AoSHQ The Morning Report
December 31, 2025
In the northeast corner of London’s Hyde Park, near the Marble Arch, is an area long known as Speaker’s Corner. Tradition holds that anyone is free to speak there on any subject for as much time as he pleases, “as long as the police consider their speeches lawful.” Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin would sometimes peddle their poisonous rhetoric there and yet go unmolested by the authorities, though in recent times the police seem to have drawn the “unlawful” line at anything uttered by a native Briton that offends the delicate sensibilities of Muhammadan immigrants.In Other News
Before this turn to sectarian division, passersby in Speaker’s Corner might have been drawn to any number of orators holding forth on any number of subjects. In his 1922 short story “Comrade Bingo,” P.G. Wodehouse described Speaker’s Corner as a place “where weird birds of every description collect on Sunday afternoons and stand on soap-boxes and make speeches.” Sometimes one of those birds may have spoken so compellingly as to draw a crowd, at least for a time, with the truly mesmerized drawing ever closer while others, less captivated by the delivery, remained on the fringes.
Encouraged by his enveloping circle of admirers, a speaker might begin to test the limits of credibility, making claims that, to those most devoted to him sound plausible, but to others ring as lunacy. To the speaker’s eye, surrounded as he is by ardent followers clapping and nodding and amen-ing along, the crowd remains as large and committed as ever, as the cheers and applause generated by the inner circle conceals the fact that people beyond are drifting away while commenting that the speaker is a very weird bird indeed.
Palace of Saint Nicholas in the Moon
Christmas Morning ~ Mark Twain
My Dear Susy Clemens,
I have received and read all the letters which you and your little sister have written me . . . . I can read your and your baby sister's jagged and fantastic marks without any trouble at all. But I had trouble with those letters which you dictated through your mother and the nurses, for I am a foreigner and cannot read English writing well. You will find that I made no mistakes about the things which you and the baby ordered in your own letters--I went down your chimney at midnight when you were asleep and delivered them all myself--and kissed both of you, too . . . . But . . . there were . . . one or two small orders which I could not fill because we ran out of stock . . . .
There was a word or two in your mama's letter which . . .I took to be "a trunk full of doll's clothes." Is that it? I will call at your kitchen door about nine o'clock this morning to inquire. But I must not see anybody and I must not speak to anybody but you. When the kitchen doorbell rings, George must be blindfolded and sent to the door. You must tell George he must walk on tiptoe and not speak--otherwise he will die someday. Then you must go up to the nursery and stand on a chair or the nurse's bed and put your ear to the speaking tube that leads down to the kitchen and when I whistle through it you must speak in the tube and say, "Welcome, Santa Claus!" Then I will ask whether it was a trunk you ordered or not. If you say it was, I shall ask you what color you want the trunk to be . . . and then you must tell me every single thing in detail which you want the trunk to contain. Then when I say "Good-by and a merry Christmas to my little Susy Clemens," you must say "Good-by, good old Santa Claus, I thank you very much." Then you must go down into the library and make George close all the doors that open into the main hall, and everybody must keep still for a little while. I will go to the moon and get those things and in a few minutes I will come down the chimney that belongs to the fireplace that is in the hall--if it is a trunk you want--because I couldn't get such a thing as a trunk down the nursery chimney, you know . . . .If I should leave any snow in the hall, you must tell George to sweep it into the fireplace, for I haven't time to do such things. George must not use a broom, but a rag--else he will die someday . . . . If my boot should leave a stain on the marble, George must not holystone it away. Leave it there always in memory of my visit; and whenever you look at it or show it to anybody you must let it remind you to be a good little girl. Whenever you are naughty and someone points to that mark which your good old Santa Claus's boot made on the marble, what will you say, little sweetheart?
Good-by for a few minutes, till I come down to the world and ring the kitchen doorbell.
Your loving Santa Claus Whom people sometimes call"The Man in the Moon"
The Trump administration is preparing to crack down on student loan defaulters starting next year. This will be interesting because you can bet Democrats are going to flip out about this. The Education Department confirmed it will begin withholding wages from borrowers who fail to pay their debts.In Other News
The first wave hits in early January. About 1,000 individuals who defaulted on their student loans will see wage garnishments begin the week of Jan. 7, 2026.
“We expect the first notices to be sent to approximately 1,000 defaulted borrowers the week of January 7,” an Education Department spokesperson told The New York Post. “The notices will increase in scale on a month-to-month basis.”
The enhanced Obamacare subsidies Democrats shut down the government to protect back in October are officially dead. House Speaker Mike Johnson slammed the door on extending the bloated COVID-era handout, saying the House will focus instead on moving forward with a new Republican healthcare package.In Other News








