Frank Gehry is the architect of the proposed memorial. Gehry’s design features large metal tapestries with images of Eisenhower’s boyhood home in Abilene, Kan., and a statue of a young Eisenhower seeming to marvel at what would become of his life. It’s missing the yellow brick road as well as a few other things.

George Will criticizes the proposed memorial by beating mercilessly on his Washington Post colleague, cultural critic Philip Kennicott, for his praise of the design. No animals were hurt in the production of the column, but Kennicott is still tending to his wounds.

Former NEH Chairman Bruce Cole goes right after the design in “Proposed memorial is an insult to Eisenhower.” Cole writes a mean lead:

If the National Capital Planning Commission approves Frank Gehry’s design for a “memorial” to President Eisenhower in April, the nation will wind up with a monumental farce.

Cole is unrelenting:

To be built between the Department of Education and the National Air and Space Museum, it will occupy one of the most prestigious pieces of real estate on the Washington’s already overcrowded National Mall.

The grandiose “memorial” will encompass four acres dotted with random trees and paths bounded by 13 enormous towers, each as tall as an eight-story building. These towers will support colossal screens composed of strips of aluminum, Gehry calls them “tapestries,” but in fact they look like woven chain link fences.

But where’s Ike in all this? Never fear, a single short statue will depict him, as a barefoot country boy from Kansas.

Why? Well, as Gehry explains in his opaque postmodern jargon: “There are people that think this is too big a space for Eisenhower. He wasn’t as important as that space is. Why does he have a space that’s bigger than somebody else?

“He doesn’t. He’s gonna have a little plank, for a little boy. This is an image that’s going to contextualize and modify the location so it can accept that little frontispiece and not get lost in the hubbub of the city. I think it’s going to be very modest.”

Gehry, whose buildings often look like the wreckage of 747s or drunken skyscrapers, purposely subverts the order and stability of traditional architecture.

This is evident in his Eisenhower Memorial, a cross between an amusement park and a golf course, which thumbs its nose at the neo-classical style of the great presidential monuments to Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln and many of the other buildings that line the mall.

We have a Gehry plane crash here in Minneapolis, on the campus of the University of Minnesota, overlooking the Mississippi River. It is the Weisman Art Museum. As a museum of modern art on a university campus, the design does no damage and provides some comic relief.

Not so Gehry’s proposed Eisenhower memorial. It is an exercise in reduction and forgetting: a postmodern twist on the idea of a memorial.

As Cole notes in his column, the Eisenhower family wants to halt the memorial because of the design. The family says architect Frank Gehry’s concept overemphasizes Eisenhower’s humble Kansas roots and neglects to show his many accomplishments during World War II and his time at the White House.

Prominent among the family opponents of the proposed memorial is David Eisenhower, a grandson whose love of his grandfather is informed by a historian’s judgment. He resigned from the memorial commission to protest Gehry’s design. Cole concludes his column on this fitting note:

Gehry as a true postmodernist believes that there is little meaning in history and certainly no heroes. So instead of the feats of the commander in chief of the Allied Forces in World War II and two-term president of the United States, rising generations will see Ike, in Gehry’s words as “a little boy” lost in the maze of the architect’s ego.

That is, unless, those who still believe in heroes stop this traducing of our past.

This Web site is dedicated to exposing the truth about the Memorial, which, for good reason, has barely been shown to the public (more here).

You can see how the increase in debt accelerates beginning in 2009, when Obama took office.

This one shows federal spending over the same period of time, once again taking the future numbers directly from Barack Obama’s own budget plan:

Why do we have too much debt? It’s no mystery; we have too much spending. I don’t know why the Republicans can’t make better use of simple graphics like these to show voters how extreme President Obama’s policies are.

Michael Ramirez weighs in on the debt crisis with a cartoon that is particularly appropriate on Washington’s birthday:

UPDATE: Here is another one, hot off the press: it shows each American’s share of the national debt, by age group. Children born today will be responsible for over $1.5 million in debt, according to the government’s long-term fiscal projections. You can go here to calculate your share of the national debt.

And since we’re celebrating great men, I’ll just second Scott’s notice of the first George W. (since I am sure Scott rather I do this than light up cyber candles for his birthday) with Forrest McDonald’s great account, in his book The American Presidency: An Intellectual History, of Washington’s handling of the Newburg mutiny.  In 1783, a group of army officers, angered by the lack of pay and disgusted with the feebleness of the national government under the Articles of Confederation, met in Newburgh, New York, to contemplate what amounted to a military coup.  Here’s McDonald’s narrative of the climactic meeting:

To the surprise of everyone, [Washington] attended the meeting in person, and by virtue of rank he presided over it.  By the score, officers came in, tempers blazing, only to sit in embarrassed silence as Washington rose.  He had written a short speech, and as he took it from cost pocket he reached with his other hand and extracted a pair of eyeglasses, which only a few intimates knew he needed.  “Gentlemen,” he began, “you will permit me to put in my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray, but almost blind, in the service of my country. . .  This dread alternative, of either deserting our Country in the extremest hour of her distress, or turning our arms against it, . . . has something so shocking in it, that humanity revolts at the idea. . . . I spurn it,” he added, as must every man “who regards that liberty, and reveres that justice for which we contend.”  The officers wept tears of shame, and the mutiny dissolved.  As Thomas Jefferson said later, “The moderation and virtue of one man probably prevented this Revolution from being closed by a subversion of liberty it was intended to establish.”

Now back to my regularly scheduled program of inspecting frabrica de biquinis, as they’re called down here.

On January 23, former CIA employee John Kirakou was arrested on charges of leaking classified information to journalists. If convicted he faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. At first glance, the case seems straightforward. Americans agree that people who illegally disclose national secrets should go to jail.

But the mixture of spies, politics, and Eric Holder’s Justice Department is a wilderness of mirrors.

Mr. Kirakou is known for having publicly criticized the terrorist interrogations that occurred under the Bush administration. I disagree with many of his criticisms, but believe Mr. Kiriakou’s motives were genuine. Democrats made great political theater with allegations of torture of terrorist suspects during the Bush era, using in part Mr. Kiriakou’s statements, and it contributed to the Obama victory.

Now that Mr. Obama owns those same interrogation programs, it seems that Mr. Kiriakou is just another critic of Big Government, and a useful scapegoat for leaks of classified information coming from the CIA and administration officials. Mr. Kiriakou is being prosecuted by Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, which has become a highly politicized arm of the Obama Administration.

The leaks that Mr. Kiriakou is charged with are tiny compared to the leaking of classified intelligence by the Obama Administration and senior bureaucrats at the CIA. According to journalist Marc Ambinder writing in National Journal, “One 20-year veteran of the community who is now a program manager at an agency said that ‘we all know 98 percent of the leaks come from policy-makers or from authorized CIA leaks’.”

After the killing of Osama bin Laden, bureaucrats seeking to take credit for the operation leaked detailed descriptions of Navy tactics and units, in an orgy of leaks to journalists that exposed American servicemen, their families, and our foreign agents to great risk. It is a real concern today within the military’s special operations units. After the raid, a Navy Seal I had worked with during my CIA career sought me out to discuss ways to hide his and his family’s identity.

If Mr. Kiriakou gets a jury trial, then witness after witness could explain to the jury that Mr. Kiriakou is being selectively prosecuted, that his leaks are nothing compared to leaks by Obama administration officials and senior CIA bureaucrats. Witness after witness could show the jury that for any secret material published by Mr. Kiriakou, the books of senior CIA bureaucrats contain many times as much. Former CIA chief George Tenet wrote a book in 2007, approved by CIA censors, that contains dozens of pieces of classified information – names and enough information to find names. But Mr. Tenet was not prosecuted – he was a supporter of Big Government, not a critic.

Mr. Holder’s DOJ should not be able to win in a jury trial. But they’re in their home court, they have infinite resources, and they’ll probably be able to bleed Mr. Kiriakou until he agrees to a lesser punishment in exchange for waiving his right to a trial.

To stop the leaks of classified intelligence, the DOJ should target and prosecute the big leakers, the big fish, not just a convenient scapegoat. Punishment of just one of the Obama administration or senior CIA officials who are providing classified information to the Washington Post or New York Times will put an end to the great majority of leaks and will make our military families safer.

Creating an accountability mechanism within the CIA will end the need for any CIA officer to write a book or speak to journalists. Mr. Kiriakou would not have written his book had he been able to bring his concerns to an accountability board. He did so because there is no internal accountability mechanism within the CIA. I did the same thing. Mr. Kiriakou and I differ in our criticism – my focus is upon the CIA’s need to get its officers overseas to do more aggressive intelligence, and account for waste and fraud in spending. However, the fact that CIA officers with solid careers will face considerable peril to write books critical of the CIA deserves attention.

With General Petraeus now in charge of the CIA, and with his understanding of the Army’s internal accountability systems, perhaps such a system of accountability will be introduced to the CIA. This will lead to great savings, better intelligence collection, and greater security for Americans and our allies.

Ishmael Jones is a former deep cover CIA officer and author of The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture.

GS Elevator Gossip @GSElevator

Now that I have almost 200k followers, it’s probably a good time to tell you about Amway.

#1: Obama wants to raise taxes on people making $250k a year. #2 (laughs): Why is he raising taxes on the poor?

#1: I already know I’m going to Hell. So, at this point it’s go big or go home.

#1: Being held accountable for selling Indonesian corporate bonds is like getting busted for prescribing OxyContin in Hollywood.

#1: Guys who mime golf swings in the office never break 100 on the course.

#1: If you buy into a Greek austerity deal, then I know a stripper who’ll still like you even when you run out of cash.

#1: The biggest lie my mom ever told me was that drinking is only an acceptable hobby for poor people.

[classic] #1: If Robert Kardashian hadn’t gotten OJ off, eventually one of his daughters would have.

#1: I never thought about shorting this market here. But now that I’m hearing ‘Four more years”, I just might.

#1: They went after Milken with a RICO but Corzine gets nothing? #2: That’s M-F’ed up.

#1: Texting is ebonics for white kids.

#1: Hey, do you have change for a $20? #2: $20′s are change, bro.

#1: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, you have boobs.

#1: Lately, I don’t even call it a hangover anymore. Its just the morning.

[Classic] #1: Blacking out is just your brain clearing it’s browser history.

#1: Every time I fly first class to Miami, I feel like I just saved $30,000.

#1: Some chick asked me what I would do with 10 million bucks. I told her I’d wonder where the rest of my money went.

#1: Banks paid back all the bailout money with interest. Remind me again when the unions paid back the auto bailout?

#1: It’s sweet how my wife thinks the silent treatment is a punishment for me.

#1: Europe is starting to make African leaders look competent.

#1: I measure how hammered I am by my ability to recite every line from ‘Caddyshack.’

#1: Rick Perry has single-handedly proven Darwin wrong. #2: And he would take that as a compliment.

#1: Obama is aging fast enough for Morgan Freeman to play him in a movie.

#1: If I were single and always sober, I wouldn’t need to password lock my iPhone.

#1: Mitt Romney would be the kid who tries to run out the clock in Madden football.

Skirt #1: Newt’s an angry, smug, condescending philanderer. Suit #1: I know. He’s awesome.

#1: Most Brits aren’t gay, but their socks are.

#1: I always thought he was a closeted homosexual. #2: It’s possible that he’s just a closeted European.

#1: I don’t care how into the environment she says she is.  No chick wants to be picked up in a Chevy Volt.

There’s lots more, but most of them are R-rated.