Don’t sleep in once you are done with your New Year’s Eve party. Instead, make sure to check out MSNBC’s Up With Chris Hayes at 8am (EST) on New Year’s Day. FrumForum’s Managing Editor Noah Kristula-Green will be on the show’s panel.

Also on the panel for the January 1st show will be Errol Lewis, Political Editor of New York 1; Amanda Marcotte, a Contributor to Slate & The Guardian, and Michael Brendan Dougherty, Political Editor of Business Insider (formerly a Contributor to The American Conservative).

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In my column for the National Post, I discuss the importance of the latest issue of the Dorchester Review:

I’ve written before about Canada’s important new historical journal, the Dorchester Review. Now they have published a second issue – and I am doing it again.

This opening paragraph from one of the current issue essays nicely conveys why the Dorchester Review matters so much:

“The myth of a ‘Great Betrayal’ by Britain during the second world war has taken root in Australia, not just in the minds of parochial scholars, but in a hazy anglophobia amongst the general population. Fortunately, Augustine Meaher, an American scholar at Melbourne University, has stripped away the naive excuses and selective use of sources characterizing what he calls Australia’s ‘national myth.’ Meaher’s grandfather served with U.S. forces in the South Pacific during the war. He came to Australia to escape the narrowness of U.S. institutions and discovered a prime example of Australian parochialism instead. Australians can be grateful for his scholarly demolition of our local mythology.”

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As 2011 comes to a close, FrumForum plans to re-run some of our best featured pieces from the year. In ‘Two Cheers for the Welfare State’ David Frum responded to Yuval Levin’s essay in National Affairs about America’s welfare state.

Don’t miss Yuval Levin’s piece in the current National Affairs, “Beyond the Welfare State.”

The piece is interesting and important for many reasons, but not least because of its author’s background: a prominent Bush domestic policy staffer, Levin has spent a lot of time pondering the question: “What is/was compassionate conservatism?”

Based on his new essay, the answer seems to be: compassionate conservatism is kaput.

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As we say goodbye to 2011, here’s FrumForum’s look back at the year in politics and popular culture — and the way the two keep intersecting year in and year out. It was the year when John Boehner replaced Nancy Pelosi as the House’s number one power broker — or so he wished. (With Eric Cantor and a rebellious Tea Party caucus standing in back of him, how’s that Speakership workin’ out for ya?)

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With the NBA season finally upon us, I find myself thinking about an NBA legend who never laced up the sneakers – legendary Celtics announcer, Johnny Most. I’ve written about sports voices before, those I loved (Dave Zinkoff) and those I hated (John Sterling). With Johnny Most, I had trouble deciding.

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As 2011 comes to a close, FrumForum plans to re-run some of our best featured pieces from the year. The piece by David Frum discusses whether or not the Founding Fathers would be recognized as libertarians.

Let me toss in my 5 cents worth on the question of whether the Founders were “libertarians.”

This seems to me a question approximately as meaningful as asking whether the Founders would have preferred Macs or PCs: it exports back into the past an entirely alien mental category.

Libertarianism fuses two ideas, one political, one psychological. The political idea is that the central state should be confined within the narrowest possible limits. The psychological idea is that each person should enjoy the widest possible scope to live as he or she thinks best.

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Here’s another tragic misunderstanding of Ron Paul’s message of human freedom: Paul has just gained David Duke’s endorsement. This week, the former KKK Grand Wizard telephoned into the radio show hosted by Stormfront founder Don Black to announce his support, and the two men had the following conversation.

Ron Paul was a hot topic this week on the talk radio show hosted by prominent white supremacist Don Black and his son Derek. Mr. Black said he received Mr. Paul’s controversial newsletters when they were first published about two decades ago and described how the publications were perceived by members of the white supremacist movement. Former KKK Grand Wizard and Louisiana Congressman David Duke also phoned in to explain why he’s voting for Mr. Paul.

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As 2011 comes to a close, FrumForum plans to re-run some of our best featured pieces from the year. Here is Eli Lehrer’s observation on the GOP leadership.

I’m not the first to make this comment, but the current debt limit debate shows what the Tea Party movement (which I once basically supported) really values: being a jerk. Speaker Boehner has a close-to-perfect voting record on conservative issues, is not terribly warm in person (heck, Newt comes across better) and has proposed a good, tough spending cut plan. But he has also demonstrated a modicum of willingness to work with the president and appears to want to bring the debt ceiling crisis to a close.

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For at least some of the Republican candidates, I don’t doubt that the position that abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape, incest and the mother’s life stems from sincere, deep moral conviction.

But Iowa front-runner Ron Paul’s position that states should outlaw abortion even in these “hard cases” but the federal government should not extend any rights to the unborn ought to be more disturbing to the pro-life movement than even an outright pro-abortion position.

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It has been a busy month for Iran in its ongoing conflict with the United States. First, the Iranian government displayed what it said is a crashed U.S. drone discovered in Iran. Then, the nation’s deputy oil minister admitted that U.S. sanctions against Iran are inflicting damage on its economy.

As a result, the rogue state announced that it will hold war games along key shipping lanes and that any further U.S. sanctions would result in the closing of the most important of those lanes, the Strait of Hormuz—the pathway for more than 20% of the world’s oil supply. Next, the trial of American-born Iranian Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, whom the Iranians claim is a U.S. spy, began this week.

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