THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES? Where Bernie-nomics Goes to Die.

ISRAELI AMBASSADOR: Iran is smuggling weapons to Hezbollah on commercial flights.

UN Ambassador Danny Danon sent an urgent letter to the Security Council members in which he revealed the smuggling route from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to Hezbollah: “The Iranian Al-Quds Force packs weapons, ammunition and missile technology to Hezbollah in suitcases and puts them on Mahan Air flights.”

Danon added that “these planes fly directly to the airport in Lebanon or Damascus and from there the weapons are transferred on the ground to Hezbollah.”

The UN envoy wrote that “Iran continues to violate Security Council resolutions, including Resolutions 1701 and 2231.” Iran arms terrorist organizations in the Middle East and works to undermine stability in the entire region, he added.

You’d think this is the kind of thing which might have come up in President Obama’s years-long negotiations with the mullah’s regime.

MAD DUCK: Obama Education Secretary John B. King Calls for End to Paddling in Schools.

TAX IT, AND THEY WILL LEAVE: Boulder passed the nation’s steepest soda tax; now, to implement it.

Haddock said the city hasn’t begun sorting through the various nuances and challenges of administering the tax.

But one scenario she and other Boulder staffers know they’ll have to prepare for involves business owners heading out of city limits to exploit what could be a loophole in the plan.

It seems like an easy way to skirt the rules: If a restaurant owner wants to avoid paying more to a distributor for a delivery of, say, sugar-sweetened lemonade, why not drive to Louisville or Longmont and buy the product there, where the tax is not in effect?

“I don’t know if that person does become a distributor or not, or how we would implement it,” Haddock said. “That’s one of those real-life examples where we’ll be thinking about how’s the appropriate way to treat them.”

Soda tax shirkers will not be tolerated in the People’s Republic.

THE HILL: Presidential electors planning to undermine Electoral College.

Some electors are lobbying their Republican counterparts to vote for someone other than Trump in an attempt to deny him the 270 votes required to elect him, according to the news outlet.
They are also contemplating whether to cast their votes for someone other than Hillary Clinton, like Mitt Romney or Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio).

With at least six electors already vowing to become “faithless,” the defection could be the most significant since 1808, when six Democratic-Republican electors refused to vote for James Madison, choosing vice presidential candidate George Clinton instead.

The electors acknowledge that it is unlikely that they will be able to block Trump from gaining office, Politico reported, but they are optimistic that their effort will raise enough questions about the Electoral College to reform or abolish it.

How did people who despise the Electoral College become Electors?

Or did they not come to despise it until after their candidate lost?

DEFENSE: Fighter Pilots Aren’t Flying Enough to Hone the Skills of Full-Spectrum War.

How did it come to this? Fighter force readiness has been declining since 2003, but it took a big dive in fiscal 2013, when funding cuts forced the Air Force to temporarily ground half of its active-duty, combat-coded squadrons and reduce overall flying hours by 18 percent.

It got worse. In 2014, additional cuts led to shortages of spare parts and aircraft maintenance workers. Fighter pilots, who once averaged over 200 flying hours a year, struggled to get 120 hours that year.

Last year, the average rose to 150 hours with a slight uptick in funding and by rolling in the surge of flying time accumulated during combat deployments. Flying in a combat environment may sound like an incredible opportunity to employ and refine high-end skillsets, but it isn’t. The vast majority of a fighter pilot’s time in a cockpit over Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria is spent holding (loitering), waiting to be employed in that low-threat environment. While they fly much more frequently, the opportunity to actually drop munitions comes infrequently. And after they return home, those pilots often average less than one sortie a week.

The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.

PROMISES, PROMISES: Trump’s Potential Homeland Security Director ‘Leaks’ DHS Plan for First 365 Days.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach inadvertently “leaked” to the press a copy of his “Strategic Plan for the First 365 Days” to improve the Department of Homeland Security’s illegal immigration policies — including a plan to rapidly build a 1,989-mile wall on the southern border, just as candidate Donald Trump promised. Kobach briefly posed for photographs with the president-elect before they both went into the clubhouse at the Trump National Golf Clubhouse in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Sunday. Kobach — an immigration hardliner who causes liberal heads to explode on a regular basis — is a top contender for the position of DHS secretary.

An AP photographer managed to get a close-up of the stack of papers and binder Kobach was clutching before he went inside, and part of “the Kobach doctrine” was revealed.

There are leaks, and leaks. This is the latter.

NOBODY GOES THERE ANYMORE, IT GETS TOO MANY HITS: Google will now tell you whether a bar or shop is busy in real-time.

BRITAIN TO TRUMP: ‘No vacancy’ for Farage as ambassador.

Britain on Tuesday dismissed U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s unprecedented expression of support for Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage to be made British ambassador to Washington, saying pointedly that there is no vacancy for the job.

Trump, who after his election victory met Farage before any EU leaders, said on Twitter that “many people” would like to see the former metals trader turned politician as Britain’s ambassador.

“Many people would like to see @Nigel_Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job!” Trump said on Twitter.

Prime Minister Theresa May, who congratulated Trump on his victory, was swift to reject such an undiplomatic proposal.

“There is no vacancy,” a Downing Street spokesman said when asked about Trump’s remark on Tuesday. “We already have an excellent ambassador to the US.”

I’m positive Trump was simply complementing Farage in his typically bombastic way, and not actually lecturing Britain on who their U.S. ambassador should be.

But after eight years of lectures from the outgoing American President, you can hardly blame Britain for being a little touchy.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Texas Bill Would Reform State Asset Forfeiture Law and Close Federal Loophole.

A bill filed for the 2017 legislative session would modestly reform Texas asset forfeiture laws and close a federal loophole that allows law enforcement to avoid state restrictions on the practice.

Sen. Juan Hinojosa (D-Dist. 20) filed Senate Bill 156 (SB156) on Nov. 14. The legislation would make it more difficult for the state to win asset forfeiture cases by raising the burden of proof the state has to meet from “a preponderance of the evidence” to “clear and convincing evidence” that the asset was linked to criminal activity. The new law would still allow police to seize assets without a criminal conviction.

While the reform is somewhat modest, it would represent a step forward and set the stage for more substantive reforms in the future.

That’s a start.

OH. Trump Won’t Pursue Charges Against Hillary: “She’s Been Through Enough.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I’m of two minds on this. On the one hand, she pretty clearly deserves to be prosecuted, and any lesser-ranking official in her position would be. On the other hand, setting a precedent in which the new administration prosecutes the outgoing administration is dangerous, and gives people an incentive to cut (even more) corners to retain power. The Roman Republic had problems like this. Perhaps the best situation is to retain the possibility of prosecution, but not use it: The value of the Sword of Damocles, as they say, is that it hangs, not that it falls. But it still rankles.

PRIVACY: Coinbase Promises to Fight the IRS in Court Over Data on All Active US Bitcoin Traders.

“Although Coinbase’s general practice is to cooperate with properly targeted law enforcement inquiries, we are extremely concerned with the indiscriminate breadth of the government’s request. Our customers’ privacy rights are important to us and our legal team is in the process of examining the government’s petition. In its current form, we will oppose the government’s petition in court. We will continue to keep our customers informed on developments in this matter”, Coinbase says.

Coinbase imparted that the Internal Revenue Services sent it a summons asking for information on all users. According to the summons, an IRS agent has recently come across three cases when people used bitcoin to evade taxes. Two of three those cases concerned Coinbase customers. The IRS has also underlined that some Coinbase users are known to have not complied with federal law in the past.

These are only isolated incidents while the government may have gone too far in its intention to gain access to all of Coinbase’s users.

The I.R.S. has not proven it’s trustworthy enough to hold such sweeping powers.

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: One of Facebook’s enormous internet-spreading drones crashed.

JACK SHAFER: Abolish the Office of the First Lady.

Yes, defund the ridiculously large staff that currently earns upward of $1.5 million a year serving Michelle Obama; abolish the federally funded bully pulpit from which the presidential spouses have historically advocated for healthy eating, literacy, child welfare, anti-drug programs, mental health issues and beautification of highways. The president’s spouse isn’t a specimen of American royalty. By giving her a federal budget and nonstop press coverage, we endorse a pernicious kind of neo-nepotism that says, pay special attention to the person not because she’s earned it or is inherently worthy of our notice but because of who she’s related to by marriage.

The hairstyles, fashion choices, vacation destinations and pet projects of the president’s spouse are newsworthy only to the mentally vacant. Other democracies, such as the United Kingdom, bestow no such honors upon the spouses of their leaders and are better for it. To use an au courant phrase, the office of the first spouse is a swamp in need of draining. Won’t somebody please dispatch a dredger to the East Wing?

My beef isn’t against Melania Trump, the next first spouse, who seems to be a poised, harmless individual. I actually started composing this column in my head when the election of Hillary Clinton seemed inevitable. We already give mega-millionaire Bill Clinton a huge payout to run and staff his office under the federal Former Presidents Act. He’s collected in excess of $16 million since 2001. Why, I thought, give him additional funding and staff as first spouse?

Indeed.

Although to be fair, the First Lady’s budget and staff were modest prior to January, 2009.

SCENES FROM RAHM EMANUEL’S CHICAGO: Teen killed, 7 wounded in West, South side shootings since early Monday afternoon.

BUH-BYE: Secessionists formally launch quest for California’s independence.

The Yes California group has been around for more than two years, Evans said. It is based around California taxpayers paying more money to the federal government than the state receives in spending, that Californians are culturally different from the rest of the country, and that national media and organizations routinely criticize Californians for being out of step with the rest of the U.S.

The attorney general’s office will give the ballot measure a title and summary, and Evans said he hopes to begin collecting signatures to get it on the ballot in the spring. Qualifying ballot measures typically requires significant resources to pay signature gatherers, and Yes California doesn’t have major financial backing. But Evans said 13,000 people have volunteered to collect signatures.

“This is real,” Evans said. “We treat it seriously.”

Let California go. Then cut our corporate tax rate to 10% and see how long Sacramento makes it on their own.

JAYVEE COMES HOME: ‘They Want an Operation in Times Square’

Federal authorities arrested a Brooklyn driver early Monday on charges of attempting to support ISIS just days before the annual Thanksgiving parade in New York that was the subject of a recent threat in an Islamic State magazine.

A criminal complaint alleges that Mohamed Rafik Naji, 37, a legal permanent U.S. resident and citizen of Yemen, discussed a plot to try to conduct a Nice-style attack using a garbage truck to mow down people in Times Square.

Naji was seized at his apartment on Clarendon Road in Flatbush in a multi-agency arrest. Authorities said he worked as a driver for Uber, though the company told NBC4 that he didn’t work for them.

Read the whole thing.

SCIENCE: Another Awesome Study Confirms Beer Is Actually Good for You.

You wouldn’t want to argue with science, would you?

RELATED: Barley dormancy mutation suggests beer motivated early farmers.

That’s right — beer is partly responsible for civilization. There really is nothing it can’t do.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Scientists shocked by what they found on ATMs.

Scientists have taken a close look at the automated teller machines (ATMs) that we use all the time, absent-mindedly punching in a PIN and receiving cash, and found something rather alarming: microbes from fish, chicken and baked goods found on the surfaces of keypads throughout New York City.

The findings were published in the American Society for Microbiology. In the course of their research, scientists collected a large variety of microbes and bacteria that make their way from human hands to the surfaces of ATM keypads. It shows that there’s just no escaping the massive amount of bacteria that surrounds on a daily basis.

Maybe there’s something to the cashless society after all.

BUT OF COURSE: NBC News Complains About Fake News And Then Posts The Most Misleading Headline.

PARENTING IN THE AGE OF TRUMP: Kids Are Writing Letters to Donald Trump Begging Him to Be Kind.

I dunno, I think he once shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die — if Twitter is to be believed.

AND: Paying Students to Protest Trump.

They probably won’t make enough to move out of their parents’ basement after graduation.

MAD DUCK: Obama sets new record for regulations, 527 pages in just one day.

OH NO, POLITICO: Obamacare repeal plan stokes fears of market collapse.

Repealing the law without a replacement is likely to spook health insurers, who might bolt from the markets prematurely to avoid losses as some people stop paying their premiums, while others rush to have expensive medical procedures before losing coverage. Insurers would have little incentive to stick around without knowing know what to expect at the end of the transition. And that could spell chaos for consumers.

“The discussion right now about repeal and replacement is making the market very, very nervous,” said Washington Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler, a Democrat. “I would not be surprised to see the potential for a stampede to exit the market.”

This is what we call “distinction without a difference.“

DAN RATHER: Now, More Than Ever, We Must Stand Up for Science.

That the author of “fake, but accurate” was published by Scientific American speaks volumes about what has become of that magazine.

KEEP YOUR POWDER DRY (AND KEEP LOTS OF POWDER): What Will Happen to Gun Sales Now that the Democrats Are Out of Power?