Day: December 20, 2007

Administration officials refuse to shed light on whether White House lawyers talked to the CIA about whether to destroy interrogation videotapes of two terrorism suspects but bristle at questions into the affair and complain about news coverage. That puts the White House in an awkward position. The very vision of White House officials sitting around a table talking about such an inflammatory course of action evokes echoes of Nixon and Watergate.

The definitive history of the role of oil in modern warfare has not been written, but a lot can be learned from Robert Zubrin’s new book, “Energy Victory.”

“For nearly a century,” Zubrin writes, “control of oil has been the decisive factor determining victory or defeat in the struggle for world dominance.” That was true in World War I and World War II. Zubrin says oil will be pivotal in the global conflict now under way as well.

As I drive through the mid-Atlantic countryside in the unending blackness of the winter night, my eyes are drawn to colorful displays of light that people use to festoon their houses, bushes and trees. In this most dreary time of year, just getting out of bed in the morning becomes an obstacle to overcome, rather than an automatic and cheerful spring of the limbs. One’s most coveted activity (in my case, horseback riding) often seems more like an obligation or chore, really, instead of something one cannot wait to do.

It is the tradition in some American families to read Clement Clarke Moore’s charming seasonal poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas” every Christmas Eve.

My own two children were involved in this lovely ritual for many years until they grew a little old for the task to the point where they were rebelling and threatening to join biker gangs. As it happens, the tradition had run its course anyway and now the formal recitation is merely a happy memory for me every Dec. 24.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the nation’s civil-rights watchdog founded in 1971, has stepped forward and branded the 28-year-old Federation for American Immigration Reform as a hate group, tying it to white-supremacist and other such organizations — and reaction has been swift.

In 2006, SPLC counted 844 hate groups in the United States.

The Bush administration is trying to hide its mismanagement of federal lands by using new permit requirements and fees to limit filming and photography in national parks, forests and wildlife refuges, a congressional leader charges.