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In 2007, I could have sworn President Barack Obama was supposed to be the savior of the Democrat Party. The smooth talking, suave Illinois senator had everything to bring the party together and end any GOP dominance. Well, it turns out, the Democrats have lost 1,030 seats across the board since Obama took office in January 2008. This includes seats in state's houses and senates, governorships, and Congress.

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CNN's presidential historian Douglas Brinkley this morning accused Donald Trump of "big-mouthing" President Obama by speaking out on policy issues during the transition. Co-host Poppy Harlow had teed Brinkely up to slam Trump, worrying that Trump had flouted the "one president at a time" tradition, and fretting that by doing so Trump was "confusing our allies and our adversaries. Brinkley was only too happy to run with the ball, responding: "I think it's very wrong-minded of Donald Trump to be doing this . . . what you don't want to do is to be big-mouthing and big-footing a sitting president . . . . I find it troubling, but I'm not going to be able to stop him from doing it."

We've written many times about the Democrats' destruction in 2013, under the leadership of Harry Reid, of the filibuster for judicial nominees below the Supreme Court level. Most of the columns written recently, including by us, discuss whether Republicans will extend that "Nuclear Option" to the current Supreme Court vacancy. And certainly, that's very important. But there is another way in which Harry Reid's gambit is going to hurt Democrats.

President Barack Obama's legacy at the UN will be marked by the year 2016. The year was bookmarked by the passage of UN Security Council resolution 2231 in January, giving U.N. authority to the Iran Nuclear Deal, and resolution 2334 last week, purporting to declare illegal the presence of Jews in areas in which form a key part of Jewish history. In the case of the Iran deal, the United States led the Security Council and voted for the resolution enshrining the nuclear deal into what passes for international law. In the case of the more recent resolution, the United States abstained, according to some incoherent reasons spouted by US Ambassador Samantha Power, but it looks like, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu charges, that Obama orchestrated it. (Yesterday, Netanyahu spokesman David Keyes charged that Israel had "ironclad information" that Obama was indeed behind the maneuver.)

On December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachov resigned as President of the Soviet Union. The red flag was lowered at the Kremlin, and the next day, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. The BBC reported:
Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union for almost seven years and executive president for nearly two, has stepped down from office. He announced his resignation in a 10 minute speech, broadcast live on television, as the Soviet Union passed into history.

I've been warning that Obama's passage of the recent anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution was not necessarily the "final" jab at Israel. Obama still has three more weeks left in which time he can achieve substantial UN action. https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/status/812385481711357958 The Israelis have reason to be fearful, asserting they have ‘Ironclad Information’ the Obama administration both pushed and helped craft the prior Resolution.

Once President-elect Trump vowed to end the war on Christmas and stated that we're going to say "Merry Christmas" again, a nationwide silent cheer went up as Americans across the country felt the weight of the religious suppression that permeates and fuels political correctness lifted in a very real way. Americans who felt, almost physically felt, that iron wall lift are mostly Christians and people who identify as Republicans or conservatives.

We all complain about how leftism has penetrated and taken over just about every conceivable institution, from the media to academia to the federal bureaucracy and political structure. It seems unstoppable. As leftists like to say, it's the arc of history. The writer who uses the pseudonym Zombie at Zombieblog disagrees, and the Trump election is the proof, Trump’s Victory Is a Pivotal Turning Point in Human History.
It's lengthy, and definitely read the whole thing. Here's an excerpt (bold in original):

There has been much bellyaching by liberal white women that 53% of us voted for Donald Trump in November presidential election. After learning of this statistic, Sa'iyda Shabazz writes a challenge letter to her white friends in The Mary Sue:
So, you voted for Trump. You don’t have to admit it, I know you did. Granted, I think the fact that some of you won’t admit it is telling. Some of you have said that you have stayed silent because you didn’t want to get dragged for voting for him.

Last night was the first night of Hanukkah (also spelled Chanukah):
In the second century BCE, the Holy Land was ruled by the Seleucids (Syrian-Greeks), who tried to force the people of Israel to accept Greek culture and beliefs instead of mitzvah observance and belief in G‑d. Against all odds, a small band of faithful Jews, led by Judah the Maccabee, defeated one of the mightiest armies on earth, drove the Greeks from the land, reclaimed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and rededicated it to the service of G‑d. When they sought to light the Temple's Menorah (the seven-branched candelabrum), they found only a single cruse of olive oil that had escaped contamination by the Greeks. Miraculously, they lit the menorah and the one-day supply of oil lasted for eight days, until new oil could be prepared under conditions of ritual purity.

We featured this video last year and liked it so much, we’re doing it again. Christmas flash mobs have become very popular over the last few years but so far none have matched the outstanding effort put forth by the Opera Company of Philadelphia in 2010. The Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah is a staple of Christmas music for good reason but when singers from multiple groups joined to create this moment on video, history was made.

I want to wish Legal Insurrection readers a very Merry Christmas (as well as Happy Chanukah, which begins December 24). My family decided to begin this holiday season with a trip to the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley. Given how closely my family followed this year's election, it seemed a grand way to conclude a crazy political year.

The posts I most enjoy writing about are the ones I didn't plan, but somehow found. I've written about Christmas Eve in World War II before, including in 2014, Christmas 1944: The Battle of the Bulge. and a follow up with reader memories in 2015, Christmas Eve in the Ardennes 1944. In searching for another story to tell this Christmas Eve, I stumbled upon memories of Christmas Eve 1943 at Stalag Luft 1, a POW camp for captured Allied airmen.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has already started to track Santa Claus as he travels the world tonight to bring presents to kids around the world. It has become a tradition for 61 years, which has evolved with technology, allowing parents to show children the exact location of Saint Nick. How did this happen? Well, it all began back in 1955....

Prof. Miriam Elman previously documented how anti-Israel protesters try to hijack Christian holidays and symbols, particularly Christmas: Guide to How Anti-Israel Activists Hijack Christmas. This takes place as the majority Palestinian Muslims systematically ethnically cleanse areas under Hamas and Palestinian Authority control of Christians:
Bethlehem as well as nearby Beit Sahour and Beit Jala were 86% Christian in 1950. But by 2016, the Christian population dropped to just 12%, according Bethlehem mayor Vera Baboun, a Catholic who is the first woman to hold the post. This trend is echoed across the West Bank. In the 1970s, Christians made up 5% of the population. Today, they are just 2%. In Bethlehem, only 11,000 Christians remain in the birthplace of Christianity.