Remember last week when South Carolina senator Jim DeMint called all the work he's having to do during this lame-duck session of Congress "sacrilegious?" Well, the senator has backed off of that strongly worded stance a bit. He still doesn't like working so close to Christmas, but now it's because he thinks Harry Reid is trying to sneak things past him. "It's just, trying to do [New START] under the cover of people being distracted," the senator told the Cable. "We've worked with a lot of people on the outside and around the country who feel this is a bad way to do a bad treaty. People are distracted."

Jim DeMint and the war on Christmas vacation [Cable/FP via HuffPo]