Larwyn's Linx: What Christmas Really Means, And Why The Left Hates It

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Nation

What Christmas Really Means, And Why The Left Hates It: Joshua Pundit
Merry Christmas 2014: A Light Unto All Mankind: Publius
Texas Delivers Epic Bad News to Liberals Waging War on Christmas: ConTrib

The Left Discovers You Shouldn’t Collectivize Guilt : Charles C. W. Cooke
Officer Near Ferguson Kills Black Teen Who Pointed Gun At Him: Clash
Riot Police Needed To Protect Christians at Midnight Mass in STL: GWP

The IRS: Just One of Dozens of Uncooperative Agencies: Kevin D. Williamson
Al-Qaeda’s Younger Brother in Florida: Joe Kaufman
NY Fire House Flees After Cops Next Door Threatened by Black Gang: GWP

Washington Power Is Flowing Away: Michael Barone
Free Men Bear Arms: Captain's Journal
Machine Gun-Firing ex-Police Chief Now Claims He Was FBI Informant: Bob Owens

Economy

Public Pension Doom Begins to Descend: MB
The Shocking-But Not Surprising-Moody's Report on NJ Pensions: SBS
The $800 Billion Leveraged Loan Blacklist?: Pension Pulse

Scandal Central

Feds Preparing for 2015 Surge of Unaccompanied Children Across Border: WS
Belatedly Released and Revealing Fast & Furious Docs: Sharyl Attkisson
Corruption at DHS Inspector General's office does serious damage: Dan Cadman

Climate & Energy

EPA can't regulate lead bullets, says federal court: Zack Colman
We don't need more laws: Glenn Harlan Reynolds
The EPA wants you to build green fires in your fireplace this winter: Blaze

Media

"The Interview” really does subvert North Korea’s regime": Rich Klein
2014 Power Rankings: 25 Most Loved and Hated Conservatives in America: IJR
The President, Al Sharpton, and the Corruption of Modern Liberalism: Peter Wehner

Student Reporter under Attack at Brandeis for Reporting On anti-Police Tweets: LI
Pope says Islam is religion of peace, then begs Muslims to condemn violence: Robert Spencer
National Geographic Misidentifies Judaism's Holiest Site: CAMERA

World

Obama State Department Working With Designated Islamic Terror Group to Whitewash Them: FreePost
Turkey’s Two Thugs: Claire Berlinski
Spare a Christmas prayer for the suffering MidEast Christians: Nick Gray

No, North Korea Didn’t Hack Sony: Marc Rogers
Malmedy massacre survivor 'wanted to stay as still as I could': Stripes
Navy looking into whether alleged bin Laden shooter told too much: Stripes

Sci-Tech (courtesy BadBlue Tech News)

Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty: MeyerWeb
Helicopter Drone Makes First Flight from Navy Destroyer: DefTech
Lockheed Gets NASA Funding for the SR-72 Hypersonic Spy Drone: Erik Schechter

Cornucopia

YouTube will stream 'The Interview' on Christmas Day: Exam
Travel Posters from A Pre-Castro Cuba: Beast
Mayweather vs. Pacquiao unlikely to happen: Boxing News 24

Image: Isaac Levitan, "March" (1895)

QOTD: "Consider, if you will, the recent behavior of Salon’s Joan Walsh, who yesterday suggested in earnest that the conservative-led condemnation of the “climate” that supposedly provoked the shootings in New York City represented the unconscionable “politicization” of murder. “To blame the peaceful movement against police brutality that’s emerged nationwide,” Walsh wrote, is “the worst in demagoguery.” “Right wingers,” she added, “are using a terrible tragedy to make sure that no one can find middle ground.” Prima facie, I concur with Walsh, of course. But what, we might ask, has finally led her to this conclusion? After the shooting of Gabby Giffords in 2011, Walsh fretted dramatically about “the rhetoric of violence”; asked aloud, “Will any prominent conservatives denounce ‘reload’ and ‘crosshairs’ imagery?”; inquired dishonestly, “Is it really controversial to suggest that the overheated anti-government rhetoric of the last two years, with its often violent imagery, ought to be toned down?”; described Sarah Palin’s pretty standard political-campaign map as “unconscionable”; hoped that Republicans would find it in their hearts to “listen to Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who denounced ‘the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about the government’ at a Saturday night press conference”; played a remarkably dishonest game of “But Anyway . . . ,” repeatedly noting that there was “no evidence” that Jared Loughner had reacted to any right-wing rhetoric before insinuating in the next breath that he must have; and, when her well was running dry, went so far as to suggest without any attestation at all that the shooter was a registered Republican.

Later, talking characteristically out of both sides of her mouth, Walsh proposed that “even if Tuscon exists in a vacuum,” it would still be the case that the “Tea Party’s violent rhetoric is dangerous.” Naturally, these accusations were part of a trend. Two years earlier, Walsh had cynically blamed conservative talk-radio for a shooting at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. The perpetrator turned out to be a neo-Nazi." --Charles C. W. Cooke