"And so [we'€™re] offering this simple phrase to kids from one to ninety-two, although it's been said many times, many ways, Merry Christmas to you!

"Top IRS officials specifically targeted tea party groups and misled the public about its secret political targeting program led by ex-official Lois Lerner, according to a bombshell new congressional report.

"The Daily Caller has obtained an advance copy of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report set to be released Tuesday morning that definitively proves malicious intent by the IRS to improperly block conservative groups that an IRS adviser deemed 'icky.' (That's right. 'Icky.')

"'The Committee has identified eight senior leaders who were in a position to prevent or to stop the IRS's targeting of conservative applicants,' the Oversight report states. 'Each of these leaders could have and should have done more to prevent the IRS's targeting of conservative tax-exempt applicants.'"

"Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is condemning President Barack Obama for anti-police 'propaganda' in the wake of the murders of two New York City police officers in Brooklyn.

"When asked on 'Fox News Sunday' if he had ever seen the city he once governed so divided, Giuliani shook his head and said, 'I don'€™t think so.'

"Giuliani said blame rests on 'four months of propaganda,' which he said started with Obama, 'that everybody should hate the police.' He said the nationwide protests against several recent police-involved deaths lead to one conclusion: 'The police are bad. The police are racist. They're wrong.'

"Police, Giuliani said, are 'the people who do the most for the black people in America, in New York City and elsewhere.'"

"Obama is hardly the first president to seek rapprochement with our adversaries and reconciliation with our enemies, of course. But his determination to make nice -- even in the face of clear and repeated rejection from the other side -- is unparalleled. For Obama and his team, diplomacy with rogue regimes is an end in itself, and any deal, however one-sided, is a win, especially one that the White House communications mavens think that friendly media will call a 'breakthrough' or 'historic.'

"In that sense, Obama is America's first postmodern president. If his predecessors tended to see the world in terms of good and evil, Obama sees the world in terms of victims and victimizers -- with the United States often in the role of victimizer. In that view, long favored by the academic left that shaped a young Barack Obama, American foreign policy is one long train of abuses, marked by casual aggression and eager imperiousness."

"In recent months, the outlook for the Castro regime in Cuba was growing steadily darker. The modest reforms it adopted in recent years to improve abysmal economic conditions had stalled, due to the regime'€™s refusal to allow Cubans greater freedoms. Worse, the accelerating economic collapse of Venezuela meant that the huge subsidies that have kept the Castros afloat for the past decade were in peril. A growing number of Cubans were demanding basic human rights, such as freedom of speech and assembly. ...

"Mr. Obama says normalizing relations will allow the United States to be more effective in promoting political change in Cuba. That is contrary to U.S. experience with Communist regimes such as Vietnam, where normalization has led to no improvements on human rights in two decades. ...

"The Vietnam outcome is what the Castros are counting on: a flood of U.S. tourists and business investment that will allow the regime to maintain its totalitarian system indefinitely. Mr. Obama may claim that he has dismantled a 50-year-old failed policy; what he has really done is give a 50-year-old failed regime a new lease on life."

"'Elections have consequences,' President Obama said, setting his new policy agenda just three days after taking office in 2009. Three elections later, the president's party has lost 70 House seats and 14 Senate seats. The job of Republicans now is to govern with the confidence that elections do have consequences, promptly passing the conservative reform the voters have demanded. ...

"No subject was more important in the 2014 elections than healthcare, and Republicans in Congress should waste no time in taking decisive action in response to the voters'€™ demands. Obamacare has escalated costs, disrupted coverage, and introduced bad incentives throughout our healthcare system. Congress must repeal Obamacare and send the president a replacement package of reforms that protects freedom and focuses on the real problem with American healthcare --€” affordability. ...

"It has become fashionable in Washington to argue that Obamacare cannot be reversed. That is nonsense. It's a fight worth waging, and a fight which can be won."

"At least 126 people, mostly children, have been killed in a Taliban assault on an army-run school in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, officials say.

"Five or six militants are said to have entered the building. Five are reported to have been killed, at least one of them in a suicide blast.

"The army says most of the 500 students have been evacuated. It is not clear if any are still inside.

"The attack is being seen as one of the worst-ever in Pakistan.

"The BBC's Shahzeb Jillani in Karachi says the militants appear to have been intent on killing as many students as possible - rather than taking hostages, as initially thought."

"The White House and IRS are entangled in a sticky court case with major political ramifications. It concerns allegations that the IRS illegally shared private taxpayer information with the White House related to conservative individuals or organizations. The Treasury Department said this month that although it has found a cache of documents that may be pertinent, it is not allowed by law to release them. The question now is who can find out whether the Obama White House has in effect weaponized the IRS, turning it into an agency that targets Americans out of favor with the administration. ...

"A politicized Justice Department cannot be trusted to conduct an impartial investigation or to appoint a reliable outside prosecutor. This means that any serious inquiry is up to Congress.

"Republican leaders are understandably cautious about this approach. When they take control of Congress in January, their overriding goal is to establish a track record for governing, not a pattern of investigating the Obama administration’s past transgressions. But this case should be an exception. Any White House interference with the IRS is a fundamental assault on the rule of law and the disinterested application of the tax code. If allowed to stand, it will serve as a pernicious precedent for future administrations."

"Instead of using this space to pretend the newly released CIA 'torture' report confirms that the United States is the most evil nation in the history of the universe, I'm going to address Jonathan Gruber's confirmation that he believes we're all stupid. ...

"[W]hile people are making a big fuss over Gruber's calling Americans stupid, they ought to be far more outraged that he admitted the administration purposefully lied to us. This is the real story, and it reveals, once again, the character and mentality of this entire administration, for Gruber was speaking not merely for himself but about the entire administration, beginning with Obama. ...

"This is all disgraceful and underscores how imperative it is that Obamacare be fully repealed and that the newly elected GOP Congress get a backbone and stand up to this cadre of scofflaws."

"The federal government'€™s funding authorization expires tonight at midnight, and the Republican plan to renew it bodes poorly for the GOP'€™s leadership of Congress next year.

"The proposal: Pass an omnibus spending resolution that funds most of the federal government into October of next year, while passing a separate resolution to fund the Department of Homeland Security just through the end of February. ...

"Rather than this barnacled bill, Republicans should have offered Senator Harry Reid a short-term funding proposal for all of government besides the federal immigration bureaucracy, and a separate bill to fund the federal immigration bureaucracy that prevents it from implementing the president'€™s amnesty. ...

"Republican members ought to vote against the cromnibus, and many of them surely will. If Democrats defect over their displeasure with some other elements of the bill, the measure could fail. The alternative then may be a short-term funding bill into the next year, which would be better than the current plan.

"In any case, it's important that the nascent GOP majority's first act not be surrender."