In Today's WaPo and NYT

Front page of the WaPo: Covert CIA Program Withstands New Furor; Anti-Terror Effort Continues to Grow. Buried near the very bottom of the article are the following grafs:

Attacking the CIA is common when covert programs are exposed and controversial, said Gerald Haines, a former CIA historian who is a scholar in residence at the University of Virginia. "It seems to me the agency is taking the brunt of all the recent criticism."

Duane R. "Dewey" Clarridge, who directed the CIA's covert efforts to support the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s, said the nature of CIA work overseas is, and should be, risky and sometimes ugly. "You have a spy agency because the spy agency is going to break laws overseas. If you don't want it to do those dastardly things, don't have it. You can have the State Department."

All too true. I'm old enough to remember the dark days of the late 70s and early 80s when the CIA was essentially gutted. We're paying the price today for that over-reaction. Let's hope the Left's current faux outrage over "spy scandals" doesn't result in similar counter-productive investigations, legislation, and the resulting exodus of intelligence professionals from the CIA and like organizations.

E. J. Dionne, in What Readers Taught Me:

Ah, yes, the president and his people have a lot of enemies out there, but his friends are just as exercised. A reader from San Diego offered a view that was repeated in many forms: "Most liberals and some Democrats hate this president and will do anything to bring him down, including siding with terrorists against the president."

And here is where I start worrying about our national mood. I don't mind being assailed myself -- even by a theologically minded reader who called me a "badly catechized Catholic." (Blame me, not the nuns and priests who taught me!) But when big chunks of the country begin to view their political adversaries as something close to traitors, we have arrived at a very dangerous time. For this badly catechized Catholic, it's a reason to pray hard for something better next year.

On the whole, not a bad column. I would suggest to Mr. Dionne if he has any influence at all in Washington, he direct the comments in his last two sentences towards people who make statements such as "the war is unwinnable" and "our troops are terrorizing Iraqi families" (both quotes paraphrased). Perhaps if the usual suspects toned down their rhetoric we on the right wouldn't "view (our) political adversaries as something close to traitors." Honest disagreement with, and debate on, policy issues are completely different than providing aid and comfort to the enemy, ya know. Just sayin'.

In yesterday's NYT: In Pursuit of Unhappiness, by Darrin M. McMahon. Excerpt:

Sociologists like to point out that the percentage of those describing themselves as "happy" or "very happy" has remained virtually unchanged in Europe and the United States since such surveys were first conducted in the 1950's. And yet, this January, like last year and next, the self-help industry will pour forth books promising to make us happier than we are today. The very demand for such books is a strong indication that they aren't working.

Should that be a cause for concern? Some critics say it is. For example, economists like Lord Richard Layard and Daniel Kahneman have argued that the apparent stagnancy of happiness in modern societies should prompt policymakers to shift their priorities from the creation of wealth to the creation of good feelings, from boosting gross national product to increasing gross national happiness.

But before we take such steps, we might do well to reflect on the darker side of holiday cheer: those mysterious blues that are apt to set in while the streamers stream and the corks pop; the little voice that even in the best of souls is sometimes moved to say, "Bah, humbug." As Carlyle put it, "The prophets preach to us, 'Thou shalt be happy; thou shalt love pleasant things.' " But as he well knew, the very commandment tended to undermine its fulfillment, even to make us sad.

I'd like to see a survey delineating "happiness" by political affiliation. I'd venture a guess that conservatives are a helluva lot happier than liberals. Not for nothing are entire liberal communities known as "The Perpetually Offended."