"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."

"WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In the week after the deadly shootings in San Bernardino, California, Americans' confidence in the federal government's ability to protect citizens from acts of terrorism has dropped to a new low of 55%.

"Confidence in the U.S. government to protect citizens from terrorism is down 12 percentage points since June, and is now 33 points lower than the 88% who said they had a 'great deal' or 'fair amount' of confidence shortly after 9/11.

"These data, collected Dec. 8-9, come just days after the San Bernardino shootings and as more details emerge about the shooters' identities and alleged connections to radical Islamic ideology."

"Liar, liar, pantsuit on fire: Hillary Clinton still insists she didn't tell the grieving families of the Benghazi victims that an anti-Islam video was to blame.

"Yet family members say she said just that, three days after the attack, at the Sept. 14, 2012, ceremony at Andrews Air Force base.

"George Stephanopoulos asked her Sunday if she'd told the victims it was about the film. Clinton gave a flat 'no.' ...

"Just why the administration united around this lie is another editorial. The disgrace here is Clinton's refusal to admit her role -- even pushing the fib to 'comfort' the bereaved.

"Stiff as the competition is, this has to count as her lowest-down, dirtiest lie of all."

"The disconnect between President Obama and the American public on the urgency of the ISIS threat is a problem for his party in 2016, especially for Hillary Clinton.

"Democrats are at risk of politically marginalizing themselves on national security in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, catering to a base that seems disconnected from the growing anxiety that the public feels over the threat from Islamic terrorism. During a month when a horrific terrorist attack killed 130 in Paris and a homegrown, ISIS-inspired attack killed 14 in San Bernardino, California, the Democratic Party's major focus has been on climate change and gun control. ...

"The big question now is how long Clinton will be content to ride Obama's coat-tails. Most Democrats are fully committed to the president's base-first strategy and don't see any benefit in Clinton distancing herself from a president whom she loyally served for four years. But on an issue that could define the election, she risks being defined by the base at a time when even some of the president's former supporters are beginning to question his approach."

"The San Bernardino terror couple didn't buy their guns at a gun show (making the effort to close the so-called gun-show loophole irrelevant); they weren't on the terrorism watch list (so the proposal to ban people on the list from buying guns wouldn't have stopped them); and Syed Farook passed a background check when he bought two handguns (rendering calls for universal background checks moot). ...

"But please don't confuse the anti-gun campaigners with facts. Their ignorance is invincible, and necessary to their crusade."

"President Obama tried yet again Sunday night to convince the nation he's serious about fighting terror, and, as usual, proved the opposite.

"Days after the San Bernardino attack, he finally called it terrorism, but he's not offering anything new to combat the menace. He still won't call it Islamist terror, and still wants to fold these attacks in with nonterror mass shootings -- and fight them all with trivial tweaks to the gun-control laws. ...

"This wasn't a national-security speech, it was a political effort -- and a weak one. The real message is that this president isn't going to let facts shift his chosen course.

"That'll be up to the voters next November."

"Before Chicago-born Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, slaughtered innocents in San Bernardino, Calif., they performed a prudent and commonplace mission of mercy: They dropped off their 6-month-old daughter with Grandma for safekeeping. The couple reportedly said they were heading to an appointment with a doctor. Surely they didn't say they'd be meeting a pathologist at an autopsy table. ...

"If we believe Thursday's reports that Farook had transformed into a radical - not a madman, an ill person, a racial supremacist or any other familiar category of mass murderer - then he and Malik will force us to think with new imagination about terror operations on U.S. soil. Farook and Malik evidently didn't qualify for anyone's watch list. What's most striking isn't who they were, but who they weren't. ...

"This is a fraught moment for America.We want home-grown terrorism exterminated, whether its perpetrators are radicalized ideologues, rogue independents or gangbangers on the streets of Chicago. The oddity of a terror cell with a baby is but one more phenomenon we have to address with the same fearless resolve."