Happy Hour Roundup
Here’s your daily roundup of quick news hits….
* U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice sends more strong signals that Obama won’t back off his campaign promise of aggressive diplomatic engagement with Iran, saying that Team Obama looks forward to “vigorous diplomacy that includes direct diplomacy with Iran.”
* Polling guru Ruy Teixeira, who seems in the end to have been vindicated in his prediction of an emerging Democratic majority, says there’s massive public support for Obama to think big.
* The email system in the White House — that would be the same White House which now houses some of the same folks who ran a more innovative Internets campaign than anyone could possibly have imagined — goes down for five hours.
* Bill Kristol’s departure from The Times gets covered, sort of, in The Times, but the article says little to nothing about why they’re parting ways (accuracy? quality?), and the paper’s edit board editor, Andrew Rosenthal, won’t tell the paper’s reporter whether another conservative columnist is on deck.
* Karen Keogh, a longtime Hillary hand and consummate New York political insider who I wish would answer my calls, signs up with Hillary replacement Kirsten Gillibrand, reports my pal Glenn Thrush.
* My old TPM colleague Eric Kleefeld keeps owning the endless contest between Al Franken and Norm Coleman, mostly because no one can match his bottomless appetite for this level of minutia.
* There won’t be prosecutions of the Bush administration over its use of extreme interrogation techniques, according to … Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez.
Consider this an open thread…
I am dumbfounded. I just followed your link to the Times article about Bill Kristol being finished there and read this: In November, Mr. Kristol told Portfolio.com that “I’m ambivalent” about the prospect of continuing to write the Times column. “It’s been fun,” he said, adding, “It’s a lot of work.”
Really? He actually worked on those columns? If this weren’t Bill Kristol, I’d almost be embarrassed for him.
hah. funny. I missed that one…
I suppose I’ll take this opportunity to throw in a few random thoughts for you, Greg.
- First: a late congratulations on the new blog. I was certainly skeptical when I first read that you were leaving TPM to work for the WaPo (Will there be an Obama “brain drain” from progressive sites? Will the new readership be able to keep you as honest as you were at TPM? Beware the “Village people” and tire swing syndrome! Etc. etc.), but, as they say, so far so good. The Plum Line is now prominently bookmarked in my “Politics” folder (right under the “Juicebox Mafia” – be proud, dammit!).
- Keep on linking to TPM articles! It’s not personal bias on your part – it’s a public service. Only sort of joking there: there’s a reason that people keep talking about them as a Pulitzer contender.
- Re: Alberto Gonzales and future prosecutions – Marty Lederman is coming for you! Who’s taking bets?
- Finally, even more irrelevantly (irreverently?) I love the “Who Runs Gov” name (and the underlying idea), but the url looks . . . um . . . kinda NSFW when glanced at (”Whor. . . “). Beware Wonkette!
thanks SGEW — and your points are all well taken. I’m glad you’re reading, and I hope you’ll comment as much as you can stand to…
Greg, I don’t want to get you in trouble with your new bosses, but did you see that Kurtz piece re Kristol?
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First off (and not Kurtz’s fault of course) the headline laughably says Kristol “Severs Ties” with the Times (rather than the other way around).
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And then there is Hiatt’s bizarre quoted explanation for Kristol’s firing: “It seems to me there were a lot of Times readers who felt the Times shouldn’t hire someone who supported the Iraq war,” Which explains, I guess, why fellow Iraq War boosters Friedman and Brooks were fired at the same time (not). ”
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Finally, as Yglesias points out, in trying to justify Kristol’s hiring by WaPo:
[Hiatt] doesn’t say Kristol’s column is good! Doesn’t call it insightful, doesn’t call it informative, doesn’t call it well-written. He just says that Kristol is “plugged-in” and influential. Which no doubt he is. But as a consumer of media, I prefer to take in well-written informative commentary that’s entertaining or enlightening. Being deliberately misled by influence-peddlers or wannabe influence-peddlers doesn’t rank high on my priority list. But to Hiatt it’s the very model of a modern major political pundit.
Greg, I don’t want to get you in trouble with your new bosses, but did you see that Kurtz piece re Kristol?
.
First off (and not Kurtz’s fault of course) the headline laughably says Kristol “Severs Ties” with the Times (rather than the other way around).
.
And then there is Hiatt’s bizarre quoted explanation for Kristol’s firing: “It seems to me there were a lot of Times readers who felt the Times shouldn’t hire someone who supported the Iraq war,” Which explains, I guess, why fellow Iraq War boosters Friedman and Brooks were fired at the same time (not).”
.
Finally, as Yglesias points out, in trying to justify Kristol’s hiring by WaPo:
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(Sorry for the duplicate comment. Please delete the first one which has screwed up formatting.)
Great post. Nice blog design also, troubling to see your RSS feed though :S