"Members of the soon-to-be Trump administration are heading into battle this week, as a slew of confirmation hearings for the president-elect's top Cabinet officials begin on Capitol Hill. They will be, in a sense, well-fortified.

"That's because the incoming commander-in-chief has the benefit of not only a Republican Senate majority intent on a swift process but also a simple 51-vote threshold requirement for confirming his executive appointments. For the latter, Donald Trump can thank former Sen. Harry Reid, who in 2013 led fellow Democrats in changing the chamber's filibuster rules to prevent the minority party from blocking the president's nominees (except for Supreme Court appointments).

"But Senate Democrats aren't submitting quietly to that reality. With virtually no recourse to block Trump's designees outright, they first intend to delay the incoming administration from taking shape and thus forestall its plan to unravel much of the work of the outgoing one.

"If they can't prevent Trump from having his Dream Team of players, the opposition party aims to undermine some of the key ones, forcing the new president to spend his political capital defending them early on. The process could also reveal just how much Trump is willing to go to bat for his team."

"House Republicans and Donald Trump's team are coalescing around a multi-billion dollar plan to make good on the president-elect's campaign vows to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, according to top Republican lawmakers and aides.

"Republican leaders, in tandem with Trump's transition staff, are considering using a 2006 law signed by former President George W. Bush that authorized the construction of 700 miles-plus of '€œphysical barrier€' on the southern border. The law was never fully implemented and did not include a sunset provision, allowing Trump to pick up where Bush left off -- with the help of new money from Congress.

"Yet the plan could potentially provoke a showdown with Democrats over government funding. Republicans are considering whether to tuck the border wall funding into a must-pass spending bill that must be enacted by the end of April. GOP lawmakers and aides believe they could win a public relations war over the matter by daring Democrats -- particularly vulnerable red-state senators up for reelection next year -- to shutter the government over one of Trump'€™s most popular campaign pledges."

"Republicans won the first skirmish in the Obamacare fight Wednesday, voting to begin debating fast-track budget procedures that, if successful, would allow the GOP to kill the 2010 health care law without having to face a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.

"The 51-48 vote, on the second day of the 115th Congress, underscores how serious Republicans are in making good on their repeal pledge. But it also signaled that Democrats are just as committed to defending the Affordable Care Act and convinced that they have the upper hand politically.

"After years of fruitless repeal votes, Republicans, now in control of Congress and about to take the White House, is firing with live rounds. Democrats said that means Republicans will take the blame for any mistakes."

"If the Democrats' version of the story is true, this represents at most some pretty low-level, apple-stealing stuff in terms of international espionage and post-Soviet dirty tricks. One would almost be disappointed if the Russians weren't up to more serious hijinks than that. No one disputes the legitimacy of the WikiLeaks documents, and they were not exactly chock-full of sensitive national-security secrets, just a lot of back-and-forth that's embarrassing to Democrats and to a few of their media sycophants. There isn't even much evidence that they had a meaningful effect on the election.

"That doesn't mean that we should ignore it, but, in terms of what we are cursed to keep calling 'cyberwar' activities, this is pretty small potatoes. There have been much more serious incursions, many of them linked to China, that present genuine national-security threats. But the Obama administration has for the most part sat on its thumb in response to those. The Chinese hack on the Office of Personnel Management was a much more substantial violation of our security, but so far as the waning Obama administration is concerned, stealing private (and, indeed, classified) information on 20 million people is nothing next to causing Debbie Wasserman Schultz a bit of public consternation.

"By all means, investigate, and do so vigorously. If the Russians are engaged even in bush-league mucking about with our elections, then that should be exposed and responded to. We shouldn't take Assange's word on this one way or the other.

"But in the end, the DNC leak is a jaywalking case that we're prosecuting while our enemies are plotting something more like an electronic 9/11. If it takes embarrassing a few Democrats to get Uncle Stupid moving on this, so be it, but the sorry case of Hillary Rodham Clinton is the beginning of this story, not the end of it."

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"Because nothing involving the U.N. is clean or straightforward, it's hard to even know how much the U.S. pays in total into the U.N. system. But it's probably around $8 billion a year. We should withhold some significant portion of it, and demand an end to the U.N.'s institutional hostility to Israel and the implementation of reforms to increase the organization's accountability. There are individual U.N. agencies that do good work, and we can continue to support those.

"Realistically, though, the U.N. will always be a disappointment. The fact is that the closest thing to what FDR envisioned in the U.N. is NATO, a like-minded group of nations that has been a force for peace, order, and freedom. This is why President-elect Donald Trump should embrace NATO and turn his critical eye to the U.N., where there is the genuine opportunity to, if nothing else, save the U.S. some money and rattle the cages of people taking advantage of our beneficence.

"Charles de Gaulle dismissively called the U.N. 'the thing.' The thing will always stumble on, but maybe Donald Trump can teach it a lesson or two about how we truly value our ally and its nemesis, Israel."

"One last point regarding the Security Council vote. It needs to be remembered that the U.N. hates Israel because it is in the political interests of member states, particularly Arab states, which use Palestinians as a distraction from their own despotisms, to hate Israel. Think of all the horrors and crimes committed by evil governments around the world. Now think about the fact that from 2006 to 2015 alone the U.N. has condemned Israel 62 times. All of the other nations combined have received 55 condemnations. Iran? Five. The genocidal Sudanese? Zero. Anarchic Somalia? Zero. Saudi Arabia? Zero. Pakistan? Zero. China? Zero. Russia? Zero.

"The U.N., more than any other player save the Palestinian leadership itself, is responsible for the horrible plight of the Palestinians because it is in its institutional interest to keep the issue alive. After World War II, there were untold millions of refugees all around the world; they all found homes and settled down -- except for the Palestinians."

We wish you a Merry Christmas filled with holiday cheer and all our Best Wishes for a Happy New Year!

"President Obama, who this week has issued a flurry of environmental rules, is planning to unleash another set of 'midnight regulations' right before he leaves office that will cost Americans $6 billion.

"Obama has already broken all past records on creating federal regulations and red tape, and his new adds will boost the overall price tag to over $1 trillion."

"Contrary to the expectations of many people, President-elect Donald Trump has been filling his cabinet with serious, no-nonsense conservatives. The Left will confront appointees who would make Ronald Reagan proud. None may be more important than Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. ...

"Sen. Jeff Sessions knows where the alligators sleep, so he'€™s one of the best people to help 'drain the swamp.'"

"[L]ost amid the left-wing hatred of Trump and the conservative Never Trump condescension is that so far he has shattered American political precedents by displaying much more political cunning and prescience than have his political opponents and most observers.

"Key is his emperor-has-no-clothes instinct that what is normal and customary in Washington was long ago neither sane nor necessary. And so far, his candidacy has not only redefined American politics but also recalibrated the nature of insight itself -- leaving the wise to privately wonder whether they were ever all that wise after all."