Somewhere in the White House or Capitol Hill, I imagine, is a whiteboard that looks like this:

In a few weeks, Barack Obama will have a chance to do something he hasn’t done particularly well during his first year in office: successfully defy his opponents and, at the same time, reassure his most loyal supporters. At issue is the fate of Craig Becker, one of Obama’s nominees for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Last month, Becker was denied a vote on his nomination when Senate Democrats failed to overcome a GOP filibuster. Now, the Senate’s coming Easter break will give Obama an opportunity to put Becker on the NLRB via recess appointment.

Former Dick Cheney aid Cesar Conda has a post at National Review announcing that he has switched his loyalties in the Florida Senate race from Charlie Crist, once seen as the prohibitive favorite, to Marco Rubio, conservative darling and now all-but-inevitable Republican nominee:

Last summer, I watched a fellow passenger at Washington’s Reagan National Airport as he was selected to go through a newly installed full-body scanner. These machines--there are now 40 of them spread across 19 U.S. airports--permit officials from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to peer through a passenger’s clothing in search of explosives and weapons. On the instructions of a security officer, the passenger stepped into the machine and held his arms out in a position of surrender, as invisible millimeter waves surrounded his body.

In the shadow of the intelligence failure that culminated with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab lighting an explosive aboard a Detroit-bound flight, the titular head of the U.S. intelligence community was busy fighting another war. For months, in fact, Admiral Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence (DNI), had been waging an epic bureaucratic offensive. His job had been created in the wake of September 11 to foster cooperation and accountability among the 16 agencies sifting through the mounds of inbound data about threats to U.S. interests.

As promised, here comes another chapter in the Chait chronicles. Back in 1997, Jon really got into the Christmas spirit. Not only did he relish his childhood memories of exposing the myth of Santa Claus, but he also disavowed the age-old practice of gift giving:

That New York Times piece on Roger Ailes I mentioned before also featured this quote from the Fox News executive waxing populist:

This is an inside New York story that I read in the New York Post. But it's really an international story with serious ramifications. This is actually a postscript to the twelve Danish cartoons of four years ago, one of which was the image of a bomb in Muhammed's turban.

Jeff Davis publishes and edits Transportation Weekly

Even if the Senate GOP was not being completely obstructionist on every little procedural motion, the smart money has always been on bypassing an actual conference committee and settling health care via an exchange of amendments between the Houses for another very important reason: Democratic leaders have realized that a key feature of their big 2007 ethics bill is incredibly inconvenient.

What do you need to know about Yemen? The New Republic has been covering the country for years—from the civil war that made it what it is today to its current incarnation as a hotbed for Al Qaeda. Read below for some of our best pieces:

"Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula: A Primer," by Michelle Shephard (1/1/2010) What you need to know about the organization that gave us the Christmas bomber.  

Yes, I suppose we are in no position to abandon Yemen, although, frankly, I hardly knew we were really there. Well, we are, as I pointed out in my Abdulmutallab posting on New Year's Day. But imagine how Senators Levin and Leahy would have reacted if poor George Bush had stumbled into the sands of "the empty quarter" without so much as advice, let alone consent. Maybe they were informed.

The provost of University College, London, where Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab studied for three years, said that he was "completely shocked" by the news of what the Christmas terrorist had tried to do. Really?

I've just received an e-mail from an old Harvard colleague, whose accomplishments include seeing social and intellectual trends in the world--the Muslim world, especially--that many of his fellow academics blithely deny.

Here is his New Year’s morning correspondence:

Brooke Astor's son, Anthony, whom the Daily News called a “convicted swindler,” was accused by his own son Philip basically of “elder abuse.” It's quite likely that Philip hated his father even than more than he may have loved his grandmother whom, we were told ad nauseum, all New Yorkers adored. This mass of people was represented in the court proceedings by just plain folks like Henry Kissinger and Annette De La Renta. Their accusations against the Astor fortune heiress' only child seemed real, and the judge was, well, judicious.

“Copacetic.” “Fine and dandy,” says the Webster's New International. Textured origins can be found in the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and the various Oxfords. Mixed origins, actually, from the black South, Creole French, Harlem jazz, Italian and Hebrew/Yiddish.

It's appropriate at Christmas time to think back to the origin of the holiday: the birth of Jesus Christ. Most people know this story: Jesus was born to Mary & Joseph in Bethlehem, in a stable because there was no other place for them to stay. While Biblical scholars believe it was probably not actually a stable, but rather a ground-floor room of a house where Jesus was born, the fact remains that Joseph and Mary were visitors from out of town who needed lodging. What made them travel 70 plus miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem when Mary was pregnant? A census.

Jews usually go out to the movies on Christmas ... and then they go out to eat "Chinese." I've spent it writing. Below is my harvest. I wish you all good cheer.

Here are the motifs of my writing day. Alas, none of them cheery.

1. THE REAL GRIM REAPER: HOLY DAY VICTIMS IN IRAQ AND PAKISTAN

2. COLD COMMON SENSE ABOUT IRAN FROM, MIRABILI DICTU, "THE NEW YORK TIMES"

3. A WISE EUROPEAN FOREIGN MINISTER: "WE SHOULD SHUT UP ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST"

4. A SOBER "TIMES" PIECE ON ISRAELI MILITARY DOCTRINE

5. THE SON OF THE MAN WHO WAS KILLED BY TERRORISTS IN THE WEST BANK: "REVENGE IS NOT FOR JEWS"

6. THE PRESIDENT AND ONE DUMB JEWISH WOMAN, THE ANTI-ANTI-SEMITISM CZARINA IN WASHINGTON

7. COPENHAGEN AND THE UNSEATING OF AMERICA AS A GREAT POWER

8. THE CHRISTMAS TERRORIST 

So here goes:

1. THE REAL GRIM REAPER: HOLY DAY VICTIMS IN IRAQ AND PAKISTAN

I dimly remembered that Mohammed Atta and at least three of his brothers (a big word in Islam) had been known to security agencies at least a year before 9/11 as "likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States." This quote is from an August 9, 2005 article written by ace- investigator-of-intricate-matters Douglas Jehl for the New York Times.

I don't mean to seem hardhearted. But I am frankly completely jaded--and made disbelieving--with the on-schedule, almost once-a-week story about the crisis in Gaza. Around Christmas, they are simply de rigeur.

As President Obama arrives empty-handed at the end of his year-long attempt to persuade Iran to address the international community’s concerns about its nuclear program, a curious paradox has emerged. Even if intensified--and highly costly--sanctions were to force the regime to comply with Western demands, an agreement between Tehran and Washington would benefit one party above all: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the illegitimate government that he now leads.

The United States is on the doorstep of comprehensive health care reform. It's a staggering achievement, about which I'll have more to say later. but the under-appreciated thing that strikes me at the moment is that it never would have happened if the Republican Party had played its cards right.

• It’s a Nice Thought, but Can a Society Really Distribute Wealth Fairly? by Moshe Halbertal
• Every Christmas, We Get a Well-Made Film That’s Uplifting, Overlong, and Simple in Moral Vision.

God, I miss the days when social conservatives sat around grumbling about how the true meaning of Christmas was being lost in a tacky, commercial wave of neon Santas and animatronic snowmen.

Instead, the evolving culture wars have turned St. Nick into some kind of conservative hero--a roly-poly, fur-clad warrior for Good in the insidious "war against Christmas."

I'm just back from Washington, where I spoke with a wide variety of people--inside and outside of the government--about the state of the health care reform debate. Among the many questions I asked was "when," as in "when will a bill land on the president's desk?" (That's assuming Congress passes one; I would never take that for granted.)

It's a question lots of people have been asking for the spring. And the answer has kept changing. First it was early September, then October, then Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and--finally--the State of the Union.

Both the NYT and the WaPo today ran the requisite Can You Believe Tiger Was So Dense As To Sext His Side Pieces pieces. With the wired world awash in countless new and improved ways to get caught cheating, the papers marvel (citing the recent texting troubles of slut puppies like Sen.