Random links of interest, concern or curiosity from the past week or so, that deserve at least a SHORT mention:

5 Criminal Christmas Carols ~ Hard to believe these classic holiday tunes haven’t already been outlawed by the politically correct police 😀
 
Obama Administration Now Has 1,000 Government Investigators Targeting Businesses for Minimum Wage Violations ~ Yet another mostly imaginary problem that suddenly requires taxpayer-funded government thuggery. If only the O’Ministration was even remotely as diligent about enforcing our immigration laws!
 
Widow Says ‘Torture Is Watching What Happened In 9/11,’ ‘Telling Your Children’ Father Was Killed (With video) ~

“Torture is watching what happened in 9/11,” Strada said. “Watching people jump out of buildings to save themselves – you know, to die as opposed to being burned to death… I mean the carpet was burning beneath their feet.”

By pretending there’s a moral equivalence between terrorism and “enhanced interrogation” the Left is being deliberately – and callously – obtuse.
 
You Can Keep Your Doctor…If He Doesn’t Kill Himself ~ Some sad statistics ~

Official estimates put the annual toll of American physicians who die at their own hand as high as 400. But, given the stigma of suicide—especially among doctors—this figure is probably low […]
 
Given the unconscionable mess that is American health care, one wonders why the percentage isn’t even higher. How is it not depressing to assume massive student debt, to then face long hours; assembly line medical office practices; the realization that at best, you are working for the insurance industry; and the constant threat of litigation?

 
Obama: ‘I Spend Most of My Time Watching ESPN in the Morning’ ~ Well, that certainly explains a lot ~

A report in October from the Government Accountability Institute noted Obama has missed 62.5 percent 😯 of his daily intelligence briefings during his presidency.

 
Nigerian Government Slaughters 27 Muslim Jihadists ~ Excellent news. (But – whew! Good thing they didn’t water-board ‘em.)

 
Sharpton: Blacks Can’t Act Decently Without More Government Payouts ~ OK, that’s not a direct quote, but it’s sure the tenor of his rhetoric.

 
 
College president forced to apologize after saying ‘all lives matter’ ~ With the Left, it’s critical to stay on-message – no thinking outside the progressive box. Right now the focus is only on black lives. And then only on blacks who have been around for a while… not the unborn.

 
‘Dwarfs castrated and children sent for chemical weapons tests’: How North Korea is ‘purging the disabled because they humiliate the regime’ ~ The Hermit Kingdom is possibly more criminally insane than the Nazis were and yet the West seems oblivious to the ongoing inhumanity – choosing instead to fight “enemies” like imaginary climate change…
 
… by defacing millennia-old archaeological sites 😯 ~
Greenpeace Defaces Ancient Peruvian Landmark – Officials Outraged ~

GreenPeace extremists have gone to great lengths to harass whaling vessels with rubber rafts and chain themselves to trees in the rain forest in order to protest what they consider to be the destruction of the planet, they don’t seem to mind personally destroying cultural treasures (ancient Nazca lines, enormous drawings etched in the earth some 2,000 years ago by a pre-Inca civilization).

Whatever Happened to St. Nicholas? ~ How did a fourth century heretic-slapping bishop from Southern Turkey wind up being a fat, Coca-Cola-swigging American elf? ~ Fr. Dwight Longenecker deconstructs the myths behind the man.