Popular culture’s vision of Christmas generally misses the challenging nature of the story of Christmas. It’s much nicer and safer to simple sing platitudes of peace on earth before turning to the celebration of acquiring more and more stuff and seeking a higher spot on the pyramid of power. But from time to time, there are glimpses of Christmas that challenge the passions in our society to make distinctions between people, to judge one’s worth by the size of one’s pile of stuff, and to raise up the rich at the expense of the poor.

In 1999, Aaron Sorkin and Rick Cleveland got it right on The West Wing, in the episode “In Excelsis Deo.” The music, the direction, and the editing brilliantly captured what I believe lies at the heart of the Christmas story. Whether we share a common understanding of this story or not, I pray that we can share a vision of a mutual partnership that raises up the lowly, that feeds the hungry, that embraces the stranger, that welcomes the outcast, and that works for peace.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has been getting beat up because he got embarrassed by Diane Sawyer when he admitted he had no clue about a 12-person counterterrorism arrest in the UK earlier the day of the interview.

The latest National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan has inspired me to write a modern parable for the season.

Christmas morning is made for the Muppets, don’t you think?

Amid all the holiday hustle, bustle and, on at least some of the lame duck session accomplishments, success of Barack Obama, it is good to keep in mind what a lump of coal his administration has been on civil liberties and privacy. Nothing has been more emblematic of the cancer they have been in this regard than the posture they have relentlessly fought for on unfettered and unilateral ability of the Executive Branch to impose the state secrets doctrine to shield the government from litigation, even when it is concealing blatant and wholesale government criminality.

If you can watch football, you can make stock. If you can make stock, you can make pretty much any and every main dish in the Western canon of cookery. Let’s get to it!

What about the rest of you? Have you been considering any New Years Resolutions yet? Will you recycle some from last year? Nothing wrong with that…

John Denver and Rowlf The Dog — Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, from the John Denver and The Muppets: A Christmas Together, a 1979 television Christmas special.

This has the potential to be the most notable linguistic self-deception by a Democratic president since Clinton claimed that oral sex wasn’t really sex.

As I reported very early on Friday, ISAF claimed that they an arms smuggler they captured last Saturday in southern Afghanistan was a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard al-Quds force. Less than twenty-four hours after making that claim, ISAF now is backing down on the claim that the arms smuggler is al-Quds. That’s an awfully short time from announcement to correction, especially since the prisoner had been held for several days before ISAF made the claim.