SHAMED SENT ME THIS EXCHANGE from last night’s “Crossfire.” Since he hasn’t posted it yet, I will.

BEGALA: What they [Saudi Arabian ads that have been airing on TV] don’t mention, of course, is the anti- American, anti-Israel hatred they spew out of the madrasas, the religious schools that they fund, or the comments from their own ambassador to Great Britain, who called the White House a place of darkness, or the comments in the paper the past few days that said if we have to, we’ll ally ourselves with Khadafy or with Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, if we have to. We’ll do whatever it takes. Somehow, those kind of comments didn’t make it in their expensive ads.

NOVAK: Let me try to explain this to you. The Crown Prince Abdullah was down at the ranch at Crawford, Texas with the president, had a very good meeting. They have a very promising peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians. And, naturally, there’s so much venom spewed by people like you, by the spokesman for the Israeli lobby, that they have to buy advertising to get their two cents in when Tom Lantos, the ranking Democratic on the House international relations committee, calls Saudi Arabia, one of our best friends in the Middle East, a medieval theocracy and dictatorship.

BEGALA: That’s probably just an insult to medieval theocracies and dictatorships.