This week Host John Snyder discusses the beam in the eye of the Republican Party and challenges some of the assumptions of knee-jerk conservatism and blabber-mouth talk radio. Later we  commemorate the anniversary of the great and terrible battle of Fredericksburg (Dec 11th 1862), where the Union Army under Major General Ambrose Burnside was tragically defeated in a effort to cross the Rappahannock River in winter and carry the battle for the republic into Virginia and contest the Confederate army of Northern Virginia on its own turf. Seldom discussed and mostly forgotten, this battle serves as an illustration of the kinds of problems a democratic nation confronts in times of unpopular war and what presidents and generals do and often fail to do in the crisis and political confusion of war..