We're all almost tired of winning, the Trump Transition has been going so well. But one of his top congressional supporters says the Transition is actually struggling to pay salaries. Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) told a Buffalo area radio station: “Mr. Trump held a fundraiser down in New York City a few weeks back and did raise some money, but they have – I would use the word – ‘struggled’ to raise the private funds needed to pay these individuals who are working on behalf of the taxpayers but not being paid by the government."

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Several of us have criticized the Clinton campaign for relying on identity politics. Mark Lilla’s essay in the New York Times sparked the most fervent reaction. I want to discuss one of the calmer, but no less wrong-headed, responses that seems prevalent among Vox’s editors. Matthew Yglesias, David Roberts, and now Sean Illig have made the point, in Yglesias’s words, that “there is no other way to do politics than to do identity politics.” In other words, all politics is identity politics.

TPM is pleased to announce the winners of the Tenth Annual Golden Duke Awards recognizing the year's best purveyors of public corruption, outlandish behavior, The Crazy, nonsense and all relevant betrayals of the public trust. The awards are named in honor of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who epitomizes the iconic modern scandal.

Our celebrity judges—Susie Bright & Jon Bailiff, Megan Carpentier, Jeb Lund, Simon Maloy & Charles P. Pierce—waded their way through all 32 finalists in seven categories, and selected the winners.

Check out the lucky nominees and the reader emails that selected them here. And now, without further ado, the winners:

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One of the most interesting explanations I ever read of the CIA's behavior after the Kennedy assassination came from, of all people, Norman Mailer.

The emergence of Russia's UK Embassy as Russia's designated anti-Obama snark channel is one of the more notable developments in the post-Cold War Era.

Yesterday I wrote that this article on the UN resolution by Times of Israel editor David Horovitz was a must-read. I said that because the piece cuts against Horovitz's usual inclinations. Here's a new piece by Horovitz, now on Kerry's framework speech. This one is much more in line with those inclinations. Sadly it translates too, "We basically agree. You just didn't say it right."

A quick reminder we've scheduled both leading candidates for DNC Chair, Rep. Keith Ellison and Secretary Tom Perez, for in-depth interviews on The Josh Marshall Show podcast in early January.

In the days since the US allowed the UN Security Council to vote on a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has unleashed a fusillade of abuse aimed at the Obama White House, one likely unprecedented in the almost 70 year history of the US-Israel relationship, at least in terms of its public character. Adding to the uncanny nature of the dispute, Israel can claim that it is not attacking the United States but simply President Obama and his administration, since we are in the final liminal few weeks of the Obama administration, awaiting dramatic changes in under President Trump after January 20th. Minister of Culture Miri Regev spit out: "Obama is history. We have Trump." Indeed, Netanyahu's government has gone so far as to promise it will share "ironclad" evidence of Obama's perfidy with Trump after his inauguration. This of course builds on the efforts prior to the resolution in which Netanyahu enlisted Trump's assistance in a failed effort to block the vote.

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