I flew home yesterday after a week away. The first news I saw was this stabbing attack on a Hanukah party at a Rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York. Police have arrested 37 year old Thomas Grafton, an African American man from Greenwood Lake, about twenty miles northwest of Monsey. Monsey hosts a large enclave of ultra-orthodox, or Hasidic, people — so people who are very visibly Jewish. According to this 2012 Times article, Monsey has the highest concentration of ultra-orthodox anywhere in the world outside of Brooklyn and Israel. Other than being an apparent hate crime, it’s not clear whether the attack was tied to a particular ideology, as seems to have been the case in the multiple fatality attack earlier this month in Jersey City, or a more individual hatred of Jews. But if Grafton was in Greenwood Lake and wanted to attack Jews Monsey would be the logical and closest place to go.

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A recently-released Justice Department inspector general review of the 2016 Trump-Russia probe did not convince a judge that Michael Flynn’s wild-eye allegations of prosecutorial misconduct were legitimate enough to push off his sentencing.

Among the already surreal cast of characters unleashed on all our brains by the Ukraine scandal, there’s one particularly weird individual.

I used to meet with him in Kyiv.

Satirizing president Trump isn’t easy, and it’s no secret that American comedians have struggled to do it. We have an article in Cafe today by five writers — four of whom grew up in countries that had recent brushes with authoritarianism — about what the U.S. can learn from comedy abroad. Other countries have dealt with leaders like Trump, and the circumstances that lead to his rise, before, and satirists there have had to find ways to make lemons into lemonade. This Cafe piece looks at how they did it.

It’s time to dole out our annual Golden Dukes, recognizing the biggest political disasters of the year. And what a year it has been.

We’re introducing a new feature for 2019: TPM members can vote for which of the nominees they’d like to see win.

Cast your ballot here.

The very important year is almost here. Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the election-prediction outlet Sabato’s Crystal Ball, joins Josh Marshall to talk through how the American electorate is feeling, and how the electoral map has changed since 2016.

Watch here.

It’s not the only or main reason for doing it. But it is instructive how even a short and uncertain pause in the House transmitting its articles of impeachment to the Senate and thus even slightly delaying a Senate “trial” has unhinged the President perhaps even more than being impeached itself.

Good morning and happy Friday December 20. The New York Times is reporting that John Durham, the Bill Barr-appointed prosecutor carrying out President Trump’s pet Russia investigation origins probe, is now targeting former CIA Director John Brennan. Here’s more on that and other stories we’re following.

Pretty intense debate. Klobuchar made a pretty good run at nudging herself into the top tier. But the big thing is that Biden had his best debate to date and basically none of the rough fights included him. Was he amazing? No. But he’s in the lead. So that’s a big win for him. The rest all had good moments. But in terms of the trajectory of the race those are the things that I think matter.

8:50 PM: Good answer from Klobuchar on voting rights. Good rhetorically and good on substance.

8:44 PM: That was a good answer from Biden on the working with Republicans front. Not saying whether I agree or disagree. But that was a good job of integrating what often seems like an out of touch mindset with the realities of the moment.

8:24 PM: Great answer from Warren. Democrats have spent decades getting cowed by reporters spouting dubious economics conventional wisdom. That was the right response. As you know, I think Medicare for All is a huge political liability for Democrats. But on taxes this is the right response politically and substantively.

8:18 PM: Biden continues to hit singles. Neither inspiring nor terribly pretty but connecting with the ball.

8:16 PM: Sanders thinks the NAFTA reboot is a modest improvement and he’s going to vote against it?

8:14 PM: Andrew Yang seems to be looking to pick up the Tulsi Gabbard vote.

8:05 PM: I simply don’t accept the premise of the debate’s first question, that Democrats have failed in some way because only about 50% of the public, or a few point less, thinks Trump should be removed from office.