FBI Investigating Enrique Marquez in #SanBernardino Jihad Massacre (VIDEO)

At the New York Times, "San Bernardino Couple Spoke of Attacks in 2013, F.B.I. Says."

And here's Jan Crawford, for CBS Evening News:

Jackie Johnson's Got Your Thursday Forecast

It's been mild this week.

Donald Trump on 'O'Reilly Factor': What's Important 'Is That We Have Security for Our Country' (VIDEO)

He's a master.

A master troll. A master PR hacker. A master ringmaster. He's running circles around the entire political system. And he's completely unperturbed as the rest of the entire world melts down. It's pretty amazing.

Poll: 65% of Likely Republican Primary Voters Back Donald Trump's Ban on Muslim Entry

This is awesome!

At Bloomberg, "Bloomberg Politics Poll: Nearly Two-Thirds of Likely GOP Primary Voters Back Trump's Muslim Ban" (at Memeorandum):

Almost two-thirds of likely 2016 Republican primary voters favor Donald Trump's call to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the U.S., while more than a third say it makes them more likely to vote for him.

Those are some of the findings from a Bloomberg Politics/Purple Strategies PulsePoll, an online survey conducted Tuesday, that shows support at 37 percent among all likely general-election voters for the controversial proposal put forward by the Republican front-runner.

“We believe these numbers are made up of some people who are truly expressing religious bigotry and others who are fearful about terrorism and are willing to do anything they think might make us safer,” Doug Usher, who runs polling for Washington-based Purple Strategies, said in his analysis of the findings. "This indicates that, despite some conventional wisdom expressed in the last 48 hours, this is unlikely to hurt Trump at least in the primary campaign."

More.

Studio Headphones

At Amazon, Pro and DJ Headphones.

And for under the tree, from Greg Gutfield, The Joy of Hate: How to Triumph over Whiners in the Age of Phony Outrage.

BONUS: From Howard Schwartz, Society Against Itself: Political Correctness and Organizational Self-Destruction.

Surge in Gun Sales in Southern California (VIDEO)

Yeah, we've got loads of Islamophobes around here. Leftists are telling us that gun owners are horrible people. And this rush to purchase firearms is predicated on fear. As if it's unnatural to be worried about your safety when Islamists are trying to kill you.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Suddenly, there's a surge in interest to buy guns around San Bernardino."

Angela Merkel is TIME's Person of the Year

Well, she gets this accolade right before the CDU (and the voters) throw her out on her ass.

See, "Chancellor of the Free World."

Angela Merkel is TIME’s 2015 Person of the Year #TIMEPOY https://t.co/Be7EjFlRS2 pic.twitter.com/3YLPZJYSlq

— TIME.com (@TIME) December 9, 2015

Donald Trump Stands By Proposal to Ban Muslims to the U.S. (VIDEO)

I love this debate.

I love that Muslims have been placed on warning, them, and their leftist enablers.

At CBS News This Morning:

San Bernardino Jihadists May Have Used $28,500 Online Loan to Buy Weapons

It's been a week now since the massacre and the revelations of diabolical homegrown radical jihad just keep piling up.

At LAT, "Online loan may have helped couple fund their terror arsenal in San Bernardino attack":

In the weeks before the San Bernardino massacre, the husband-and-wife assailants obtained a $28,500 loan — an advance that authorities believe may have helped them acquire last-minute firearms, ammunition and components to build explosives, two federal officials said Tuesday.

The loan offers investigators a key new detail as they try to unravel how Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik plotted the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. The money could also explain how they managed to pay for target practice at local gun ranges, as well as the rental sport utility vehicle they used during the Dec. 2 attack, the officials said.

Authorities were also looking into whether they left a device — made up of three bundled pipe bombs and remote-control car parts — that was intended to harm police responding to the shooting at the Inland Regional Center, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly.

Police radio chatter on the day of the shootings, in which 14 people were killed, mentioned a “suspicious device” in or near the conference room where the attack occurred. “We need to slow things down,” an officer ordered after the device was located. “I need you to advise all the units to move with caution.”

Left in a canvas bag, the device mirrored the crude explosives that dot the pages of Al Qaeda's “Inspire,” a publication pored over by radicals seeking guidance in planning attacks, multiple sources told The Times.

Bomb technicians do not believe the device would have detonated, the law enforcement source said, adding that the building's sprinkler system was activated during the shooting and water damage could have caused the device to malfunction.

The global investigation into the attackers' backgrounds and any possible ties to larger terror networks has examined the couple's finances.

Farook, an environmental health inspector for San Bernardino County, earned about $50,000 a year, while his wife stayed home with their 6-month-old daughter. They lived in a modest, rented town house in Redlands.

The couple received a $28,500 loan from San Francisco online lender Prosper Marketplace just weeks before the San Bernardino massacre, according to Fortune and Bloomberg News.

Prosper is a leading player in the burgeoning world of online, peer-to-peer lending, acting as a middleman matching borrowers and investors who fund their loans.

These loans are usually faster to obtain, larger and carry lower interest rates than credit cards.

People familiar with the industry say it's exceedingly unlikely that Prosper or similar lenders could have allowed terrorist groups to finance the rampage.

Borrowers first must go through the same kind of credit check used for any other credit card or loan. In addition to a standard credit check, the company, like traditional banks, runs applicants' names through a federal database of terrorists, drug traffickers and others who are prohibited from conducting business in the United States, Prosper spokeswoman Sarah Cain said...

Keep reading.

Sexiest Outtakes - Lily Aldridge Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2015 (VIDEO)

She's fabulous:

Donald Trump Raises the Stakes

We live in interesting times, that's for sure.

At the Washington Post, "Along with Trump’s rhetoric, the stakes for 2016 have risen dramatically":

Donald Trump continues to go where no recent candidate for president has gone before, plunging the Republican Party — and the nation — into another round in the tumultuous debate about immigration, national identity, terrorism and the limits of tolerance.

Trump’s call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States marked a sudden and sizable escalation — and in this case one that sent shockwaves around the world — in the inflammatory and sometimes demagogic rhetoric of the candidate who continues to lead virtually every national and state poll testing whom Republicans favor for their presidential nomination.

Nothing in modern politics equates with the kind of rhetoric now coming from Candidate Trump. There are no perfect analogies. One must scroll back decades for echoes, however imperfect, of what he is saying, from the populist and racially based appeals of then-Alabama Gov. George Wallace in 1968 and 1972 to the anti-Semitic diatribes of the radio preacher Charles Coughlin during the 1930s.

Historian David Kennedy of Stanford University said there are few comparisons, adding that, in branding an entire religious class of people as not welcome, Trump “is further out there than almost anyone in the annals of [U.S.] history.”

From the day he announced his candidacy in June, Trump has continually tested the limits of what a candidate can say and do with apparent political impunity. In that sense, he has played by a different set of rules. In the wake of his latest provocation, the question arises once again: Will this finally stop him? Everything to date suggests those who believe it should be tentative in their predictions.

Those already drawn to Trump have shown remarkable willingness to accept the worst and continue to support him. In reality, it will be another 60 days or more for any definitive answers to emerge. Only when voters begin to make their decisions in the caucuses and primaries that begin in February will the final verdict be delivered on the size and strength of the movement that has rallied behind him...

Really? We have to wait for the primaries to see if Trump's supporters will stay true? Actually, no. The billionaire iconoclast is already surging further ahead in the polls. The only people who are upset by this are media hacks and leftists (but I repeat myself).

See CNN, for example, "Trump nearly doubles lead in New Hampshire."

Under Armour Men's Charged Cotton Crew Socks

Heh, nice socks.

At Amazon, Under Armour Men's Charged Cotton Crew Socks (Pack of 6), Black, Large.

And from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now.

Syed Farook, Tashfeen Malik #SanBernardino Terrorist Attack Planned Years in Advance (VIDEO)

Farook may have abandoned a planned 2012 attack after getting spooked by authorities.

More from Pamela Brown, at CNN, "Sources: Farook planned another attack years ago."

And at the S.B. Sun, "FBI: Syed Farook, Tashfeen Malik pre-planned San Bernardino attack."

Plan to Bar Foreign Muslims by Donald Trump Might Survive a Lawsuit

Following-up, "Donald Trump's Plan Would Survive Constitutional Challenge."

This has got to drive leftists batshit crazy (or crazier).

At NYT:

WASHINGTON — When Donald J. Trump called on Monday for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” many legal scholars were aghast and said that such a ban would certainly be struck down by courts as blatantly unconstitutional.

But on Tuesday Mr. Trump clarified his proposal, saying that he would exclude only foreign Muslims, not Muslim American citizens who travel abroad and then seek to come home. That distinction, legal specialists said, made it far less likely the courts would strike it down.

“If a person is a Muslim, goes overseas and comes back, they can come back,” Mr. Trump said on ABC. “They’re a citizen. That’s different.”

Several legal scholars who specialize in immigration, international and constitutional law said a policy of excluding all foreign Muslims from visiting the United States would still be “ludicrously discriminatory and overwrought,” as Gerald L. Neuman, a Harvard Law School professor, put it. But he said that it was far from clear that the Supreme Court would block it.

Under a provision of immigration law, Congress has already delegated to the president broad power to issue a proclamation indefinitely blocking “the entry of any class of aliens into the United States” that he or she thinks would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” No president has ever used that power in such a sweeping way, but the text provides a potential statutory basis for a President Trump to carry out his plan, specialists said.

Still, if Mr. Trump won the White House and invoked that power as a justification to bar all foreign Muslims, people affected by that policy inside the United States — like a person seeking reunification with a family member, or a university that wanted to invite someone to come speak — could file a lawsuit challenging it.

Several legal questions would be raised by such a policy...

Interesting.

Trump has done the country a monumental favor just opening up this issue for discussion. This could be the beginning of the repeal of the 1965 Teddy Kennedy open immigration act. Seriously. A "Muslim Exclusion Act" by executive authority? God, that would be brilliant!

More at that top link.

Donald Trump's Plan Would Survive Constitutional Challenge

Drop the U.S. citizen Muslims from the plan and it would pass constitutional muster.

See Peter Spiro, at the New York Times, "Trump’s Anti-Muslim Plan Is Awful. And Constitutional":

In the ordinary, non-immigration world of constitutional law, the Trump scheme would be blatantly unconstitutional, a clear violation of both equal protection and religious freedom (he had originally called for barring American Muslims living abroad from re-entering the country as well; he has since dropped that clearly unconstitutional notion). But under a line of rulings from the Supreme Court dating back more than a century, that’s irrelevant. As the court observed in its 1977 decision in Fiallo v. Bell, “In the exercise of its broad power over immigration and naturalization, Congress regularly makes rules that would be unacceptable if applied to citizens.”

The court has given the political branches the judicial equivalent of a blank check to regulate immigration as they see fit. This posture of extreme deference is known as the “plenary power” doctrine. It dates back to the 1889 decision in the Chinese Exclusion case, in which the court upheld the exclusion of Chinese laborers based on their nationality.

Unlike other bygone constitutional curiosities that offend our contemporary sensibilities, the Chinese Exclusion case has never been overturned. More recent decisions have upheld discrimination against immigrants based on gender and illegitimacy that would never have survived equal protection scrutiny in the domestic context. Likewise, courts have rejected the assertion of First Amendment free speech protections by noncitizens.

Nor has the Supreme Court ever struck down an immigration classification, even ones based on race. As late as 1965, a federal appeals court upheld a measure that counted a Brazilian citizen of Japanese descent as Asian for the purposes of immigration quotas.

In the context of noncitizens seeking initial entry into the United States, due process protections don’t apply, either. This past June, the court upheld the denial of a visa for the spouse of an American citizen based on the government’s say-so, with no supporting evidence.

The courts have justified this constitutional exceptionalism on the grounds that immigration law implicates foreign relations and national security — even in the absence of a specific, plausible foreign policy rationale. The 1977 Fiallo case, for instance, involved a father seeking the admission of his out-of-wedlock son from the French West Indies — hardly the stuff of national interest.

Indeed, contrary to the conventional understanding, President Trump could implement the scheme on his own, without Congress’s approval. The Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president the authority to suspend the entry of “any class of aliens” on his finding that their entry would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” President Obama has used this to the better end of excluding serious human rights violators...

Spiro hates that Trump's plan is fully legal under current U.S. constitutional interpretation, so he blathers on with a bunch of namby-pampy objections about changing "popular consensus" and "constitutional norms," blah blah.

Let the voters figure out. The Constitution's not a suicide pact. A few more attacks like this and Hillary Clinton will be embracing a bar on Muslim migrants.

More, "Plan to Bar Foreign Muslims by Donald Trump Might Survive a Lawsuit."

The Truth About the War We're In

From Robert Spencer, at Amazon, Arab Winter Comes to America: The Truth About the War We're In.

And, The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS.

Plus, 12 Days of Deals - TV, Video, Audio.

Also, Custom Gifts for the Holidays.

More blogging tonight.

Syed Farook Practiced Firing AR-15 at Riverside County Gun Range

And he was just a "normal guy" out for a day at the firing range.

At the Los Angeles Times, "San Bernardino attacker practiced firing military-style weapon at gun range":

One of the San Bernardino attackers practiced firing a military-style weapon at a Riverside County gun range, according to an employee who described him as a "normal guy."

John Galletta, a firearms instructor at Riverside Magnum Range, said shooter Syed Rizwan Farook had practiced there before, but couldn't comment on when or how frequently.

Galletta said Farook's wife, Tashfeen Malik, had never been there.

As for Farook, a co-worker at the range described him as "a normal guy," Galletta said.

The company has turned over surveillance footage and sign-in logs to the FBI, he said.

Galletta said Farook practiced with an AR-15 and that he brought his own weapon. It wasn't clear if that is the only type of weapon he practiced with, Galletta said.

The FBI said Monday that the San Bernardino shooters had been radicalized "for quite some time," but investigators were still trying to determine whether they had links to foreign terror organizations.

Officials also said Farook and Malik, had gone to gun ranges in the Los Angeles area in the days before Wednesday's massacre, in which 14 people were killed and 21 were injured.

Federal investigators did not know how the couple had become radicalized, said David Bowdich, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles office.

"Remember, oftentimes it's on the Internet," he said.

John D'Angelo of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives added that three of the guns recovered from the couple's shootout with police after their attack and from the couple's home were purchased by Farook between 2007 and 2012. The other two weapons were purchased by Farook's friend, Enrique Marquez of Riverside.

Marquez entered a mental hospital after the attacks, according to two law enforcement sources...

Still more.

TONIGHT: Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2015 (VIDEO)

Hey, it's the annual extravaganza!

Here's the homepage.

And the lovely Lily Aldridge:

Pearl Harbor Survivors Honored on USS Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum (VIDEO)

There's not too many of the old guys left.

Watch, at ABC 10 News San Diego:

Donald Trump Supporters Applaud Plan to Ban Muslim Entry to the U.S. (VIDEO)

At USA Today, "Trump supporters say Muslim plan won't affect their view of him."