In his Wall Street Journal column today, our own Bill McGurn.  (The column is behind a paywall, and I'm intent on sneaking out as much of Bill's prose as the "fair use" doctrine, and the indulgence of his editors, will permit.)

John Boehner knows that today's White House get-together with Barack Obama is a distraction....The [real] story is this: Democrats remain in charge for the next few weeks, they have some big decisions to make and, at least for now, Mr. Boehner's relations with Mr. Obama are of far less moment than the president's relations with his own party...

Democrats have to make...[a] decision:  Will their party acknowledge this month's election returns or not...?

Beause Mr. Clinton's health-care plan was defeated, he could walk away from it in 1994 and start afresh.  In theory, Mr. Obama might likewise move to the right and use Democratic liberals as a foil to his pragmatism.  In practice, it would be hard to do while defending his health-care initiative....

In other words, there is a story well worth covering:  an intramural Democratic fight about the way forward.

Let the mainstream media huff and puff about the supposed civil war on the right, despite the willingess--now demonstrated over a period of months--of the GOP and the Tea Party to work together.  The real fight--the caterwauling and gnashing of teeth--will take place on the left.

What's up with Edmund Morris? With a new volume on Teddy Roosevelt, I was all ready to forgive the man for botching one of the greatest opportunities of all time, the official Reagan biography. The last two days he has made some of the blogs for having caused CBS to bleep out part of a quote from Marissa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny.  As it happens, I agree with him on the larger point he was making, about how you can't just pluck someone out from history and declare what they would have made of some event today.

However what caught my ear was what he said later, about Americans. Again, there's a germ of truth here, in that we can be complacent about the competition from people in other countries. I don't know, though. The way he says it here -- "I’m aware of the-- the fact that people elsewhere in the world think differently from us. I can sort of see us, us Americans with their eyes. And not all that I see is-- is attractive. I see an insular people who are-- are insensitive to foreign sensibilities, who are lazy, obese, complacent and increasingly perplexed as to why we are losing our place in the world to people who are more dynamic than us and more disciplined" -- just seems snotty. (Full Transcript here)

I'm sure the 19-year-old Marine from Ohio who was sent to Anbar as part of the surge likely didn't know much about Iraqi history, or the difference between Sunnis or Shias. Come to think of it, how much did those GIs who landed at Normandy or the Marines who took Iwo Jima know about other cultures? Curious what others think. As someone who has lived a good chunk of his life abroad, I wonder if we might flip the question: How many foreigners really understand America, i.e., are able to look past MTV and Disney World to appreciate the virtues of a free and vibrant American society? When I was in Hong Kong,  the Sinophiles constantly lamented how we didn't understand China. Never really read about China's almost complete lack of understanding of us. 

I sometimes wonder whether the Savior's remark that, "...the poor shall be with ye always," was actually made at a truck stop.  As a Christian, I celebrate this season when the Word became flesh and also observe that, judging from the above quote, in addition to being the Prince of Peace, Christ is also the undisputed King of Understatement.

Pandhandlers are an almost daily fact of life for an over the road trucker.  I don't know if they think we are loaded with cash, or if maybe it's the "captive audience" nature of truck stops (we can only park and rest in certain places).  But after maneuvering The Beast backwards into a parking spot, I'll often look up and see them approaching, eyes darting about, maybe with a sachel of "gold" chains they're ready to sell, or a forlorn look that cues the violins for the sob story I'm about to hear.  I like to think I've achieved a certain level of discernment and can distinguish the truly needy from the thoroughly seedy, but I'm not always sure. 

Over at the Washington Post today, Petula Dvořák discusses the phenomenon in the DC area, and her article got me to thinking. Is there some "one size fits all" response to panhandlers here that doesn't entail extreme indifference or gullibility? Some people offer to buy a meal for a person who claims to be hungry.  I like that approach, but with the schedules I run, I often times don't have time to eat lunch myself, let alone watch someone else eat.  I find that I will sometimes hand over a few bucks out of simple expediency rather than debate with the panhandler, and later with my own conscience.  At other times, I've become annoyed (especially with the jewelry salesmen), even to the point of offering once to introduce the merchandise to the digestive processes of a particularly tenacious antagonist. 

The words, "I was hungry and ye fed me, I was naked and ye clothed me," come back to my mind.  Especially at this time of year, as the cold sets in. I have noticed a fortunate trend where the truck stop panhandlers have migrated south, so that their ranks swell in Florida but dwindle in Michigan, where I am today. 

But the images remain. The mass of blankets on the concrete in Alabama, where a young man slept a couple of weeks ago. The veteran in Denver sleeping outside the truck stop, back in 2006, who lost his ka-bar and wanted a few bucks for another to defend himself from hoodlums.  The lady with mascara running down her face, who had tried to surprise her husband at a truck stop only to find him in the sleeper with another woman and now just wanted enough money to put some gas in her car and go home.  The young troop who had lost his bank card and needed gas to get his young family to his next duty station.  All of these people I helped, but there are many that I didn't.  It's not always an easy call, and it's often made more difficult by my own limitations of time, judgement, and resources.  Tis the season, right?

Where in the world can you find naked brothers kissing, an ant-covered Jesus, men in chains, and Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts all in one place? 

No, not the ninth circle of Dante's hell--but close!

You'll find these inflammatory images at a new exhibit of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery which, like most things in Washington DC, is funded by your precious taxpayer dollars. In fact, according to a spokesperson from the museum, at $750,000, this exhibit is the most expensive one to date at the National Portrait Gallery.

The exhibit, which has the sort of title you can only get when academics team up with government bureaucrats--"Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture"--runs through the holidays, closing right before Valentines Day, on February 13th. 

Merry Christmas, America! I would post more of the pictures here, but they violate the CoC.

I haven't seen the exhibit, but from what I gather, to call its contents art would be a stretch. It's more like politics, crudely illustrated. What's the political agenda?

According to CNSNews, a plaque at the entrance to the exhibit says the National Portrait Gallery is 

committed to showing how a major theme in American history has been the struggle for justice so that people and groups can claim their full inheritance in America’s promise of equality, inclusion, and social dignity. As America’s museum of national biography, the NPG is also vitally interested in the art of portrayal and how portraiture reflects our ideas about ourselves and others.

These themes, historic and artistic, come together in 'Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,' the first major exhibition to examine the influence of gay and lesbian artists in creating modern American portraiture...'Hide/Seek' chronicles how, as outsiders, gay and lesbian artists occupied a position that turned to their advantage, making essential contributions to both the art of portraiture and to the creation of modern American culture.

These major themes of American history are illustrated with images of male genitals. Oh, and see the picture above with the bloody lips? I'm guessing that has something to do with how society has silenced gay men with bloody stitches. I think it's supposed to be deep. Really, though, it's predictable. And boring. And outdated. In Washington DC, gay people now have the right to marry, after all.

What's worse, the exhibit has nothing to do with Art, Beauty, or Aesthetics. With its violent and ugly images, the exhibit, in fact, is an assault on beauty. But that's what happens when you mix politics with art, I suppose. 

Christian Whiton proposes the following program for bringing down the North Korean regime. What are the pros and cons? 

1. Dramatically increasing defector-led radio broadcasting from outside North Korea. The truth is Kim Jong Il’s greatest foe, and dissent movements thrive on factual information that undermine the dictators’ propaganda. Defector broadcasts exist but need real resources.

2. Halt all foreign aid and other funds flows to North Korea, which the regime uses to survive. We should also deny any financial organization or central bank that deals with North Korea the ability to clear transactions in U.S. dollars—essentially a death penalty for banks that would end the regime’s ability to move funds and reward those who keep it in power.

3. Stop trade and seaborne proliferation. China has demonstrated it will not cooperate with us or comply with U.N. resolutions that restrict trade or call for inspections of goods going to North Korea. However, ships going to or from North Korea can be impounded.

4. Wage economic warfare. The North Korean government is the first regime since the Third Reich to counterfeit U.S. currency. We should return the favor by dumping bales of North Korea currency just off Korean and Chinese shores. The resulting economic tailspin would penalize the North Korean elite most.

5. Allied militaries should broadcast a clear message to North Korea’s military seeking to separate it from the Kim family. The USS Pueblo, which North Korea hijacked in 1968 and currently holds captive, should be sunk. We have every right to do this to our own property, and every military officer in North Korea would perceive the regime is running out of lives.

6. Change the military balance. We should consult with South Korea and Japan about increasing the forces of our three nations available for a rapid move on Pyongyang should one ever become necessary. 

More importantly, we should talk openly about placing U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in the 5-150 kiloton range in the region to counter the growing nuclear threat from North Korea. For the first time, this would make China realize supporting North Korea is harming Beijing’s own security, which just might make it less willing to aid Pyongyang. Kim’s generals would also see they are worse off for following him.

(Yes, yes, I know: I don't seem to be writing a book review. I'm as aware of this as anyone. If you're reading this, National Review, don't worry. I'm totally on top of the situation.) 

For those of you who were in a funk because the election results weren't even more decisive, I present to you Obama's proposal for a federal pay freeze. You think that would be on the table if we hadn't won? Yes, I know, it's a miniscule percentage of the federal debt. But let's rejoice at this hint that at last the Reality Principle is beginning to mediate the spending Id. 

Pretty much the whole world has been forced grudgingly to acknowledge one thing: Our diplomats possess a remarkable reserve of unrecognized literary talent. The Caucusus Wedding cable has justly become an instant classic. But really, it's one gem after the other. The lapidary description of Turkey’s main opposition party as “no more than a bunch of elitist ankle-biters" couldn't be a better use of nine words.

I'm as surprised as everyone else to discover the prose mastery of the State Department. Who knew? Can you imagine how the authors of these cables must be thrilled? One day they're laboring in unacknowledged obscurity, the next the whole planet is writing about their literary genius and comparing them to Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. (If you think any diplomat's outrage over the harm done to our national security would prevent him from taking delight in that, I have important news for you about human nature in general and literary vanity in particular.)

Here's a view of the literary caliber of the dispatches from Turkey's Hurriyet (which I should stress is no friend of the government, not least because the government is trying to tax it out of existence):

If anything, we have been impressed by the depth and breadth of American diplomats’ grasp of Turkish nuance, Ottoman history, Islamic philosophy and the country’s political and social complexity. One editor, however, thinks they should round out their reading with more of the pro-government press.

We must confess surprise at the quality of English and the often humorous tone of diplomatic cables which we would have expected to be jargon-filled, acronym-laden and tough to read.

The description of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, “whose rhetorical skill, while etched with populist victimhood, redolent with traditional and religious allusions that resonate deeply in the heartland, deeply in the anonymous exurban sprawls...” is almost poetic.

Some in the main opposition Republican People’s Party, of CHP, will no doubt chafe at being described as “no more than a bunch of elitist ankle-biters.” But the imagery is vivid. As is the observation that “Tayyip Bey believes in God... but doesn’t trust him.”

We all know that leaking classified information is terrible. Taking that as given, I'm so far thinking that overall this will benefit the United States. About a million global conspiracy theories have just suffered a nasty confrontation with reality. Of course, a new one has immediately emerged in Turkey to compensate--to wit, that the United States leaked the cables deliberately to cast itself in a positive light. But that should tell you something. 

The headlines here read, for example, US cables claim Turkish PM Erdoğan has eight Swiss bank accounts. Cables like this--SUBJECT: DEALS WITH IRAN BENEFIT PM ERDOGAN'S FRIENDS--are now being widely discussed. You need a very capacious conspiracy theory to account for those in a way that makes America look like the villain. (Mind you, I have absolute confidence in Turkey's talent.)

Not that Turks didn't know everything in these cables already. It's all pretty much common knowledge. Thus far, almost every Turk I've asked about "Vicky Licks" has shrugged and said the same thing: "We knew all of that." Some of them have in the same breath earnestly explained to me that the US leaked the cables deliberately to make Turkey look bad.

But that's Turkey. We've all got our flaws. Turns out that "unable to write" isn't really among the flaws of US diplomats--although "unable to keep a secret" obviously is. Anyway, who am I to talk. I'm genuinely surprised and pleased that we write so well; if you can't keep a secret, I say, at least leak it in style. 

Interestingly, Peter, just by coincidence, I have two books on my desk right now: One is Gray Lady Down, which Encounter Books was kind enough to send me following our podcast discussion. The other is Mitchell Bard's The Arab Lobby, which I'm supposed to be writing about for National Review (rather than procrastinating here on Ricochet). So I'm exceedingly prepared to discuss both of your posts at very great length. However, if you think I drive you hard, you should see what I'm doing to myself: I'm in an agony of self-loathing about this review, which I've been putting off for far too long.

Why am I putting it off, you ask? That should be easy for me to write about, shouldn't it? Here's the problem: I wrote my doctoral dissertation about the role of ethnic lobby groups in shaping US arms transfer policy toward the Arab-Israeli antagonists. I could therefore write ten pages about every sentence in that book, and I'm not kidding--I pretty much already have. The subject really requires a doctoral dissertation's worth of comment; and the more you know about it, the more complicated it seems. 

I'll figure out somehow how to get it down to the length of a book review. And as an act of initial discipline, I'll reply to your comment in two paragraphs. Here we go. Basically, Peter, our policy toward Saudi Arabia is a Cold War relic. We treat Saudi Arabia the way we do because institutionally--even though the policy is obsolete--we're so accustomed to viewing the region through the Cold War paradigm that our foreign-policy bureaucracy applies to it Cold War habits of thought and action; at this point, almost unconsciously. It will all make a lot more sense if you assume that every institution through which we deal with the Saudis emerged or was shaped during a time when losing Saudi Arabia meant losing the Cold War. 

The Cold War is over: This needs to stop. But just as it's difficult to roll back programs for government spending--they become too deeply institutionally entrenched--it's difficult to reverse generations' worth of foreign-policy habits.

As for the New York Times--the book is excellent. It really explains a lot. 

My second conclusion about the Wikileaks scandal?  That the New York Times has reached a new level on the smug-and-smarmy-hypocrisy-o-meter.  This seems obvious just as soon as you hear someone make the point.  But it took Scott Johnson, our friend at Powerline, to make the point--and so far as I can tell, Scott's the only one to make it.  Read this slowly, taking it in.  And if you're ever tempted to suppose that the mainstream media is merely silly, or callow, but essentially harmless, remember it:

The New York Times is participating in the dissemination of the stolen State Department cables that have been made available to it in one way or another via WikiLeaks. My friend Steve Hayward recalls that only last year the New York Times ostentatiously declined to publish or post any of the Climategate emails because they had been illegally obtained. Surely readers will recall Times reporter Andrew Revkin's inspiring statement of principle: "The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won't be posted here."

Interested readers may want to compare and contrast Revkin's statement of principle with the editorial note posted by the Times on the WikiLeaks documents this afternoon. Today the Times cites the availability of the documents elsewhere and the pubic interest in their revelations as supporting their publication by the Times. Both factors applied in roughly equal measure to the Climategate emails.

Sorry to be weighing in on the Wikileaks matter so late in the day.  After taking the kids to school, I got myself a cup of coffee, sat down, opened my laptop, and, as I had promised Claire I would--if you think she's compelling onstage, you should see the way she drives us back here in the wings--began to compose a post.  Whereupon my cell phone rang.  Whereupon one thing began leading to another.  Do you have days like that?  Days during which you feel frantically busy but that, by bedtime the same night, almost seem never to have taken place?

Anyway, in all my quick Googlings around on Wikileaks at stolen moments, I came away from the whole affair with a couple of strong feelings, one of which I'll share right here:  I've had it up to here with Saudi Arabia.  Excuse me.  The Saudis, I suppose, are merely being the Saudis.  What I really mean is that I've had it up to here with our own government for failing to put the screws to those people.

During the Cold War, Reagan got something from "the kingdom," as the diplomats call it, persuading the Saudis to hold down the price of oil, helping to starve the Soviets of hard currency (oil was the biggest-ticket export item the Soviets had going for them).  But what have the Saudis done for us over the last couple of decades?  Oh, just squeeze every last dollar out of us for oil that they could, then recycle those dollars by building mosques and madrassas around the world, spending billions--billions--to encourage the spread of Wahhabi Islam, the most anti-western school or strain that Islam has produced.  And what have we now learned courtesy of Wikileaks?  That the Saudis have been privately encouraging us to mount a military operation to take out the Iranian nuclear program.

The Saudis permitted us to save their country from Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War, and now they're asking us to spend still more of our treasure, and risk still more American lives, to save them from Iran.  In return for--what?  Precisely what concessions have we wrested from them?

George W. Bush?  I'll defend the man, stoutly, on any number of points.  But his friendship with Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador who spent ten or 15 years buying up everyone in Washington who was for sale, makes me--well, let's just say it makes me queasy.  Barack Obama?  How does our current chief executive go about showing King Abdullah that the United States of America means business?  By bowing to the king so deeply that it looks as if he's checking whether the king needs a shoeshine.

The emerging leaders of the GOP have distinguished themselves, beautifully, by saying sane and necessary things about domestic policy.  Now a few of them need to step up to foreign relations--and offering the Saudis a brisk reminder of just how much they owe this nation would be a mighty useful way to start.

"See you again," said the merchant of a store in Kunsan City, Republic of Korea, as I was leaving his business. Apparently, he was saying goodbye, but I didn't know that at the time. "Maybe," I said, "or maybe not," and walked out. It was 1994, and I was starting a one year tour of duty in South Korea, where I also took a part time job teaching English to classes of Korean adults and children. It was an amazing year as I came to appreciate their culture and their devotion to education in general. I've been thinking a lot lately about how so many of the people I met in that part of the world wanted desperately to master the English language.

I particularly missed my old students while at a truck stop in Tuscaloosa, AL, yesterday. Three young ladies were standing behind the cash register. I think they were being paid to talk amongst themselves, because they paid precious little attention to the customers who were trying to make purchases. I waited in line until it was my turn to stand next to the counter and listen to them for awhile. From the front of the line, I could see that two of the young women were listening intently to the third, nodding their heads in unison as she explained the following story: "I was down wit ma home boy, and he was like pphhhhttttttt. And I was like, for real? And he was like, I dunno. And I was like, na-unnh." And then, fearing that rigor-mortis would soon set in, the young lady accepted payment for my coffee so that I could like, leave and the next person in line could like, listen to this captivating tale of like, utter incoherence.

I wish I could say that my experience was unusual. For that matter, I wish I could say it was nonexistent. But it seems all too common, and it does not prefer one region over another. Ignorance has more than one accent, and comes from all walks of life. Several years ago, my son and I watched two people at a fast food restaurant try to conduct a transaction; one person placing an order, the other person taking the order. Neither one could understand the other. "Wutchoo wont?" asked the first person, to which the second answered, "huh?" And on it went for several minutes. They needed an interpreter, and I needed a sedative. Last month, I spent a full hour at a security office while the guards, Beavis and Butthead, tried to coach each other on how to accomplish the paperwork necessary for me to pick up a loaded trailer and depart with it. The challenges of the job and of communicating in a common language were just too much for them.

The blame can be placed in a variety of places. Government schools, the dumbing down of the larger culture, parental abdication of teaching in favor of the television, etc. I personally think there is a fashion component at work as well, inasmuch as there seems to be a correlation between the angle of a baseball cap and the ability of the wearer to complete a sentence. Ditto with the droopiness of pants.

The question is, what can be done about this, if anything? Can this slide into gibberish, mumbling, slurring, nonsensical prattle be arrested, let alone reversed? It's reached a point where significant segments of society are walking around in such a communicative stupor, that they are barely even functional. Oh yes, ...and they vote. Ideas anyone?

Today the 2011 candidates for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame were announced. Who are your Top 3 and why? Inductees will be announced on Jan. 5, 2011. Here's the list:

Newbies: Jeff Bagwell, Carlos Baerga, Bret Boone, Kevin Brown, John Franco, Marquis Grissom, Juan Gonzalez, Lenny Harris, Bobby Higginson, Charles Johnson, Al Leiter, Tino Martinez, Raul Mondesi, John Olerud, Rafael Palmiero, Kirk Reuter, Benito Santiago, B.J. Surhoff, Larry Walker

Returning to the ballot: Roberto Alomar, Harold Baines, Bert Blyleven, Barry Larkin, Edgar Martinez, Don Mattingly, Fred McGriff, Mark McGwire, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Dave Parker, Tim Raines, Lee Smith, Alan Trammell

I'll simply offer my totally insignificant list of Most Decent Fellows* among these candidates: John Olerud, Al Leiter, and Tino Martinez.

*Qualities include, but not limited to, patience and fully intact basic manners when asked irritating questions by pesky reporters at inopportune times. You'd be surprised how rare these qualities are.

Anyone else reading Decision Points, the Bush memoir?  I'm almost done and really enjoying it.  Very well-written for one of these things -- former Bush speechwriter Christopher Michel was, I believe, the invisible hand.  I'm finding it a deeply pleasant and nostalgic experience to remember what it was like to have a president who cared more about the office and the country than himself.

I am struck, however--I should say struck again--by Bush's frustrating refusal to engage directly with his enemies in the news media.  They treated him like garbage, made scandals where there were none (Valerie Plame), gave credence to critics and criticisms (Cindy Sheehan) that did not deserve it, covered the war on terror in a way designed to insure its failure (the NY  Times called it a quagmire after three weeks) and covered Katrina with what was tantamount to hate speech.  And yet, though Bush does try to explain himself in the book, he never really confronts the media's rabid and despicable animosity.

Bill O'Reilly asked W about this in their recent interview and Dub said essentially he didn't want to lower himself to the media's level.  The problem with that is that the media coverage - as he himself admits - weakened his presidency.  It seems a paradox to me:  holding yourself above the media fray while admitting you've been wounded by the unbridled media attacks.  Reagan did it better.  Chris Christie does it better now.  It's simply part of a modern presidency:  the imperative to put some of these mad dogs down.

Odd couple of the day: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and President George W. Bush sit down for an interview at Facebook's HQ in Palo Alto.  As of this posting, the interview is still streaming live here, and will be available to view later here.

BY JON WARD

Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican who is scheduled to become chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Monday that WikiLeaks should be designated a terrorist organization for releasing hundreds of thousands of secret and classified government documents.

“The benefit of that is, we would be able to seize their assets and we would be able to stop anyone from helping them in any way,” King said, appearing on MSNBC.

King also hinted at getting WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, extradited for prosecution in the U.S. Naming WikiLeaks a terrorist group would help the U.S. government, he said, “as far as trying to get them extradited, trying to get them to take action against them.”

“Either we’re serious about this or we’re not. I know people may think this is a bit of a stretch, but I analogize it as the RICO statute, where they had a pretty narrow definition of criminal enterprise in the beginning, but now that’s been expanded quite a bit to deal with contemporary problems,” King said.

“If we’re going to live in this world, this technological world, where information can be disseminated so quickly, we have to be serious, take firm strong action against those who are putting American lives at risk, because this will put people’s lives at risk.”

Joe Scarborough, the co-host of “Morning Joe” and a former Republican congressman from Florida, was dubious.

“I think you may be overstepping a good deal,” he said. “Isn’t your first job to call government agencies… in front of your committee and say, ‘How did this happen?’ … You know you can’t designate them a terror outfit?”

King persisted.

“I don’t think we should write it off that quickly and say we can’t do it. They are assisting in terrorist activity. The information they are giving is being used by al Qaeda, it’s being used by our enemies,” he said, adding that foreign intelligence agencies will be able to identify sources for intelligence from the more than 251,000 cables being released by WikiLeaks in batches.

King wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Sunday urging him to charge Assange under the Espionage Act and a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking her to designate WikiLeaks as a terrorist organization.

Holder said Monday that there is an “active, ongoing criminal investigation” into the WikiLeaks release.

“We are not in a position as yet to announce the result of that investigation, but the investigation is ongoing,” Holder said.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that “WikiLeaks and people that disseminate information to people like this are criminals, first and foremost, and I think that needs to be clear.”

King’s rhetoric is the latest example of outrage – most of it from conservatives – against the international nonprofit that earlier this year released hundreds of thousands of classified government and military documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The documents appear to have come from one source: U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning, who was arrested in May and is currently being held at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, and faces a long prison sentence.

Later in the day Monday, former Clinton era Secretaryof Defense William Cohen said he supported Holder’s criminal investigation and said the U.S. government should seek to have WikiLeaks’ leaders extradited “to bring them back to face a trial here.”

On Sunday, as the first diplomatic cables began to dribble out, Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia who has since left the organization, sent a public message to WikiLeaks on Twitter.

“Speaking as Wikipedia’s co-founder, I consider you enemies of the U.S. — not just the government, but the people,” Sanger wrote.

He added: “What you’ve been doing to us is breathtakingly irresponsible and can’t be excused with pieties of free speech and openness.”

Former Alaska Gov. SarahPalin called the release by WikiLeaks “treasonous.”

Assange, who is Australian, is facing possible prosecution in his country of origin if he returns there. The government in Canberra is exploring the possibility of filing charges against Assange.

In October, conservative columnist asked in a column: “Why isn’t Julian Assange dead?”

WikiLeaks gave an explanation for its actions in publishing the diplomatic cables Sunday that showed what appeared to be a strong anti-U.S. motivation.

“The cables show the extent of U.S. spying on its allies and the U.N.; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in ‘client states’; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for U.S. corporations; and the measures U.S. diplomats take to advance those who have access to them,” WikiLeaks wrote.

This document release reveals the contradictions between the U.S.’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors — and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what’s going on behind the scenes.

Every American schoolchild is taught that George Washington — the country’s first president — could not tell a lie. If the administrations of his successors lived up to the same principle, today’s document flood would be a mere embarrassment. Instead, the U.S. government has been warning governments — even the most corrupt — around the world about the coming leaks and is bracing itself for the exposures.

In its mission statement, however, WikiLeaks says its “primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East."

“But we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations,” WikiLeaks says. “We aim for maximum political impact.”

(This article originally appeared on the Daily Caller)

Mediate offers a snarky clip from yesterday's Face the Nation episode, in which Bob Schieffer tries to get Theodore Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris to hypothesize on Teddy's probable opinion of today's Tea Partiers. Morris doesn't bite but instead calls it a [expletive deleted and bleeped on TV] question because "you cannot pluck people out of the past and expect them to comment on what’s happening today." Instead, Morris, living entirely in the present, takes the opportunity to offer his own view of contemporary Americans:

I see an insular people who are insensitive to foreign sensibilities, who are lazy, obese, complacent and increasingly perplexed as to why [Americans] are losing our place in the world to people who are more dynamic than us and more disciplined.

Ouch. And for the record, I rejoined Weight Watchers yesterday.

If Morris merely echoes the liberal disdain at the root of our nation's growing Nanny State (i.e. Mama Obama and the food police), he does strike a nerve nonetheless. Remember the July 4 edition of "Jay Walking" with Jay Leno?

Yeah. That happened.

Now comes the solution! A new book edited by Jackie Gingrich Cushman called The Essential American: 25 Documents and Speeches Every American Should Own. This beautiful single volume includes the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Lincoln's First and Second Inaugural addresses, George Washington's Farewell, Patrick Henry's famous "Give me liberty" address at the Second Virginia Convention, and one my new favorites (because I hadn't known it before), Theodore Roosevelt's speech, "The Strenuous Life."

It's time for Americans to put the Edmund Morrises of the world in their place. Let's make The Essential American a national best-seller, and reassert the exceptionalism that defines our national character. Bully!

According to buzzfeed, you can find the 40 here.  I'm not sure of the who, why or how about the list being compiled.  I'll admit some I didn't know about (that is, assuming the label is truly warranted).

Are there any on the list who we dispute?

No fair picking on that Sajak fellow.  I'm reasonably sure they tagged him correctly.

In the spirit of bipartisanship, buzzfeed also listed 40 celebrities who are Democrats/liberals.  Find them here.  Shockers for me:  Faith Hill and Tim McGraw? 

Two of my closest friends in college were converts to Christianity.  Neither had grown up in a religious household, but as adolescents each read the Bible cover to cover, began attending church weekly, and adopted the Christian faith.  In college, the two attended the same church as I and participated in Bible studies and prayer groups.  But one day as we neared the end of our days as undergraduates, in a move that surprised everyone who knew them, both renounced Christianity and declared themselves "faithless."

And yet, as shocking and heartbreaking as it was to witness my friends rationalize their loss of faith, apostasy -- leaving or renouncing one's faith -- apparently isn’t too unusual among young Americans.  A fascinating article in Christianity Today documents the phenomenon of young Americans' increasing abandonment of religion.

Among the findings released in 2009 from the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), one stood out. The percentage of Americans claiming "no religion" almost doubled in about two decades, climbing from 8.1 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008. The trend wasn't confined to one region. Those marking "no religion," called the "Nones," ... were most numerous among the young: a whopping 22 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds claimed no religion, up from 11 percent in 1990. The study also found that 73 percent of Nones came from religious homes; 66 percent were described by the study as "de-converts."

Other survey results have been grimmer. At the May 2009 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, top political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell...reported that "young Americans are dropping out of religion at an alarming rate of five to six times the historic rate (30 to 40 percent have no religion today, versus 5 to 10 percent a generation ago)."

The figures certainly suggest that young Americans are an increasingly godless demographic.  Surely many in this group will discover or rediscover faith as they age and start their own families. Nevertheless, the undeniable trend toward godlessness may be a precursor of further disintegration of American society.  As John Adams' oft-quoted observation warns,

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

So where do we go from here?

But of course, if we did, the Saudis would publicly condemn US military strikes against Iran.  And if you understand that, then you understand everything there is to understand about the Middle East.

From NewsMax:

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia repeatedly exhorted the United States to "cut off the head of the snake" by launching military strikes to destroy Iran's nuclear program, according to leaked U.S. diplomatic cables.

The April 2008 [classified diplomatic] cable detailed a meeting between Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, and then-U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, King Abdullah, and other Saudi princes.

At the meeting, Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir "recalled the King's frequent exhortations to the U.S. to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program," the cable said.

"He told you to cut off the head of the snake," Jubeir was reported to have said.

I'm torn.  Part of me is gratified that the Saudi leadership has such a clear-sighted grasp of the dangers of a nuclear Iran.  Part of me is irritated by their hypocrisy.  And another part of me (I have lots of parts, okay?) wonders when, exactly, the Saudi leadership is going to show actual leadership -- when, for instance, it's going to say publicly what it acknowledges privately: that Iran is a dangerous threat, that military action is probably inevitable, that the United States is a force for good in the world, and that Israel -- all of 11 miles wide in some places -- isn't the root of cause of the rotten state of the Middle East.

Put it this way: would King Abdullah be okay if Israel went ahead and "cut off the head of the snake?"  Does it matter who kills the snake, as long as it's dead? 

When I was in college it was chic to love the Sandinistas. They had three things going for them: they were romantic rebels going up against a gouty strong-man; Reagan opposed them; the Clash named an album after them. Never mind that there was something Fielding-Mellish-like about Ortega -  the Sandinistas were cool! Jump forward a few decades, and let’s see how that hero-worship plays out:

Nicaragua’s constitution limits presidents to two non-consecutive terms. Having previously served from 1985 to 1990, during the Sandinista revolution which toppled the Somoza dictatorship, Mr Ortega is doubly barred from running again. Mimicking his Venezuelan ally Hugo Chávez, he has tried to abolish term limits. When the required 60% majority in parliament proved elusive, he appealed to allies in the Supreme Court, who ruled that the re-election ban violated his human rights. Mr Ortega has since illegally extended the terms of these justices.

To justify this, leaders of his Sandinista Party ordered the printing of a rewritten (but bogus) constitution during a public holiday in September. The electoral authority, also illegally stuffed with allies, has accepted Mr Ortega’s candidacy, which is celebrated in roadside billboards lit with pink neon.

Understated all the way. Don’t expect him to lose:

The president will be difficult to unseat. Although his trampling of the constitution has prompted a cut in Western aid, donations from Mr Chávez, said to amount to some $400m a year, have more than offset this loss.

Why is there any Western aid at all, you ask? See my first paragraph.

Finally, we've got some clarity on the subject of climate change.  Gathering in sunny, fun, cruise-ship-friendly Cancun -- and how do they pick these places? -- global environmental bureaucrats are fretting in keynote speeches and breakout panels about just how to stop the climate from changing.

One paper to be delivered has the solution: stop economic growth in the west.  From the Daily Telegraph:

In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years.

Stopping economic growth is an outlandish and crazy idea, right?  I mean, how could anyone manage to pull that off?  Think of the complicated moving parts that would have to work together.  First, you'd have to create an enormous public sector pension problem, then add to it tax hikes, then figure out some way to pile on huge government deficits, then engineer, somehow, a money-printing central bank and top it all off by enacting enterprise-killing regulations. Impossible!  

Really?  I mean, really?

Look, I'm not mocking the man if he does.  And I'm in no position to criticize him if he doesn't.  (I don't, for the record.)

But it's one of those things that's sort of hard to believe.  This feels like marketing, like repositioning.  Like trying to get the center back.  Or I don't know what, because it just doesn't ring true.  And it's a shame, really, that he's making such clumsy swipes at redefining himself, because by now, he's been defined.  

The only way for him to reclaim the center is to redefine what he does during the workday -- cut taxes, shrink government, reduce pointless regulations, control the border, protect Americans from terrorism, that sort of thing.  What he does after the workday, before he climbs into bed, is really not important.

Especially because, come on!  You know he doesn't pray every night.

Though there were about a hundred consequential stories breaking this morning, NPR decided to devote at least two of its a.m. segments today to the issue of repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell. In one of them, NPR host Neal Conan interviewed Tammy Schultz, the director of National Security and Joint Warfare at the U.S. Marine Corps War College. Schultz is an openly gay woman who thinks that the Marines should accept that DADT will be repealed.

At one point during the interview, Schultz compared repealing DADT to desegregation. According to Schultz, 60% of Marines "would be ok" with repealing DADT. Here's how she came to that number: according to her figures, 40% of Marines "expressed concerns" with repealing DADT, therefore, "if you do the math, that means 60 percent of the Marines say it won't be an issue." That's not exactly sound statistical reasoning.

Anyhow, from the "fact" that 60% of Marines "would be ok" with repealing DADT, she goes on to compare repealing DADT to desegregation. "Those numbers [the 60% figure] are much higher than if you look at history, for instance, for desegregation."

CONAN: Yet that 40 percent issue - that 40 percent, those are the - that's the percentage who expressed concerns, even a majority of Marines said this would be okay.

Dr. SCHULTZ: You know, that's exactly right, Neal. And honestly, that's one of the things that I have found surprising was the level of support across all armed services and also the Marine Corps because obviously, you know, if you do the math, that means 60 percent of the Marines say it won't be an issue. And I think that is very positive. Those numbers are much higher than if you look at history, for instance, for desegregation.

And as I've said in other writings, I don't think desegregation and allowing gays to serve openly are analogous. You know, I can hide my sexual orientation. An African-American certainly can't hide who they are. So I would, you know, offer no analogy in that way, but the arguments used are very similar. And I think the opposition is very similar as well. And we're seeing much more support for reversing Don't Ask, Don't Tell than we ever saw for desegregation when Truman affected those policies.

I don't think that the dis-analogies Schultz cites are the ones that we should be concerned with.  Desegregation was about ending racism. Not ending segregation would have been tantamount to racism. Not repealing DADT is not tantamount to discrimination against gay men and women, however.

But the analogy between racism and discrimination is precisely the analogy Schultz wants to draw.

Confusing the issue like this helps neither side of the argument. As far as I'm concerned, let's repeal DADT (I mean, Alexander the Great was gay...and he was great!)--but I think we need to have a reasoned discussion about it, and one not clouded by misinformation and misapplied facts.

Because, for one thing, you're paying for it. For another, those are not professional victims of endless disaster, but real human beings. If you want to follow it in a way that moves a bit beyond "There goes another disaster in Haiti," here's a Twitter feed from someone who makes the headlines less abstract. 

Of course a cholera center only smells like a chlorinated pool. It looks like nothing of the sort.12:10 AM Nov 26th via Twitterrific

Instead if yr eyes were closed and you did not know better it might feel like you were in a swimming pool locker room, w lots of chlorine11:58 PM Nov 25th via Twitterrific  

Cholera leads to rice water diarrhea. No reason to wear a mask for the smell.11:55 PM Nov 25th via Twitterrific  

Masks are not needed for cholera infection control.11:50 PM Nov 25th via Twitterrific  

You may wish to take their cholera reporting with a grain of salt.11:50 PM Nov 25th via Twitterrific  

When a news crew comes to your hospital wearing face masks to cover a story on cholera..,11:49 PM Nov 25th via Twitterrific

Doctor Coffee, I'm given to understand, "is a saint." From what I hear, if you want your money actually to go to something useful there, money sent to support her work at the HUEH Hospital would be well spent.

As echoes of war rumble in the seas of Asia, as bombs blast two nuclear scientists in Iran, as fraudulent elections tear Haiti apart--here is one more piece of news that makes the world a less happy place. Comic actor Leslie Nielsen died today at 84 of complications with pneumonia.

I'll never forget the first time I saw Nielsen in a movie. I was around 8 or 9 years old and the Naked Gun movies were playing on television. It may have even been around the holidays. Watching those movies, I had never laughed so hard, or been so delighted by an actor.

So as the world seems to be falling apart around us--during the holiday season, no less--let's remember a man whose career ambition it was to bring joy and laughter and happiness into our hearts.

I really don't want the friendship of some of the nuts who seem eager to extend it to me. I don't want to hear one word of enthusiasm or justification for the arsonists who torched the Salman Alfarisi Islamic Center in Portland. Not one word. Yes, of course that place needs to be investigated, given that one of its congregants turns out to be a terrorist. It needs to be investigated by the legal authorities, acting in accordance with the law, and if you don't like that law, that's why we have elections. I'm not on your side, lunatics. Don't dream that I am.

Anyone who sets a fire that could easily kill not only the people they suspect may be inciting terrorism but their children, neighbors and bystanders--and those neighbors' and bystanders' children--needs a long stay in a Federal penitentiary to get their heads straight. There they can meditate at leisure on such concepts as evidence, due process, the rule of law, and the unwisdom of modeling your country's approach to these issues on Lebanon's.

At last, the leaks are dribbling, and the Guardian has a preview. (The Wikileaks site itself is under a denial-of-service attack. Congratulations to someone out there.)

Brace yourselves. "Among scores of other disclosures that are likely to cause uproar," the cables detail:

• Grave fears in Washington and London over the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme (No! Have we gone mad?)

• Alleged links between the Russian government and organised crime. (Say it ain't so!)

• Claims of inappropriate behaviour by a member of the British royal family. (It's Watergate ten times over!)

"The material," continues the report, "includes a reference to Vladimir Putin as an 'alpha-dog,' (Gentle Vlad?), Hamid Karzai as being 'driven by paranoia,' (Sweet, trusting Hamid?) and Angela Merkel allegedly 'avoids risk and is rarely creative'" (The Chancellor of Germany, of all people?) "There is also a comparison between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Adolf Hitler." (No! I cannot believe anyone in my government could say or think such a thing! Why?)

"The Guardian can disclose," it says--actually, I could have disclosed it with no help from Wikileaks, but whatever--"that Arab leaders are privately urging an air strike on Iran and that US officials have been instructed to spy on the UN's leadership. These two revelations alone would be likely to reverberate around the world."

According to another piece in the Guardian, "The cables also expose frank, even rude, remarks about Iranian leaders, their trustworthiness and tactics at international meetings." Get me my smelling salts, I am scandalized!

And the biggest bombshell of all: It even seems many other countries don't trust Iran.

The whole world's turned upside down. This is going to change everything.