Intelligence Failure

John M. Deutch flamed out as a Clinton-era CIA chief. New York Times:

Mr. Deutch, now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said there would have been good reasons for Mr. Obama to select a C.I.A. veteran to lead the agency. But Mr. Deutch also cited the examples of John McCone in the Kennedy administration and George Bush in the Nixon administration as cases in which outsiders became “two of the agency’s most successful directors.”

Except that George H.W. Bush was named by President Ford.

Secret For Saving Newspapers? It's Classified

Matthew Yglesias on newspapers' biggest mistake:

[T]he clearest thing management could have done better was to recognize earlier what business they were in. In particular, letting the online classified market slip away was a preventable error. Everyone might be posting their free classified on NYTList.com had someone really smart come up with that idea. The pageviews involved would have been a huge additional asset to the nytimes.com website and it would have been one newspaper undercutting the competition rather than all newspapers being undercut by a guy named Craig.

A Torturous Choice For CIA

The PE's adorable second grader, Sasha, was amply protected today as she headed to her new school. As Mr. Obama would be the first to affirm, every child in America deserves to be just as safe. In all the years since Sept. 11, no terrorist attacks have been launched on U.S. soil. It hasn't been because al-Qaeda and others haven't tried. While we may never know about all or even most of the attacks that were thwarted, the CIA and others in the intelligence community have obviously played an indispensable role. No more than any other agency in Washington, the CIA doesn't need to be cleaned up, reined in, or reformed. It needs to be inspired and empowered. That's why Leon Panetta's appointment as CIA director borders on boneheaded.

Panetta's opposition to torture, which hometown media friends proudly trumpet, is irrelevant. Whatever you think of water boarding and other extreme interrogation measures, a Senate investigation has made clear that the Bush White House authorized them. Since Mr. Obama takes a different view, he'll issue different orders. There's no evidence he needs a reformist watchdog sitting at Langley to make sure they're followed.

Others praise Panetta's management skills. Was there no one in the country who combined management skills and intelligence experience? As a distinguished former White House chief of staff, he would certainly have advised Mr. Obama to check with intelligence policy stakeholders in Congress before making the choice. It's hard to believe that Sens. Feinstein or Rockefeller wouldn't have had better ideas.

During his recent appearance at the Nixon Library, Bill O'Reilly said his sources in the intelligence community were already dispirited by Mr. Obama's AG choice. Unless Panetta -- nothing if not a canny political pro -- acts quickly to reassure his new colleagues that his main job will be enabling them to do an ever better job than they've been doing for the last seven years, agency morale could decline further, which would be bad news for us all.

Winners, Losers, And The Miracle Of Grace

It was quiet this afternoon outside the Cathedral Center of St. Paul, headquarters of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. But there was jubilation within as word came down from the California Supreme Court that three congregations which left the Episcopal Church after the ordination of the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, a partnered gay man, as bishop of New Hampshire must return their properties to the Diocese.

My wife and colleague Kathy and I were downtown for a noon meeting. We visited the Cathedral Center in Echo Park afterwards. It seemed to be the place to be today, if only briefly. This news van was the first to arrive for a 2 p.m. news conference. It was national news several years ago when our congregations in Newport Beach, Long Beach, and North Hollywood voted to join the Anglican Province of Uganda. When they tried to keep their buildings and property, our Diocese sued.

Today's unanimous ruling is expected to complicate the lives of 100 other congregations around the country who have left TEC without leaving their buildings. It's not clear yet whether the dissenting LA churches will try to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here's Bishop J. Jon Bruno's statement from the Cathedral Center:

"The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles is overjoyed with the conclusive opinion of the California Supreme Court.

"We have prevailed in all areas of law addressed in this case.

"We look forward to the possibility of reconciliation with these congregations, and we assure that this Diocese and the people of The Episcopal Church that we will continue mission and ministry in the areas of these congregations.

"The mission of The Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Los Angeles continues, as our prayer book states, 'to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.' We will continue to seek this reconciliation with fellow Christians in the communities of Long Beach, Newport Beach, and North Hollywood, as well as La Crescenta, where Episcopal church properties continue as part of the Diocese of Los Angeles in accordance with the Court's opinion announced today.

"We acknowledge that this opinion establishes a precedent. We further note the pastoral concerns at this time within The Episcopal Church, which continues in its mission of service, especially in providing food, shelter, medicine, and pastoral care to those in greatest need locally and globally, respecting the dignity of every human being."

Political and legal entanglements are a fact of human life, including in the church. And yet neither elections nor legal rulings can settle theological disputes or heal spiritual or interpersonal wounds. Long after voters and judges leave off, the work of God's grace persists.

O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment, and light rises up in darkness for the godly: Grant us, in all our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask what you would have us to do, that the Spirit of wisdom may save us from all false choices, and that in your light we may see light, and in your straight path may not stumble; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER

Eating, Sin, And Redemption

Laura Miller on our weirdness about food:

There's a crypto-religious element to our oscillation between unrestrained indulgence and penitential asceticism, the same thing that makes us talk about desserts as "sinful." Our eating lives are the sites of overwrought private dramas worthy of the Catholic saints, in which we seek release and then restraint; we gorge, then impractically resolve never to touch butter or pasta again, convincing ourselves that we can achieve the bodies of movie stars if we can only summon enough willpower. It's debatable whether that many of us really want to adopt a sensible eating plan, if it's going to deprive us of all this excitement.

Murdoch: Once Satan, Now Savior?

David Carr, New York Times media writer, talking on a Dec. 26 Book Review podcast about Rupert Murdoch's impact on journalism and the Wall Street Journal, which he recently bought:

I was at a party last night for a Journal reporter that's switching assignments. Unlike a lot of journalism parties I've been to lately, number one, it was about a promotion, number two, it was filled with happy people who were excited about what they were doing. The suggestion that Mr. Murdoch was going to ruin the Journal, which I and others couldn't say often enough when he bought the paper, turns out to be not true, not so far....[T]o suggest that he or [managing editor] Robert Thompson have gone about the business of tearing it apart or diminishing it just hasn't proven to be the case.

Reminds me of an article my editor friend Tracy Wood sent me in November about a publisher's party where the paper's employees were parking cars to earn extra money. Turns out Murdoch, at whom newspaper people have been turning up their noses for years, may be one of the few publishers left who can keep them all in business.

Doublegate

Scandal #1: Sen. Clinton allegedly takes care of the Clinton Foundation's friend in Syracuse. Scandal #2: Caroline Kennedy asks, "Where's Syracuse?"

The Bold And Brash Bush

From Carolyn Lochhead of the San Francisco Chronicle, an extensive and fair assessment of the Bush Presidency. Read the whole thing, but here's a nugget:

He sought "to end tyranny in the world." He began two wars. He cut taxes three times, tried to privatize Social Security, and added the biggest expansion of Medicare since it was created under Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. He took on AIDS in Africa and redrew the federal role in education. He named two relatively young conservatives to the Supreme Court. He declared by himself a "global war on terror" and asserted unprecedented executive powers to fight it.

As bold and brash as his father was cautious, W. rolled the dice at history. And history rolled them back.

iPhone vs. Kindle? No Kontest

Marjorie Kehe, blogging at the Christian Science Monitor, thinks people will take to reading on their iPhones and presumably other handhelds, pushing the Amazon Kindle out of the market.

I doubt it. Who wants to read his phone sitting up in bed? It's not enough to hold onto. Who wants to prop her phone on the kitchen counter while eating her Cheerios? Phones are too small for a pleasant reading experience. I've read 20 books on my Kindle. It's the size of a trade paperback -- just right. Its designers grasped that miniaturization can lead to shrunken returns. Books, even when digitized, should have some heft.

Newspapers, too. Until I got my Kindle a year ago Christmas, I mistakenly thought there was nothing easier than reading the New York Times on a BlackBerry. Buy a Kindle today and save the newspaper business (including, if I may, the post-print Monitor).

Poverty, Bad Times, And HIV-AIDS

An Episcopal priest from northern California, Bill Rankin, is being honored for co-founding the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance, which works on HIV prevention and care in impoverished central Africa. Under the leadership of Daphne Berry, the church I serve has supported GAIA for several years.

The devastation wrought by the disease is still hard to comprehend. The faltering global economy won't make GAIA's work any easier:

AIDS has hit Malawi hard, Rankin said.

"We've been in some villages where there aren't very many people left in the parent generation," he said. He estimates the growth of 40 percent of the children has been stunted by hunger, and said 86 percent of the young girls have been pulled out of school to care for sick family members.

Relying on local religious groups has been a double-edged sword for the alliance.

"The religious groups tend to be good when it comes to encouraging people to take care of the orphans and the people who are sick," Rankin said, "but on the other hand they tend to have a moralistic outlook on condoms and the naive view that says to be in favor of condom use is tantamount to being in favor of promiscuity. The assumption there is that promiscuity is not already a factor."

But Rankin said the biggest challenge people in Malawi face in coping with the AIDS epidemic is the republic's general poverty. He said, for example, most people there rely on ox carts to travel to health clinics during the rainy season - if they can find a cart.

"People die just getting from wherever they are to some kind of facility," Rankin said. If they manage to reach a clinic, it may be out of medical supplies or there may be no qualified medical personnel on hand, he said.

The global economic slowdown will only make matters worse.

Hat tip to Cindy Drennan