"It was a muted Bill Clinton who stumped for his wife in New Hampshire on Monday.

"Only a few weeks back, Mr. Clinton was thought to be Hillary Clinton's 'secret weapon.' Well, he has just made his first two appearances of the 2016 campaign -- and the Associated Press describes him as 'subdued,' while the New York Time says he 'seemed to be on a tight leash.'

"Not to mention how adrift he looked when a reporter asked him about Donald Trump's slams about his treatment of women. ...

"As Christopher Hitchens once put it, Bill Clinton didn't lie about sex. He lied about women. The Clintons' problem today is that they are being called on these lies -- and neither he nor his wife has a good answer."

"In congressional testimony in December, Alan Bersin, assistant secretary for international affairs at the Department of Homeland Security -- the most cruelly misnamed bureaucratic concatenation since the Government Accountability Office -- was asked by Representative Mark Meadows (R-NC) to answer the simple question of how many aliens illegally overstay their visas every year. Bersin's answer as quoted in the Times was: 'We don't know.' ...

"From two of the 9/11 hijackers to one of the San Bernardino shooters, our visa program is a real source of national vulnerability to terrorism. And the fact is that the federal government is doing such a catastrophically poor job policing visa overstays that its minions are terrified even to keep track of how catastrophically poorly they are performing.

"We are perfectly capable of keeping track of these things: Miss the January payment on your Macy's card by two days, and financial firms around the world will know instantly, but flout federal immigration law, and the mighty, mighty Department of Homeland Security can't find its own ass with both hands, much less locate yours. Congress should give DHS a deadline -- say, June 1 of this year -- to at least get a handle on how bad a job it is doing. And if it fails to satisfy congressional demands, then DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson should be expected to resign or face impeachment. Impeachment is not something to be taken lightly, but we cannot afford to have intelligence operations that are this unintelligent. Institutional ignorance on this level does not happen by accident or through negligence -- it happens only by design."

"We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

"Good tidings we bring to you and your kin; We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!"

"Every year millions tune in to 'A Charlie Brown Christmas,' a 50-year-old TV special that shows its age. The animation looks rudimentary by Pixar standards. The voice acting, performed by real children, isn'€™t exactly a Shakespearean triumph. So what makes this 'Peanuts' television special, in a word, special? It's that Charlie Brown knows what Christmas is all about. ...

"Half a century later, 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' is far more than a quaint historical artifact. The slow and yet sublime story proves that purposeful characters and a simple aesthetic can beat fancy computer algorithms. The annual spiritual validation on mainstream television is a breath of fresh air. Free from gross humor or double-entendres, the show is a reminder that Hollywood need not reach to the lowest common denominator. A lonely kid who hears deep truths and is comforted by flawed but well-meaning friends is enough."

"It's not Gitmo driving recruitment. It's our president.

"In truth, Muslims don't care a whit about Guantanamo Bay. I prosecuted one of the world's most notorious terrorists in the mid '90s, the 'Blind Sheikh,' Omar Abdel Rahman, who formed the cell that carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York. He got the gold-plated due process of a civilian trial and all the trimmings of top-shelf civilian prison -- no Gitmo for him. And you know what? Islamic supremacists continue to condemn his incarceration and jihadists have killed scores of people to try to extort his release. They don'€™t care where we detain jihadists; they care that we detain jihadists."

"Last Saturday, Barack Obama gained the second jewel in his foreign-policy triple crown: the Paris climate accord. It follows his Iran nuclear deal and awaits but the closing of Guantanamo to complete his glittering legacy.

"To be sure, Obama will not be submitting the climate agreement for Senate ratification. It would have no chance of passing -- as with the Iranian nuclear deal, also never submitted for the Senate ratification Obama knew he'd never get. And if he does close Guantanamo, it will be in defiance of overwhelming bipartisan congressional opposition.

"You see, visionary thinkers like Obama cannot be bound by normal constitutional strictures. Indeed, the very unpopularity of his most cherished diplomatic goals is proof of their prophetic farsightedness."

"Congress is set to pass a massive spending bill to fund the government for another nine months, but that spending bill also includes funding that could go towards the United Nations' global warming redistribution schemes.

"Republicans have long pledged funding for the U.N.'s Green Climate Fund (GCF), which hands out money for green energy and 'sustainable' development projects around the world. President Barack Obama pledged $3 billion to the GCF, but so far Congress has opposed any attempt to give tax dollars to the U.N. green scheme.

"While the omnibus spending bill before Congress does not directly fund the GCF, it gives more than $388 million to other international funds that could end up funding the U.N.'€™s broader green energy goals."

"Those looking for the turning points in the tumultuous GOP presidential race may want to circle on their calendars the contests next year in Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois in the Midwest, and South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and Florida in the Southeast.

"As Republicans gathered for their latest debate in Las Vegas this week, more GOP strategists believe their presidential marathon is evolving toward a three-way contest that could divide the party along sharp demographic and geographic lines well into 2016.

"And given the patterns of support behind the top contenders, those states look primed for battle-of-the-bulge confrontations: the places where the contrasting components of the modern Republican coalition are most evenly matched."

"It's enough to make your head spin. Tashfeen Malik -- the Pakistani immigrant jihadist who helped carry out the deadliest terror attack on American soil since 9/11 -- passed three background checks without a single American official discovering that she openly supported 'violent jihad' on social media. Moreover, this was no oversight. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security has an actual 'secret policy' that prohibits immigration officials 'from reviewing the social-media messages of all foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas.'

"This is sheer insanity. In an era when jihadists are extraordinarily active on social media and often count on supporters' sharing and retweeting jihadist messages to help spread Islamist propaganda, our government decided it would create a 'civil liberties backlash' if it were known that America actually reviewed the public social-media posts of immigrants and visitors. ...

"No government can change human nature, but we can stop rewarding its worst impulses. Our present system rewards conformity -- a dubious enough trait -- and magnifies that fundamental flaw by demanding that our civil servants believe a series of lies about the world and -- especially -- our most vicious enemies. Our leaders are worse than foolish. They're cowards. And Americans are paying the price for their failures."

"Danish linguist Tina Magaard and a team of researchers spent three years examining the texts of the 10 largest religions to see if any incite violence. 'The texts of Islam are clearly distinct from the other religions' texts, as they, to a higher degree, call for violence and aggression against followers of other faiths,' she concluded. 'There are also direct incitements to terror.' ...

"Islam is not a 'religion of peace,' and won't be until most of its followers -- the Taliban, the Ayatollah, ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood, the mullahs of Saudi Arabia -- reject tenets like jihad. To suggest otherwise is naive. Virtually everyone is hacking at the branches of this growing menace, and almost no one is striking at its root."