Barack Hussein Obama is a beguiling but confounding figure. As he said of himself in "The Audacity of Hope," "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."

It is indeed audacious that he should proclaim this consciously disingenuous attribute. And as one reads his inaugural address, it is hard not to conclude that it was crafted shrewdly to perpetuate such confusion.

Run-of-the-mill politicians try to hide their duplicity. Only the most gifted of that profession brag that they intend to confound and confuse the public.

And it is working. Many of my fellow conservative commentators are embarrassingly eager to search Obama's words, groveling for hopeful signs that he is not a radical intent on changing the face and nature of our republic.

To little notice in America, a drama is being played out in Eastern Europe that future historians may mark as the beginning of the end of Russia's neo-imperialist ambitions under Vladimir Putin.  The economic house of cards he has built is collapsing as the tyrant himself heads for the dustbin of history.

Turning off the natural gas spigot in the middle of a harsh winter to much of Eastern Europe that is completely dependent on it and has few alternative sources to heat its schools and hospitals is the kind of  imperial hubris that often drives dictators past the tipping point and ultimately to their downfall.

This, as Moscow's army of European lobbyists led by paid Gazprom lapdog and former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, sing the praises of ever greater European dependence on Russian energy.

Yet, Europe's cowardice notwithstanding, it is difficult for anybody with even a basic knowledge of the facts not to see that this time Putin has miscalculated badly and is playing a losing hand from an increasingly untenable position.

Israel hasn't killed a single civilian in the Gaza Strip. Over a hundred civilians have died, and Israeli bombs or shells may have ended their lives. But Israel didn't kill them.

Hamas did.

It's time to smash the lies. The lies of Hamas. The UN lies. And the save-the-terrorists lies of the global media.

There is no moral equivalence between Hamas terrorists and Israeli soldiers. There is no gray area. There is no point in negotiations.

Hamas is a Jew-killing machine. It exists to destroy Israel. What is there to negotiate?

When Hamas can't kill Jews, it's perfectly willing to drive Palestinian civilians into the line of fire - old men, women and children. Hamas herds the innocent into "shelters," then draws Israeli fire on them. And the headline-greedy media cheer them on.

Hamas isn't fighting for political goals. "Brokered agreements" are purely means to an end. And the envisioned end is the complete destruction of Israel in the name of a terrorist god.

Would you ask your accountant to perform brain surgery on your child? That's the closest analogy I can find to the choice of Democrat Party hack Leon Panetta to head the CIA.

Earth to President-elect Obama: Intelligence is serious. And infernally complicated. When we politicize it - as we have for 16 years - we get 9/11. Or, yes, Iraq.

The extreme left, to which Panetta's nomination panders, howled that Bush and Cheney corrupted the intelligence system. Well, I worked in the intel world in the mid 1990s and saw how the Clinton team undermined the system's integrity (when Panetta was Clinton White House Chief of Staff).

The director's job at the CIA isn't a party favor. This is potentially a matter of life and death for thousands of Americans. But the choice of Panetta tells us all that Barack Obama doesn't take intelligence seriously.

Dead Jews aren't news, but killing terrorists outrages global activists. On Saturday (12/27), Israel struck back powerfully against its tormentors. Now Israel's the villain. Again.

How long will it be until the UN General Assembly passes a resolution creating an international Holocaust Appreciation Day?  The UN seems always ready to denounce Israel's "crimes."

What have those crimes been? Not "stealing Palestinian land," but making that land productive, while exposing the incompetence and sloth of Arab culture.

Israel's crime isn't striking back at terror, but demonstrating, year after year, that a country in the Middle East can be governed without resort to terror. Israel's crime hasn't been denying Arab rights, but insisting on human rights for women and minorities.

Israel's crime has been making democracy work where tyranny prevailed for 5,000 years. Israel's crime has been survival against overwhelming odds, while legions of Arab nationalists, Islamist extremists and Western leftists want every Jew dead.

But Israel's greatest crime was to...

I recently read a book that deserves the widest possible readership: The Trouble with Textbooks - Distorting History and Religion, by Gary A. Tobin and Dennis R. Ybarra. I never have met or talked with either of these gentlemen, but I can't say enough good things about this book.

For all who believe that there is a fairly objective rendition of history that we are obliged to teach our children, this book reveals how shockingly far from that objective American education - particularly in schools' textbooks - has fallen.

The grievance group that has become particularly adept at influencing textbook publishing is the organized Moslem lobby. Shabbir Mansouri, the founder of the Council on Islamic Education, the chief Islamic group for vetting textbooks in the United States, refers to his work as a "bloodless revolution ... inside American junior high and high school classrooms."

Mr. Mansouri is, regrettably, right.