HEH: You may be healthier if you are a 'political extremist'. If that's the case, I must be the healthiest man alive....

POWERLINE: Why the Freedom of Information Act is virtually worthless. "[A] cynical determination to run out the clock, combined with the federal government’s infinite litigation budget, can prevent damaging information from coming to light for years. There might be effective remedies for Executive Branch corruption, but the Freedom of Information Act is not among them."

ANOTHER EXPLANATION for why men are leaving college campuses in droves.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON on the resemblance of academia to California: "Traditional campuses are becoming like California, where those who got tired of paying high taxes and getting poor services with lots of psychological abuse simply left. Those who remained were mostly the very wealthy and the very poor."

THEY'RE NEITHER PEACEFUL NOR PROTESTORS: 'Peaceful' protesters block, damage Oakland police station.

A SHORT 'GOOD NEWS' POST: Animal Thieves.

THOMAS SOWELL: Tortured reasoning.

If you knew that there was a hidden nuclear time bomb planted somewhere in New York City -- set to go off today -- and you had a captured terrorist who knew where and when, would you not do anything whatever to make him tell you where and when? Would you pause to look up the definition of "torture"? Would you even care what the definition of "torture" was, when the alternative was seeing millions of innocent people murdered?

Only an idiot -- or a liberal -- would worry about torture in the immediacy of a crisis.

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane: If you're smart, become a businessman. If you're stupid, become a politician. If you're too stupid to be a politician, become an academic.

ON FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will drop off an unmanned Dragon spacecraft in orbit and send it on its way to the International Space Station. Then, if all goes well, the rocket's first stage will turn around, fly itself back to Earth, and, if all goes well, land on this platform floating in the Atlantic Ocean.

Read more here.

RED AMERICA, BLUE AMERICA: if only it could be so....

MARTHA MCSALLY wins Arizona's 2nd Congressional district. I'm pleased,but as an
experienced A-10 combat pilot, she may be more needed in Iraq and Syria.

THE "I CAN'T BREATHE" T-SHIRT we've all been waiting for.

GREEN HYPERBOLE: Cities are 'heat islands' that kill people unless global warming.

The problem is acute in Louisville [KY]. A 2012 study from the Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that 39 people die every year in Louisville from heat-related causes. That means that a city with .2 percent of the U.S. population experiences roughly 6 percent of heat-related deaths every year. The problem is only likely to get worse. Unless Louisville’s warming trend is reversed, the cumulative death toll could reach 18,000 by the end of this century—a projection that far exceeds that for any other city.

Umm, the average high temperature in Louisville, KY, during the months of June, July, and August is 87 degrees. The city averages just one day a year when a daytime high reaches into the 100s.

In Venice, FL, the summer average high is 90 degrees; in Austin, TX, it is 95 degrees. Phoenix, AZ, a mere 104 degrees. How many people do those 'heat islands' kill every year?

Idiots.

AT $1/GALLON, THAT'S ALMOST THE NATIONAL DEBT: California needs 11 trillion gallons of water to recover from drought.

THOMAS SOWELL: here be voter fraud.

WHY GUN-CONTROL ADVOCATES lie about guns. The facts aren’t on their side.

THE NEW YORK TIMES needs a paywall. To hide their incompetence.

SCOTT OTT: An exclusive interview with Allah.

ROGER SIMON on the film industry. Liberal lemmings. Rabid liberal lemmings. Stupid rabid liberal lemmings.

WE HAVE an extensive list of things caused by global warming/climate change/climate disruption (your choice); now we know what causes global warming/climate change/climate disruption -- racism.

Which in turn is a smoke-screen for white privilege.

HE'S CONSERVATIVE - AND A MUSLIM - so his opinions must necessarily produce 'existential worry' in the minds of the precious liberal flowers at the University of Michigan.

THEY'VE HAD HOW MANY YEARS TO GET IT RIGHT? Health insurers extend premium deadlines due to chronic back-end exchange issues.

E-CIGARETTES now have teens smoking less tobacco than ever. So let's ban them.

WELCOME BACK, PRETTY LADY: The A-10 carries out its first airstrikes against the Islamic State.

[T]he A-10s had arrived at an undisclosed base in the region ... and will support Operation Inherent Resolve – the mission against the Islamic State – and other operations in the region. The jets will be part of the 332nd Air Expeditionary Group.... The unit has a long history of combat operations, and worked from an air base in southwest Asia in 2011 to provide support to U.S. troops in Iraq....

WE KNOW where the Wild Things come from. So why let them in?

MEGAN KELLY: Angry CIA interrogator James Mitchell lashes out at partisan Senate report. There are two videos. Watch them both.

MORE PROOF THAT TAXES ARE TOO HIGH: National Institutes of Health has spent $100M on mindfulness meditation.

PUNCHING BACK: Tea Party mom wins lawsuit after being arrested for her beliefs.

More please.

HIGHER EDUCATION TODAY: A race to the bottom, between the vicious and the trivial.

LIBERALISM: When you find yourself in a deep hole keep digging. The rest of us will watch and laugh at you.