Security desk: Michael Flynn Deserves an Apology

Michael Flynn was forced to resign as President Trump’s national security adviser after widely being branded a traitor over his alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 transition. But as Bloomberg’s Eli Lake notes, “none of this was true.” So how, he asks, “did Washington get sucked into believing” that Flynn, portrayed as “a bumbling Benedict Arnold,” betrayed his country? Part of it is guilt by association, but any evidence that he was acting on behalf of Russia “is lacking.” His only crime: concealing his not-unusual Russian contacts from the incoming Trump White House. Why he lied “remains a mystery” — as does why the FBI was investigating him in the first place. Because “in no other era would these be grounds for treating a national security adviser like a member of a crime family.”

Conservative: Guess Who’ll Love the Impeachment Process

Those born at the right time “will get to fully observe three presidential impeachment fights” — including the one “likely opening in earnest in January,” observes Hugh Hewitt at The Washington Post. Because the fact remains that “an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House says it is.” And that “House Democrats are going to drive toward a vote on one or more articles of impeachment” against President Trump seems “predestined.” Never mind that there’s virtually no chance of Trump being convicted: Given “the militarized industrial news complex that must be fed,” it will be “a ratings bonanza.” And we all know who loves ratings bonanzas. Says Hewitt: “This president can look at his markers already on the table and actually come to relish the battle.”

Culture critic: Times, Author Push Anti-Jewish Tome

Tablet’s Yair Rosenberg reports that The New York Times Book Review on Sunday published an interview with Alice Walker, author of “The Color Purple,” who said she was reading “And the Truth Shall Set You Free,” by David Icke. The Times failed to note that this book “is an unhinged anti-Semitic conspiracy tract written by one of Britain’s most notorious anti-Semites.” Icke’s book “claims that a secret conspiracy control the world” and, like most conspiracy theories, this one “happens to be Jewish.” Fact is, “the cultural establishment has spent years studiously looking away from Walker’s praise of Icke and his work, and her repeated expressions of anti-Semitism.” Indeed, says Rosenberg: “We have known who she is for many years. It is the Times and other cultural elites who have opted to ignore this inconvenient fact.”

Reporter: Holland Tunnel Fiasco Shows NY’s Transit Woes

Slate’s Henry Grabar has been driving through the Holland Tunnel at Christmastime for a quarter-century and has always seen “the same set of asinine Christmas decorations” that created such an uproar this year. The Port Authority, in agreeing to change them, congratulated itself for taking “customer feedback seriously.” Nonsense, says Graber: It only shows that New York politicians, “unwilling to confront the deep, structural problems at the agencies they are supposed to oversee, have become obsessed with aesthetics and superficial problems.” In fact, the Holland Tunnel decorations represent “the dysfunctional fruits of a dysfunctional organization, the faithful convergence of appearance and reality.” The Port Authority “isn’t just an agency that can’t put up Christmas decorations right — it’s one that can’t figure out how to build a bus terminal for less than $10 billion.”

From the right: Beto Boomlet Shows Dems’ 2020 Weakness

A new CNN poll puts Beto O’Rourke right behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in the race for the 2020 Democratic nomination. That, says Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner, says less about him than about “how weak many other likely Democratic contenders are as the campaign enters its preliminary stages.” That O’Rourke, “without doing much, could leapfrog all of the other candidates who had been clearly positioning themselves to run for years, suggests that none of the Democratic candidates enter the race in a particularly strong position.” Even more surprising is the poll’s dropoff in support for Elizabeth Warren, who was “initially seen as the greatest threat to Hillary Clinton in 2016 were she to run.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann