Anyone have a good story to tell? My day ended with an electrical snafu at 5:30 p.m. I thought finding an electrician to make a house call on Christmas Eve would be impossible. I was wrong. Four responded to a request I made through a company called Service Magic I found on the internet, and all were willing to come. I went with the first one, he was here within an hour. He fixed the snafu and also replaced a bunch of high ceiling bulbs.

If you're waiting for Santa, you can track him here, via NORAD.

Merry Christmas everyone, this is an open thread, all topics welcome.

I was thinking about a nice cliche of a Christmas song to post, and I came up with this:

"You will get a sentimental feeling
When you hear
voices singing "Let's be jolly
Deck the halls with boughs of holly""

Open Thread.

Booman:

At this point in his presidency I think it is fair to say that Obama is already in the conversation as best president since Abraham Lincoln.

Heh.

Speaking for me only

The Senate has confirmed Michele Leonhart as head of the DEA. No change there either.

I just got home from a miserable day...a completely unexpected, emergency root canal. It hurts way too much to blog, so here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Good news would especially be welcome.

The more things change....President Obama left for Hawaii today on his Christmas vacation. The U.S. warns Americans to be cautious of terror attacks over the Christmas holiday.

The attack in Rome was the work of anarchists, not al Qaeda.

Over in Somalia, the two largest militant groups, al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam, announced they are merging and "threatened attacks against the African Union peacekeeping force in Mogadishu as well as attacks in Uganda and Burundi."

And the CIA forms a task force to investigate the impact of Wikileaks -- with an appropriate name: WTF.

Some interesting news articles today:

• Fl. Gov-Elect Terminates Jobs in Drug Policy Control office. His spokesman says,

  ``I don't think we're going to have cocaine bales stacking up on the docks of Miami if we close this office.''

  Critics ask, who's going to go after the pill mills? What about the planned prescription drug monitoring database? Salaries for the four full time employees in the office, which was created by Jeb Bush in 1999, are $500k.

• Lack of retroactivity in revised crack penalties results in unequal justice which may last for years, until the five year statute of limitations has run on crack offenses committed prior to Augst 3, 2010.

• New police chief in Mexico (a former General) fires almost his entire police force of 600 cops due to corruption. Then he lets 300 reapply. Only one passed the honesty tests.

• LA Times calls on Schwarznegger to commute potentially innocent death row inmate's sentence to life.

It's the last work day before everything shuts down for Christmas Eve and I've still got so much to do. For those of you procrastinating, or just with leisure time (what a luxury), here's an open thread.

Congress bans Guantanamo transfers for trial or any other reason. It also put the kabosh on using U.S. prisons to house Gitmo detainees.

The measure for fiscal year 2011 blocks the Department of Defense from using any money to move Guantanamo prisoners to the U.S. for any reason. It also says the Pentagon can't spend money on any U.S. facility aimed at housing detainees moved from Guantanamo, in a slap at the administration's study of building such a facility in Illinois.

Obama claimed yesterday he still supports closing Guantanamo, but he didn't mention the legislation, which he obviously intends to sign since it contains his funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[H]e said he remained committed to eventually closing the prison at Guantánamo because it was a symbol that was “probably the No. 1 recruitment tool” for terrorist propaganda.

At the same time, he's drawing up a plan for indefinite detention of terror detainees. If they can't be detained in the U.S., where's he going to put them besides Guantanamo? Are we going to buy or take over more prisons in Iraq or Afghanistan and ship them there? Out of sight, out of mind. [More...]

Open Thread.

One of the strange conceits Beltway pundits have is that most politicians actually give a fig about policy outside of how it affects their political prospects. Consider this from Ezra Klein:

So far, the lame-duck session has managed to pass an $850 billion tax-cuts-and-stimulus deal, the repeal of DADT, the Defense Authorization bill, a continuing resolution to keep funding the federal government, the START treaty, the food-safety bill, and probably a few more pieces of legislation I'm forgetting. [. . .] The question is why the Republicans didn't just drag their feet and let things expire and then come back to everything in 2011,The answer, I think, is that there are plenty of Senate Republicans who aren't too comfortable with the class of conservatives who got elected in 2010.

The answer actually is that Republicans took credit for the things that help them politically (tax cuts, stopping the spending bill) and avoided blame for things they do not want to be attributed to them. Let's consider Ezra's list of "accomplishments:

In our constitutional system, prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man. If and when we determine that the United States must hold individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war, we will do so within a system that involves judicial and congressional oversight. - President Barack Obama, May 21, 2009

December 21, 2010 ProPublica report on the proposed Obama Administration executive order on indefinite detention:

[T]he [proposed] order establishes indefinite detention as a long-term Obama administration policy and makes clear that the White House alone will manage a review process for those it chooses to hold without charge or trial.

(Emphasis supplied.) The proposed executive order reported on by ProPublica is not only a violation of the promises made by the President himself; in my view, it is likely a violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Constitution. I'll explain my view on the flip.

Phoenix's Sheriff Joe Arpaio may have a rival in the category of worst Sheriff in America. Pinal County (Tucson)Sheriff Paul Babeu has announced his department will institute a policy authorizing (mandating) the use of lethal force against suspected drug smugglers.

"I've given specific instruction, no less than lethal force is going to be used. It's all lethal force only and we go into that environment knowing that we're likely expecting an armed threat from these people," Babeu said.

Good thing for this Sheriff's deputy, he's in Texas and not Tucson. [More...]

Radley Balko has a new article at Slate on the grand jury investigation of Siobhan Reynolds of the Pain Relief Network. Tanya Treadway is the relentless federal prosecutor pursuing her, apparently for exercising her First Amendment rights in the trial of pain doctor and his wife charged with drug trafficking. The fight started when the prosecutor sought a gag order against Ms. Reynolds, lost, and then opened a grand jury investigation and subpoenaed everything but the kitchen sink.

When Reynolds appealed the subpoena, the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld it, as well as the seal on everything related to it. While we can't read the ruling, the justification for the seal is ostensibly the secrecy afforded to grand jury investigations. But that secrecy is supposed to protect the people the grand jury is investigating. In this case, the person being investigated wants it made public. Reynolds feels the subpoena is harassment and wants to shed some light on it. Treadway and the courts are hammering Reynolds with the very secrecy that is supposed to protect her. [More...]