As a journalist, I sometimes favor leaks – even of classified material – since far too many mundane government documents continue to be classified top secret and Americans are often denied information they should have in the name of protecting national security.

But as an American who cares deeply both about the nation's global standing and Ukraine's survival, I'm worried about the mysterious leak of a cache of potentially hundreds of Pentagon documents marked "secret" and "top secret," but not for the reason most analysts now cite.

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"Listen up, New York—Florida sucks, and you'll all be back in five years." So proclaimed New York Post reporter Steve Cuozzo last June, after the flight south of hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens from the Empire State. Many have found refuge in Florida, which prides itself on generous tax laws, low crime, a pro-business environment, unobtrusive pandemic policies, an anti-woke ethos, and general ease of life.

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No Russian missiles or bombs were falling on Uzhhrod when I visited this city of 120,000 in western Ukraine three weeks ago. But there were plenty of fresh graves. The remains of 39 men from this city, ages 21 to 54, reside in this cemetery, all killed since Russia's invasion in February.

An older part of the cemetery contains the bodies of men and women from this city, some of the more than 14,000 Ukrainians killed since Russia's first invasion of Ukraine and seizure of Crimea in 2014. "For us," said Anatoly Sukhalov, who takes care of the cemetery, "this war has been going on for a long time."

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Uzhhorod, Ukraine — When Ukraine's First Lady Olena Zelenska visited New York in September, former Gov. George Pataki asked what her country needed most. "Heaters, heaters, heaters!" she exclaimed.

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'Tis the season of endless "best of" lists. Newspapers, magazines, and social media sites have been flooded with their cultural critics' views of 2022's ten best books, plays, restaurants, "hatemongers," and, of course, movies.

A glance at these lists, particularly the "ten best films," suggests how utterly out of touch some of the nation's most prominent film critics are with what Americans want to watch.

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