A global cyber-sting helped shut down hundreds of dark web sites selling drugs and laundering money, and led to the arrest of 17 individuals.

Top of the Alty World

“Global Web Crackdown Arrests 17, Seizes Hundreds Of Dark Net Domains”—Wired

The new Republican majority have their eyes set on the stalled Keystone Pipeline as a top priority for 2015.—Slate

A look at America's coming solar-energy boom in charts—Mother Jones

Despite the significant Republican gains, the country did get more mellow as D.C., Oregon and Alaska legalized weed in the recent election.—Rolling Stone

Top of Alty Utah

Rep. Greg Hughes, R-Draper is the new Speaker of the House.—Utah Politico Hub

Doug Owens was defeated but the 2014 elections didn't completely demolish Utah's Democrats.—Salt Lake City Weekly

Utah Political Capitol analyzes the election from looking at the effect of gerrymandering to Utah voters amnesia over the scandals of Mark Shurtleff and John Swallow.—Utah Political Capitol

The owners of The Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News want information classified in federal lawsuit.—Salt Lake City Weekly

Rantosphere

Utah Politico Hub offers its takeaways from the recent election.

“In terms of demographics, much of the population growth is happening in Republican areas and Republicans continue to poll very well there. About the only glimmer of hope for Democrats is that Utah’s minority population is growing and much of that population is assumed to vote Democrat.

Some might think from this election review that Utah is ideologically very conservative and strongly Republican, yet I can point to vouchers failing in 2008 and a couple of failed constitutional amendments this year that show that voters are much more pragmatic than that.”—Utah Politico Hub

The Long View

The British news magazine The Economist looks at the dysfunction of American politics and whether it's really improving or not.

“Voting patterns in Congress suggest that the parties are even further apart now than they were in the mid-1990s, when Republicans tried to impeach Bill Clinton, or the middle of the past decade, when Democrats denounced George W. Bush as a warmonger. Over the past 20 years, the share of Americans who express consistently liberal or consistently conservative opinions has doubled, according to a study by the Pew Research Centre. Most of these people now believe that the other party’s policies “are so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being”. The results of the mid-terms, far from repudiating this dynamic, have reflected it. The defeat of John Barrow in Georgia leaves just one white Democratic congressman in the deep South; most of the Senate seats picked up by Republicans were at the expense of moderate Democrats in states that voted for Mitt Romney.

This degree of political polarisation is often described as unprecedented, but that is mistaken. The parties were similarly divided at the end of the 19th century, following the civil war. The difference then was that Republicans won most federal elections, so the restraints built into the constitution did not resemble leg-irons, as they do now.”—The Economist