2009 is already begun in Australia.

The radio program celebrates the end of '08 and the beginning of '09 with the two-day broadcast of an extended interview with Dr. Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, on the greatest ideas and thinkers of all time.  Make a resolution to listen today and tomorrow and hear a small bit of the large story of the West and how it came to be --through the force of ideas.  Happy New Year.

The once and perhaps very-soon-again Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu gave an interview yesterday on the battle to topple Hamas in Gaza.  Read the whole thing.  Key exchanges:

Q. In the short-term, what needs to happen. Can there be a ceasefire with Hamas?

A. "I think we want to make sure that the firing of rockets stops, but also that the capability to fire future rockets is also stopped."

Q. And how long can this take? Will it be weeks, days?

A. "I don't know. I think what is important is the goal and not how long it takes to achieve."

Q. And if you're elected prime minister in the coming election, will removing the Hamas administration in Gaza be a key goal of your government?

A. "Yes."

Q. And how would you go about it?

A. "With all the means necessary to achieve it."

Q. What about the peace talks with the Palestinians, with Mahmoud Abbas, who has been critical of Hamas? Will you be pursuing peace talks?

A. "Absolutely. I believe there are Palestinians who want peace and Palestinians who are terrorised by Hamas. In fact, I think the people of Gaza are being terrorised by Hamas itself. They're held hostage ... I mean Hamas ... puts its arms caches, its rocket launchers in dense civilian populations. They're basically using these people as human shields ... My goal is to defeat Hamas and to bring up peace with those Palestinians who want to live in peace."

Q. And can that be done without targeting Hamas leaders specifically? Do you see Israel targeting Hamas leaders in this operation?

A. "I don't want to get into the tactics. I think this Hamas regime has to go."

I have no idea how the war on Hamas is impacting Israeli politics and the approaching elections on February 10.  If there are Israeli political bloggers in Israel with stellar reputations like those of Powerline or Geraghty in the U.S., please send me the links via hugh@hughhewitt.com.

Be sure to read as well Alan Dershowitz's "Israel, Hamas and Moral Idiocy" in today' Christian Science Monitor.  Everytime I hear some MSMer passing along a condemnation of Israel's alleged "disproportionate response," I ask myself if the critics employing that canard want Israel to respond with 2,000 rockets lobbed into Gaza with no targeting.  The use of indiscriminate missile attacks against civilians is a war crime.  If Hamas had bigger and deadlier rockets that could reach farther into Israel and kill more, it would use those, just as Hezbollah did in the 2006 war.  The moral idiots that Dershowitz refers to are counting dead and wounded, not focusing on the means of the attack and the intent.  Israel is declaring, hopefully one and for all, that it will not abide the use of such missile attacks and will strike back whenever they are employed and will do so until they end.

As with the YouTube channel discussed below, the Israelis have figured out new media is part of the battlefield.

Time to go read up on YoniTheBlogger.

The key to Blago: Which moves will help the book deal?

He reminds me of my hometown's old congressman Jim Traficant.  No sense going quietly into the clink.  Perhaps Blago will defend himself at trial?

Don't miss Bret Stephens' essay on the war against Hamas.  Key graphs:

Hamas knows one big thing, which it labels "resistance" or, for Western audiences, "ending the occupation." Just what that means was made clear by Palestinian cleric Muhsen Abu 'Ita in a televised interview. "The annihilation of the Jews here in Palestine," he said, "is one of the most splendid blessings for Palestine."

This kind of genocidal incitement is more than idle ranting: Gigantic ambitions sustain political movements through hard times. Hamas is also sustained by the insight that Israel's considerable military capabilities are unlikely to be matched by political will. It believes that whatever attacks come will be tempered by a host of humanitarian and diplomatic considerations. It believes that Israel wants to avoid a public relations debacle (so Hamas will do everything it can to engineer or fabricate one). It believes that the weight of international sympathy will be on its side. It believes, too, that the last thing Israel wants is to reoccupy Gaza, with all the costs and complications that entails.

Hamas believes, in short, that while Israel will do many things, and do them well, it will not do the main thing. And that, in turn, means that as Israel exhausts its target list, as eventually it will, the storm will pass. Then the green flag of the movement will fly defiantly over the tallest building left standing, its prestige hugely boosted -- and Israel's commensurately diminished -- throughout the Muslim world.

The IDF has launched a YouTube channel covering its operations in Gaza.

This step recognizes that the battle in Gaza is also a battle for world opinion, and that Israel --and every other democratic state facing a terrorist threat-- needs to provide accurate information about all operations in as timely and direct a fashion as operational security will allow.  With Hamas enjoying the advantage of Arab television stations eager to broadcast pictures of the carnage, Israel needs to continue to convey the IDF's attempt to minimize the death and injury to innocents.

Noah Pollack is reporting that YouTube is censoring the material, which is very troubling.  How in the world is the world going to know what to believe when third parties attempt to referee competing claims via censorship?

The YouTube channel, even if uncensored, is still only raw data.  Where to turn to for the sort of analysis that conveys how crucial this battle is, and how jumbled the alliances.

Jeffrey Goldberg writes:

I've been talking to friends of mine, former Palestinian Authority intelligence officials (ejected from power by the Hamas coup), and they tell me that not only are they rooting for the Israelis to decimate Hamas, but that Fatah has actually been assisting the Israelis with targeting information.

Egypt is certainly hoping to see Hamas uprooted from Gaza.  Anyone who favors peace in the region via a negotiated settlement has to hope for the same thing.  This is the hardest thing for many in MSM to grasp --Hamas is al Qaeda with better pr.  The American coverage I have been reading and hearing is not conveying the nature of Hamas or the desire of many of Israel's Arab neighbors and potential peace partners to see Hamas routed from Gaza.

I'll try and line-up Goldberg for when I get back.  I missed his January, 2008 book Prisoners, or I'd have already had him onto discuss and included the conversation in The War Against the West.  I'll also try to find Robin Wright, whose Shadows and Dreams spent a lot of time delineating the divides among the Arab world that work both to empower and isolate Hamas.  If Israel's objective is to destroy Hamas so as to empower the PLA to return to Gaza and reunite the land over which a negotiated settlement can proceed, journalists and analysts like Wright and Goldberg, Michael Totten and Bret Stephens, and Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi will be as key as YouTube to explaining this to the American audience again confused by the strange alliances and brutal rules of the Middle East. 

My new Townhall.com column covers my resolutions for 2009.

The Fetching Mrs. Hewitt suggests not posting while on vacation. Like that is going to work.  Any suggestions can be sent to hugh@hughhewitt.com or sent to me on Twitter @hughhewitt or by using the hash tag #hhrs.

I note the Browns will be drafting fifth, which is part of the plan to make Cleveland and Ohio sports the center of the sports universe in the year 2009.  First the Cavs, then the Tribe, then the Bucks and Brown.  I think four national titles in a single year will greatly compensate for the frustrations of the past.  Beating the Celtics and Lakers, the Yankees, and the Steelers and USC along the way will greatly add to the pleasure of the extraordinary year ahead.

Back to vacation mode.

Deep in a long New York Times story on Israel's offensive against Hamas comes these paragraphs summing up the dividing line on the conflict between Israel and Islamist radicals:

Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, condemned the silence of some Arab countries, which he said had prepared the grounds for the “catastrophe,” an Iranian news agency, ISNA, reported.

“The horrible crime of the Zionist regime in Gaza has once again revealed the bloodthirsty face of this regime from disguise,” he said in a statement. “But worse than this catastrophe is the encouraging silence of some Arab countries who claim to be Muslim,” he said, apparently in a reference to Egypt and Jordan.

Egypt has mediated talks between Israel and the Palestinians and between Hamas and Hamas’s rival, Fatah, leaving it open to criticism that it is too willing to work with Israel. In turn, Egypt and other Western-allied Sunni Arab nations are deeply opposed to Hezbollah and Hamas, which they see as extensions of Iran, their Shiite nemesis.

On one side, those nations and forces that support IsrAel's right to exist even if they also demand a state for the Palestinians.  On the other:  Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamist radicals across the globe that want Israel destroyed.

This is the same conflict that has defined the presidency of George Bush and it will define the presidency of Barack Obama.  We have to hope that the president-elect achieves the same clarity about the conflict that the president has, and signals early and often that there will be no negotiation with any state or entity that denies the right of Israel to exist within secure borders.

The great danger is that the new Adminstration will see some upside in talking with Hamas and Hezbollah or their sponsor Iran.  There is no possibility of a "grand bargain" with these forces because they are not driven by any objective that can be met short of the destruction of Israel.  If the president-elect conveyed his understanding of this central fact, he'd go a long way towards reassuring the world and the region that we were not in for a Carter-like epic naivete about our enemies.

Powerline and Contentions have many crucial links and commentaries on the battle to topple Hamas.

The Times of London's Anatole Kaletsky provides a concise look back at the events leading up to when "the entire world financial system suffered this unprecedented nervous breakdown."

What I appreciate about the analysis is that it begins with an admission that no one, including Kaletsky, saw it coming.

The special Christmas program with Professor David Allen White on Handel's Messiah and Friday's program with DAW on Shakespeare are both available on CD.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Both Florida's Urban Meyer and Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, who will face off in the national-championship game on Jan. 8, grew up in Ohio. Recent title-winners Jim Tressel of Ohio State and Les Miles of LSU are native Ohioans, as are two of the college game's rising stars, Nebraska's Bo Pelini and Missouri's Gary Pinkel. The list of coaches with Ohio ties includes Alabama's Nick Saban, who played at Kent State and coached at Toledo, and USC's Pete Carroll, who was an Ohio State assistant in 1979.

Less than 4% of the country's population lives in Ohio, but 15% of college football's major-conference head coaches were born there -- the most for any state. And this volume is more than matched by quality: 14 of the last 18 teams that have made it to the national title game have had head coaches with Ohio connections.

Four decades ago, when Ohio State's Woody Hayes, Michigan's Bo Schembechler and Notre Dame's Ara Parseghian prowled the college sidelines -- and fellow Ohioans Don Shula and Chuck Noll ruled the NFL -- Ohio's coaching supremacy was a foregone conclusion. But at a time when the best football is generally played in the South -- teams from the Southeastern Conference have won the last two national titles -- the rise of a new generation of Ohio coaches belies the popular perception that Midwestern football is slow, staid and increasingly obsolete.

Facts are stubborn things.  Read the whole thing.

Be sure to watch the whole thing.  HT: Lileks at RobinsonandLong.com.

The president-elect dropped in on some Marines stationed in Hawaii yesterday, a fine gesture of appreciation for the military he will soon be leading.

The Los Angeles Times reported in a separate article, however, that "President-elect Barack Obama's transition team has signaled that the incoming administration will look to cut the Pentagon budget, of which military personnel costs are a rising share."   This in an article on the many demands on the Army, which are paralleled by demands on the other services. 

Even as Iraq settles into a stable and largely peaceful normality --Iraqi Christians who fled during the period of the greatest violence are returning to the country, and Christmas was celebrated openly there yesterday-- and U.S. forces can be carefully drawn down, the demands in Afghanistan and elsewhere are mounting.  As much as Democrats would love to replay the nineties and declare another "peace dividend," they can't do so without endangering basic U.S. security.  As a matter of simple politics, the worst thing that the new president could do would be to shortchange the military and with it the security of the country.

Rather than cutting at the Pentagon's budget, the new Administration should continue President Bush's focus on the well-being of the troops that are carrying the burden of the war through pay and housing improvements.  Visiting the Marines and other forces around the country and the globe is a very good practice for the new president to continue, but he should let his transition team know that the military's budget will continue to increase on his watch, not be slimmed down.

Merry Christmas.

For reasons detailed in the post on the economy below, I want the president-elect to succeed in conveying confidence and energy as he assumes office.  I don't want him enmeshed in a scandal that draws in his close associates and key advisors.  I want him to focus on the war and get that right, on the economy and get that right, and rethink disastrous ideas on health care etc.

I want him, in other words, to grow in office into a centrist figure who will recognize that his allies on the left genuinely don't have a clue about wars are won or economies grown.  President-elect Obama is a smart guy.  It could happen.

But he also has to figure out you cannot game a nasty bit of business like Blagojevich, or Chief of Staff-designate Emanuel's calls to Balgoland.  Put everything out early, answer every question now, and toss everyone from the bus immediately if necessary.  I got many e-mails after yesterday's show pointing out how extraordinary it is for the president-elect and two key staffers to be interviewed in a massive criminal investigation into corrutpiton and not to have had the interviews announced for many days or basic follow-up questions asked and answered.  This attempt to massage the story might work in illinois or during a presidential campaign when the MSM is blocking for you, but it won't work over a four year term when careers have to made and remade by media climbers.  There's always a young Woodward who will go where there's a story.  President-elect Obama would do himself and the country a lot of good by abandoning the tactics of the last two weeks and start to live by the openness and transparency he promised. 

From an Assistant United States Attorney:

Caught some of the show yesterday after the release of the Obama internal report.

I know you're off the air for a couple weeks, but I thought I'd mention a couple of things:

First, the "false statement" statute is 18 USC Sec. 1001 (not 2001).

Second, neither the FBI nor US Attorney's Office  puts witnesses under oath when they are interviewed.  The oath is only administered before testimony before a GJ.  Agents are not authorized to administer an oath, nor are prosecutors.

Nevertheless, the existence of the 1001 statute has the same 
functional effect.  Any intentional misstatement or omission of a 
material fact when being questioned by a federal law enforcement agent about a matter under investigation is a felony, oath or no oath.  That's why LIbby was charged both with perjury before the GJ and making false statements to the FBI during his earlier interviews.

As for the order of the witness interviews, its really only 
speculation, and witness availability has a lot to do with it, but in 
my experience having done a few wiretap cases involving drugs back in California, you start with the recorded conversations as your basic record.  I would then pull the telephone tolls of every person who was recorded, and I would want to know who they spoke to on the phone immediately before and immediately after each recorded conversation.  So, if Emanuel is recorded at 12:00 noon talking to Harris about appointing Jarrett, and at 12:15 there is a telephone toll showing a call to Obama, I would want to ask Obama about the contents of that phone call.  If there was a call at 12:20 from Emanuel to Jarrett, I would want to ask Jarrett about that phone call -- keeping in mind that I know what it is Emanuel and Harris talked about because they are recorded.   So, it's sometimes easy to pick-up on prevarications and inconsistencies when you start getting explanations that don't  sound right.  Once you have the interviews done of the people who were contacted around the same time as key recorded conversations you go 
back to the person who was recorded and ask him about the unrecorded conversations that came before and after the recorded conversations.

This is really where the current environment -- the same as the 
environment Libby found himself in -- borders on the unfair.  
Fitzgerald knows -- as any good prosecutor would know and take 
advantage of -- that the people he wants to talk to cannot assert 
their Fifth Amendment rights for political reasons.  If I was 
Emanuel's lawyer, it would be my advice that he not be interviewed - he has only his best recollection of what he has been recorded as saying, and he doesn't get to listen to his conversations prior to answering questions about them.  Second, he has no idea what the other people being interviewed are saying about unrecorded conversations they had with him.

For a prosecutor this is the equivalent of "broken field running" -- 
you're through the line or scrimmage and behind the linebackers, and everyone else is trying to catch-up to where you are.  Fitzgerald has probably 3-4 guys/gals working on this full time -- meaning they spend all day comparing transcripts, subpoenaed documents, and interview notes looking for opportunities to lay traps for people about to be interviewed.  That was the undoing of Libby and almost Rove.  When the prosecutor calls you back to the GJ for the 3rd and 4th time, its not because he's still genuinely unsure about your testimony.  He's asking you to navigate the minefield of the record that has been created to that point under oath.  Your missteps are going to become his indictment.  No normal person would go back to the GJ time after time, 
but Fitzgerald knows that he's going to get whatever he asks for 
because doing otherwise would make it look like Obama's people have something to hide.

The report comes out late in the day on Tuesday, Dec. 23.  They know that most folks like yourself are going to be off the air on Wed, or they are going to have holiday themed shows.  Thurs, is obviously not a news day, and Fri is likely going to be the same.  Next you have the dead week between Christmas and New Years.

Obama is in Hawaii until Jan. 2 with no public events planned where he might be asked questions.  Emanuel is in Africa where he is out of contact on a long planned family vacation.

Consider that again -- the incoming WH Chief of Staff, in a "change of parties" transition from one Presidency to the next which is less than 4 weeks away -- and he's in Africa??????

And they want the press to have nothing on this story other than their self-serving exoneration of all key staffers.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.