Washington Post Top Online Stories: Mon 11/29/10

The Washington Post lead headline online early Monday morning says "American exceptionalism: an old idea and a new political battle." The paper says with Republicans and tea party activists accusing President Obama and the Democrats of turning the country toward socialism, the idea that the United States is inherently superior to the world's other nations has become the battle cry from a new front in the ongoing culture wars.

The paper says a vast treasure trove of secret State Department cables obtained by the Web site WikiLeaks has exposed the inner workings of U.S. diplomacy, as well as bluntly candid assessments by American diplomats, according to news organizations granted advance access to the more than 250,000 confidential documents.

It says the release of a huge tranche of U.S. diplomatic cables has laid bare the primary risk associated with the U.S. government's attempt to encourage better information-sharing: Someone is bound to leak.

The paper says at St. Matthew's, faithful have mixed views as they ponder the pope's comments on condom use.

It says Haiti's much-anticipated presidential election ended Sunday as broken as the buildings around the capital city, with protests flaring across the country and nearly all the major candidates calling for the results to be tossed out amid "massive fraud."

And the most popular story says "Why the TSA pat-downs and body scans are unconstitutional."