Russia With Love: Just a few days after one of his aides was grabbed and drafted into the Russian military, the offices of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were raided yesterday by masked officers who cut their way in with a metal saw.

  The 43-year-old Navalny was dragged out of the office, but not detained. The security officers took laptops and other equipment. Navalny says he was raided because he refuses to comply with a court order to delete a 2017 film posted online accusing Russia’s prime minister of corruption.

 This happened just days after Ruslan Shaveddinov, a project manager at Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, was taken from his Moscow flat. He resurfaced Tuesday at a secret air defense base on the remote Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.

  Navalny is the most prominent opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He tried to run in an election against Putin, but was banned.

Mar-a-Lago Alone: China, Russia, and Iran are holding joint military exercises in the Indian Ocean and the vital Gulf of Oman, but Donald Trump is up in arms about an eight-second edit in the movie “Home Alone 2” broadcast in Canada.

  Trump’s cameo appearance in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel was edited out of the picture, causing Trump to tweet, “I guess Justin T doesn’t much like my making him pay up on NATO or Trade!”

  The edit became the subject of talk about “Trump derangement syndrome” and “censorship” on Fox News.

   Neither the President nor Fox News are big on checking facts. Trump was edited out of the CBC version of “Home Alone 2” five years ago when they trimmed about eight minutes for time. Justin Trudeau was not in the room when it happened.

  The big question is what Donald Trump has to do to convince the die-hards that he’s a fool who needs to go. Polls in the past week show that support for removing Trump from office is creeping upward. The Economist has it at 47 percent, plus three points, and Politico is at 51 percent, up 9. 

  Former Michigan Republican Rep. Dave Trott wrote a letter to The Atlantic saying “Trump is psychologically, morally, intellectually, and emotionally unfit for office. We can only hope Congress impeaches and removes him so we have a choice between two adults in 2020.”

Bibi Survives: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu easily won an election for continued leadership of his conservative Likud Party, setting the stage for another brutal general election in March. He won 72.5 percent of the vote.

The Pew Report: Millennials are leaving religion and not coming back, according to, oddly enough, the Pew Research Center. People between the ages of 23 and 38 are now almost as likely to say they have no religion as they are to identify as Christian. 

  History suggests that people who were raised with a religion might drift away when they are young, but come back when they marry and have children. That’s not happening with Millennials, Pew Research says. They also point out that the people who abandon religion tend to be Democrats, feeding a political divide between religious and secular Americans.

The Obit Page: Composer Jerry Herman, who wrote the music and lyrics for such classic stage shows as “Mame,” “Hello, Dolly!” and “La Cage aux Folles,” died yesterday at age 88.

The Bulletin Board: New York detained a 14-year-old boy in the stabbing murder of Barnard College freshman Tessa Majors in the city’s Morningside Park … then let him go. Police say they believe the boy’s family shielded him until a bite mark on his hand healed. — Because Christmas is all about shopping and the economy, we report that holiday sales this year were up 3.4 percent over 2018, and online sales jumped 18.8 percent, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse. — The Coast Guard is searching for a tourist helicopter that went missing off Kauai’s dramatic Nā Pali coast with seven people on board. — A Spanish television reporter quit live on the air thinking she had won $444,000 in the state lottery, only to learn later that her part of a split ticket was just $5,500.

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