowditch, an oceanographic survey ship, was about to retrieve the unmanned, underwater vehicle (UUV), the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Payback for taking Taiwan’s call, or just seeing what the incoming Administration is made of?

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Scott Pruitt Is The Ideal Nominee to Lead the EPA.

Secretary of the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, Donald R. van der Vaart:

As the head of a state environmental department with two decades of experience enforcing environmental protection laws, I am disappointed by the attacks on Pruitt’s views. The extreme environmentalist left is distorting his mainstream views because they want to bully Americans into their job-killing climate change agenda. Americans overwhelmingly rejected this outlook in November.

Like President-elect Trump, Pruitt is committed to clean air and clean water, and to restoring EPA to its original mission of enforcing the environmental laws written by Congress. He has laid out a view that human activities do impact the climate, and we should be encouraging a healthy debate over the government’s proper role in addressing them rather than trying to shut down the discussion.

As a state attorney general, Pruitt has seen the real-world consequences of EPA’s unlawful regulations, and North Carolina was proud to join Oklahoma in taking on tough fights on behalf of states who are being overrun by federal overreach. Pruitt has been a national leader in fighting back against President Obama’s various job-killing and unconstitutional regulations including those related to the “War on Coal” and the Waters of the United States rule.

Or as John Galt put it, “Get the hell out of my way!”

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP: Group Using Celebrities to Urge Electors to Vote Against Trump Has Foreign-Registered Website.

An image on the Unite for America Facebook page shows the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin and asks, “Is this your president?”

The Unite for America website does not contain much information about the group or its members. It also does not list an address or phone number. In order to contact Unite for America, a form must be submitted through its site.

Despite the group’s reference to alleged foreign influence in the presidential election, a trace of the group’s URL shows that its website was registered in a foreign country.

According to a search on ICANN WHOIS, a website that provides public access to data on registered URL names, UniteForAmerica.org was created on Nov. 26 with internet service provider Tucows Inc., located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

“Canadians are attempting to subvert the results of our election” doesn’t actually sound any crazier than anything else I’ve read in the last five weeks or so.

DIAL L FOR LOSER: Democratic donors call for Clinton campaign post-mortem.

“A lot of the bundlers and donors still are in shock and disbelief by what happened. They’re looking for some introspection and analysis about what really happened, what worked and what didn’t,” said Ken Martin, chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and a top campaign bundler himself. “It may take some time to do that, but people are still just scratching their heads.”

Or, in the words of a Midwestern fundraiser who’s kept in touch with fellow donors, “A lot of people are saying, ‘I’m not putting another fucking dime in until someone tells me what just happened.’”

Unless Democrats are willing to listen to advice from outside the echo chamber (Eric S Raymond and Scott Ott come to mind), their 2016 post-mortem won’t be any more effective than the one the GOP put together after 2012.

DO YOU OR SOMEONE YOU LOVE SUFFER FROM TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME? Doctors Whittle, Ott, and Green are here to help.

Full disclosure: I’m Green, but I’m not actually a doctor.

THAT COULD BE USEFUL: Dwarf Planet Ceres Is Full Of Water.

Scientists have long theorized that the surface and subsurface of Ceres has vast stores of water ice. A model developed in 1989 suggested the presence of layers of ice measuring between 3 to 330 feet in the surface and subsurface of this extraterrestrial world.

The model was created using data gathered from ground-based telescopes, but recently gathered data suggest that estimates based on this decades-old model was not far off.

Researchers used images captured by Dawn to analyze the craters in the northern polar region of the asteroid and identified regions of perpetual shadow in more than 600 craters. Of these craters, 10 had bright spots that reflect high levels of sunlight. Wavelengths of light that were reflected off these patches revealed the reflective surfaces contain water ice.

“We spectroscopically identify one of the bright deposits as water ice. This detection strengthens the evidence that permanently shadowed areas have preserved water ice on airless planetary bodies,” study researcher Thomas Platz, from Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, and colleagues reported in Nature Astronomy on Dec. 15.

Launching water into space from Earth is prohibitively expensive. So imagine a huge store of water in a low-gravity environment, conveniently located in the asteroid belt between Mars and the outer planets.

MUST-SEE TV: Tucker Takes Down Kurt Eichenwald.

Riches of embarrassment.

COMPETENCE: Republican National Committee Security Foiled Russian Hackers.

Russian hackers tried to penetrate the computer networks of the Republican National Committee, using the same techniques that allowed them to infiltrate its Democratic counterpart, according to U.S. officials who have been briefed on the attempted intrusion.

But the intruders failed to get past security defenses on the RNC’s computer networks, the officials said. And people close to the investigation said it indicated a less aggressive and much less persistent effort by Russian intelligence to hack the Republican group than the Democratic National Committee. Only a single email account linked to a long-departed RNC staffer was targeted.

The disclosures came as a political furor grows over suspected Russian hacking of U.S. political organizations. The Central Intelligence Agency has concluded that Russian hackers, whom analysts say work for that country’s military and intelligence apparatus, stole emails from the DNC, as well as another Democratic organization and the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, to harm her candidacy and boost Republican Donald Trump’s chances of winning. Russia has denied the allegations.

The possibility that Russians tried and failed to infiltrate the RNC doesn’t necessarily conflict with the CIA’s conclusion. A senior U.S. official said analysts now believe what started as an information-gathering campaign aimed at both parties later took on a focus of leaked emails about Mrs. Clinton and Democrats.

Two things come to mind. First, which party would you trust more with your national security? And second, it’s perfectly clear that with a Clintonista running things, the DNC servers were always going to contain much juicier material than anything on the RNC’s.

Listen up, Democrats: You can have a Clinton or you can have lax security, but you can’t have both.