Requiem For A Public Option

The traditional media is certainly trying its best to bury the public option today, whether motivated by their corporate colleagues, the usual bipartisan fetishists or key figures inside the White House itself. Both major newspapers write essentially the same article about it today. The New York Times writes an elegy for the public option beginning with the line "It was just one line in a campaign manifesto, and it hardly seemed the most significant or contentious." The story goes on to claim that the public option's death is basically attributable to its probable success.

Champions of the public plan said it could save money by using Medicare rates and fee schedules to pay hospitals and doctors. In a book last year, one of Mr. Obama’s top advisers, former Senator Tom Daschle, said consumers should have the option of enrolling in “a government-run insurance program modeled after Medicare, a proven and popular program.”

That is exactly what worries health care providers, who say Medicare pays them less than market rates paid by private insurers. And they have pressed their concerns on Capitol Hill with a small army of lobbyists.

Conservatives have another concern. They see the public option as a step toward a single-payer system in which the government would pay most of the nation’s health care bill and could supplant private insurers.

Essentially, health care providers want to maximize their profits, and so they prefer an inefficient, profit-taking private insurance system. They are symbiotic to protect one another's profits.

The Washington Post's article gives yet another voice to White House officials' feigned surprise that the public option has become so outsized in the debate.

White House officials are somewhat baffled by House Democrats continuing to push for legislation that includes a robust public insurance option when it's clear the Senate will not embrace such a provision. In their view, the public option was never debated in the campaign, was never the center of a national debate and appears to lack the votes regardless of what public opinion polls show about its popularity.

In the opposite view, the public option may have not been debated in the campaign, but it's the center of a national debate right now, polls show it popular, and if it's such a minor part of the overall bill, why are Democratic moderates holding the legislation hostage to it? But for some reason, the dynamic never flows that way in Washington.

If there was ever a moment to get through to the White House, it happened yesterday. The President, at a rally in Minnesota, stated his support for a public option, and the crowd went wild. Absolutely nuts. So much so, the President seemed unnerved by it. He kept on with the same rhetoric from his Wendesday speech about how it's not a big deal and it wouldn't cover everybody. But efforts to rein that in just elicited confusion.



Like it or not, the public option has major grassroots support, and it's driving whatever energy exists around the bill. Kill it and you kill any attempt at leveraging that energy. And the prospects for a bill become remote. Maybe Obama figured this out yesterday in Minnesota.

NYT's Insurance Industry Tearjerker Tries To Change The Subject From Industry Practices

The New York Times published a very nice press release from the desk of Humana, one of the nation's largest health insurance companies. The reporter interviewed a bunch of employees at Humana, all of whom were horrified to see themselves depicted as "villains" in the health care debate. I agree with Yves Smith, this is an absurd angle for a story, an extreme example of selection bias. The people who work at Humana probably have a sense that their employer, um, pays their salary, and thusly, what's good for the employer is probably good for them. Similarly, most people hold a favorable opinion of themselves just as a matter of getting through the day. Not to mention the fact that their understanding of the functioning of Humana is limited to their job description. It is not possible to gain much of a perspective on the health care debate or industry practices by asking a midlevel manager "Do you think you're the worst person alive?"

Since when is it legitimate, much the less newsworthy, to get a company's perception on its embattled status, at least without introducing either some contrary opinion or better yet, facts, to counter the views of people who will inevitably see what they are doing as right? I hate to draw an extreme comparison to make the point, but staff in Nazi concentration camps also thought they were good people. It is well documented that for all save the depressed, people's assessments of their own behavior is biased in their favor.

There is some revelatory stuff in the article, however. David Sirota flags one employee saying that Humana believes in keeping down costs by "controlling utilization":

Now, I know we're supposed to think that private for-profit health care companies don't ration care, while government-run programs like Medicare do - but as the insurance industry admits right here for all to see, that's just not the case. The obvious truth is that the health insurance industry works hard to "control utilization" - that is, it works hard to make sure that when you need a costly medical service, you are "controlled" (read: prevented) from getting it.

Sure, we're all against excessive testing - and there are good ways to deal with those inefficiencies. But that's not what the insurance industry is talking about. It is talking about its practice of rationing care - and now that reality is right there in black and white for all to see.

The truth of the matter is that many of the charges that insurance companies like WellPoint level at the public option and regulatory changes sought in the health reform bill mirror accepted industry practices. WellPoint, which emailed its own customers yesterday attacking the Democratic plan, claimed that health reform will “increase the premiums of those with private coverage.” Yet WellPoint routinely hikes their own premium prices by close to double digits annually, leading to ever-increasing profits. The email stated that millions of Americans would lose their private coverage and be forced onto a government-run option if the Democratic bill passed (nothing could be further from the truth); yet WellPoint routinely uses the practice of rescission to drop their own customers from coverage if they ever try to use it, and they've admitted they would continue doing so unless forced to stop by law.

The email is an example of the astroturf practices from the industry, including, no doubt, pitching to the New York Times a story putting the human face on insurers. Many of these astroturf efforts spring from the same sources as the corporate lobby groups activating the tea party protests at town hall meetings throughout the country this August. They're trying to change the subject, away from facts, like how they're spending less of their premium revenue on medical care over the years, from 90% in the early 1990s to around 80% today. Or how they use rescission and pre-existing condition to make profits off cherry-picking the healthy and denying everyone else care. House and Senate leaders have requested more and more information about insurance company practices; Dennis Kucinich has joined that effort. But the insurance industry, while nominally siding with reform, wants to keep the focus on efforts against it, in service to de-fanging it.

The Plaintive Wail Of The Not-Quite-As-Obscenely-Rich

There's a new sub-genre in journalism, tracking the travails and hardships of the not-quite-as-obscenely-rich. Inequality is still at its highest level since the Gilded Age, mind you, and the top 1% still rakes in 35% of all compensation, but selected still-rich individuals lost a little of their fortunes. This is the stuff of front-page news.

Last year, the number of Americans with a net worth of at least $30 million dropped 24 percent, according to CapGemini and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. Monthly income from stock dividends, which is concentrated among the affluent, has fallen more than 20 percent since last summer, the biggest such decline since the government began keeping records in 1959.

Bill Gates, Warren E. Buffett, the heirs to the Wal-Mart Stores fortune and the founders of Google each lost billions last year, according to Forbes magazine. In one stark example, John McAfee, an entrepreneur who founded the antivirus software company that bears his name, is now worth about $4 million, from a peak of more than $100 million. Mr. McAfee will soon auction off his last big property because he needs cash to pay his bills after having been caught off guard by the simultaneous crash in real estate and stocks.

“I had no clue,” he said, “that there would be this tandem collapse.”

You really have to be kidding me with this. The stock market dropped 40%, so we're talking about paper value, not real but imagined wealth. And none of it was real anyway. That same stock market is now at a 52-week high at today's close, so the first thing to come back in this so-called recovery has been the fortunes of these same lamented rich people. The jobs for everyday Americans, not so much.

The ostensible premise of the article, that lesser yields for the rich may lead to a flattening of income distribution and maybe some relief for the middle and lower classes, is proven wrong by the middle of the article.

Few economists expect the country to return to the relatively flat income distribution of the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, they say that inequality is likely to remain significantly greater than it was for most of the 20th century. The Obama administration has not proposed completely rewriting the rules for Wall Street or raising the top income-tax rate to anywhere near 70 percent, its level as recently as 1980. Market forces that have increased inequality, like globalization, are also not going away.

No, the real reason for this article is so super-rich people can read about other super-rich people and not feel so bad about poor people dying in the streets because of their hoarded fortunes. For example, here's Mike Bloomberg, of all people, singing a dirge for the poor little rich people.

Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical companies and their chief executives on Friday, declaring that they "don't make a lot of money" and shouldn't be scapegoats in the health care debate.

The mayor – and wealthiest person in New York City with a fortune estimated at $16.5 billion – made the comments on his radio show Friday during a discussion about health care.

"You know, last time I checked, pharmaceutical companies don't make a lot of money, their executives don't make a lot of money – not that they couldn't be better," Bloomberg said.

Pharmaceutical CEOs are known to make millions, with generous salaries, stock options and other perks.

This is a guy who bought the Mayoralty in New York for $100 million dollars over two terms, talking about people who routinely make tens of millions of dollars and hold hundreds of millions more in stock options, telling the public that the plebes shouldn't revolt because things are tough all over and those pharmaceutical CEOs are barely scraping by.

Well, tell you what then. As long as CEOs from the insurance and drug industries are basically pikers, they should have no problem adhering to Henry Waxman's request and providing readouts of their salaries and perks, so they can prove to the world once and for all that they're in this for the saving of lives and not the filthy lucre. Surely they'll agree to that.

Maybe they'll even tell the New York Times what a bad year they're having.

Rove Tries To Wiggle Off The Hook

So you have the Washington Post headlining that E-Mails Show Larger White House Role in Prosecutor Firings and the New York Times stating Rove Says His Role in Prosecutor Firings Was Small. Somehow, I assume they're both right, and it all depends on your angle. I mean, I'm sure Rove said he had just a small role in the US Attorney firings. Rove says a lot of things, most of them untrue. I'd prefer to do as WaPo did, and look at the documentary evidence:

The e-mails and new interviews with key participants reflect contacts among Rove, aides in the Bush political affairs office and White House lawyers about the dismissal of three of the nine U.S. attorneys fired in 2006: New Mexico's David C. Iglesias, the focus of ire from GOP lawmakers; Missouri's Todd Graves, who had clashed with one of Rove's former clients; and Arkansas's Bud Cummins, who was pushed out to make way for a Rove protégé [...]

Complaints about Iglesias began at least a year before he was relieved of his job, according to documents reviewed by The Post. Then- Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), his chief of staff, Steve Bell, and GOP lawyers in the state lobbied aggressively to oust the prosecutor. But the activity accelerated in fall 2006.

Responding to questions about another little-understood event, Rove told reporters in the interview this month that he had not seen a letter that Justice Department officials prepared and sent to the Senate on Feb. 23, 2007. The letter stated that "the department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint [protégé] Mr. Griffin" to a top job in Little Rock.

The Justice Department later retracted the statement, which the inspector general concluded was "misleading." [...]

But internal White House correspondence dating to two years earlier suggests that job prospects for Timothy Griffin, who had worked for Rove in the administration, were a hot topic of conversation. In a Feb. 11, 2005, e-mail, Rove wrote to deputy Sara Taylor: "Give him options. Keep pushing for Justice and let him decide. I want him on the team."

Then-White House counsel Miers e-mailed Taylor a month later, writing, "Sara, Karl asked me to forward you a list of locations where we may consider replacing the USAs."

Rove suggested Little Rock, where Cummins was U.S. attorney, as a post for Griffin, reminding Miers in March 2005 that "that's where he's from." The next day, Sara Taylor forwarded communications about Griffin to then-Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, who wrote, "let me know his reaction," according to the e-mails.

It's interesting that we're just learning that Rove held an interview with the Times and the Post this month, where he tried to spin them both about his role in the scandal.

In an interview with The Post and the New York Times this month, Rove described himself as a "conduit" of grievances from lawmakers and others about the performance of home-state prosecutors. The e-mails and interview were provided on the condition that they not be released until Rove's House testimony concluded. He said he did not recall several events because of his busy job and asserted that he had done nothing to influence criminal cases, an allegation by Democrats that has dogged him for years. Luskin, Rove's attorney, asserted that "there was never any point where Karl was trying to get a particular prosecution advanced or retarded."

"Yes, I was a recipient of complaints, and I passed them on to the counsel's office to be passed onto Justice," Rove said. The complaints about weak enforcement of voter fraud laws and public corruption "had the sound of authenticity to me. If what I'm told is accurate, it's really troublesome."

The NYT article suggests that Rove selectively leaked emails to put himself in a peripheral role in the firings. I don't know how someone peripheral writes something like “Give me a report on what U.S. attorneys slots are vacant or expected to be open soon,” as Rove did in an email in November 2006.

This is classic Rove - pre-empting whatever leaks come out of the House Judiciary Committee with incriminating but less damaging material that he handpicks to send to the press, who dutifully writes it all up. But Rove appears to be so deep in the US Attorney purges that he cannot credibly spin this away.

The Media Treatment Of Sotomayor

I didn't address the New York Times' Sotomayor temperament story yesterday. I think you could probably talk your way into believing that this was a perfectly legitimate area of concern, as Adam Liptak did. And I generally like Liptak as a reporter. But I also sympathize with Christy Hardin Smith's take.

You want to know why those opposing Sotomayor keep raising this issue of "she's a bitch on the bench?" (And how often have you seen this tack with a man. Honestly.)

It's because they know that a Heathers campaign is media catnip.

The titillating nature of junior high anonymous gossip mongering is so much more amusing and more easily understood by political reporters who don't bother trying to comprehend legal intricacies.

I think Liptak can get away with saying that Sotomayor's demeanor and style of questioning might be of legitimate interest if he didn't allow a bunch of anonymous sources to characterize it as "difficult" and "nasty" off the top. He did give voice to perhaps the best rebuttal of this line of argument, however:

Judge Guido Calabresi, a former dean of Yale Law School who taught Ms. Sotomayor there and now sits with her on the Second Circuit, said complaints that she had been unduly caustic had no basis. For a time, Judge Calabresi said, he kept track of the questions posed by Judge Sotomayor and other members of the 12-member court. “Her behavior was identical,” he said.

“Some lawyers just don’t like to be questioned by a woman,” Judge Calabresi added. “It was sexist, plain and simple.”

He said Judge Sotomayor’s forceful and lucid arguments had persuaded him to reconsider his position in a number of instances. “And I’m a tough act,” he said.

Actually, I think Sharon Theimer's AP article, accusing Sotomayor of hypocrisy because she grew up in poverty but now accepts her salary as a federal judge instead of living in a Bronx tenement, would warrant much more criticism.

There's no doubt that the media is treating this pick differently because Sotomayor is a woman, so driven are they by conservative frames and narratives.

The Early Winner In The Sotomayor Battle

As I said before, despite the bluster, Republican Senators are considering it unlikely to mount a filibuster against Sonia Sotomayor. But there's an entire architecture of movement conservative organizations designed to push a filibuster fight, and they will be hard to ignore. After all, this is how they make their bacon:

Organizations that have been preparing for a major confirmation battle — and that depend on such fights to raise money, motivate supporters and galvanize enthusiasm for their agendas — made it clear they don't intend to sit out the debate, filibuster or no. The debate over Sotomayor could also lay groundwork for fights over later high court nominations the president might make.

Never mind the longer game of making Sotomayor illegitimate, calling into question all her future opinions, and rousing the base even more now that such a woman sits on the nation's highest court ready to persecute them.

TPMDC profiles these movement actors, the same few people you'll see quoted in every paper and appearing on every cable show in the next couple months. There's Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network, Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice (who used Sotomayor's taste in Puerto Rican cuisine to call into question her judicial philosophy - really, he did), Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who I heard on NPR criticize Sotomayor for her "silence" in an opinion she participated in but didn't write, and Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice. There are more groups, like Judicial Watch, The Federalist Society, plus the usual think tanks, et al. Why you need this many overlapping judicial organizations is beyond me, but I guess the goal is to employ as many movement conservatives as possible, plus you can mix and match them in the media to give the illusion of a broad perspective. And filibuster or not, they have to be out there raising hell and raising money. A Supreme Court fight without storefront conservative judicial organizations would be like tax season without accountants.

But TPMDC missed the one individual who has certainly gained the most in the early going of this nomination - New Republic writer Jeffrey Rosen. After all, his use of gossipy talking points has driven the entire discussion in the media, and made him ubiquitous even if he hasn't graced the camera with his presence. And though his reputation ought to be in tatters for pushing such demeaning talking points into the mainstream, as it turns out, he has the lead story in this week's New York Times magazine.

The article sidesteps the Sotomayor controversy, preferring instead to define liberalism on the Court in the 21st century, and the term "democratic constitutionalist." But the meta question of "why the hell is the NYT allowing Jeffrey Rosen a platform?" can never be far from the informed reader. Far from being punished or blackballed for his role in trying to destroy the reputation of a soon-to-be sitting Supreme Court Justice, Rosen has been celebrated and promoted. Of course, in the Village, Rosen is "one of us," and Sotomayor is "one of them."

Media Enablers

Many are justifiably angry at the Democrats for enabling the stupid Republican bedwetting about real live terrorists coming to American maximum security prisons. But the media plays right along with this fearmongering and enables it to a frightening degree.

The front page headline in yesterday's New York Times blared: 1 in 7 Detainees Rejoined Jihad, Pentagon Finds. Disturbing! Although how this would reflect on the Obama Administration and not the one who released all these "jihadists" is an open question.

Problem is, the Times and other outlets have run this story before. And scratching just an inch beneath the surface always reveals there's no actual evidence for the claim. The last time such a report was released, back in January, the Pentagon got caught including among those who had "returned to the fight" former detainees who wrote newspaper editorials criticizing US policy.

Meanwhile, the writer herself is disavowing the story in an interesting way.

New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller is now casting doubt on the claim in her front page story today, pounced on by the right and quickly picked up on cable, that one in seven detainees released from Guantanamo "returned to terrorism or militant activity."

Appearing on MSNBC today, Bumiller said "there is some debate about whether you should say 'returned' because some of them were perhaps not engaged in terrorism, as we know -- some of them are being held there on vague charges."

Aside from the fact that the Pentagon has no real statistics on this (they don't tag the detainees they release), there's what Bumiller alludes to here, which is that seven years unjustly detained in a confined cell probably makes you at least open to hating the United States, whether you were a "terrorist" beforehand or not.

The Times actually changed their lede in online editions, but of course not in the paper - and cable news ran with their headline yesterday. The Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet has no problem with this:

I think Elisabeth answered it properly in this interview. Reading some of the criticism it seems that people are saying it undercut the story. It did not. The story was about the estimate of the number of people who ended up, by DOD"s account, as being engaged in terrorism or militant activity after leaving Gitmo. That still stands. The change was an acknowledgment that some assert that not everyone in Gitmo is truly a terrorist. Some critics have said that Gitmo is also filled with people who aren't truly terrorists.

Anyone who is reading a significant retreat in the story, or as us somehow saying the story is wrong is looking for politics where it ain't.

The point is this: traditional media outlets have abetted the blatantly false argument that the "worst of the worst" sit in cells at Gitmo and must never be set free. This not only serves Republican ends as they cling to an issue to get a victory for themselves, but serves the White House, as they try and make this distinction of suspects who can neither be tried or released. Once again, the forces of the status quo and the media megaphone are uniquely aligned.

Whoops

We all know that Maureen Dowd has been writing one story over and over again for the last decade - Democrats are feminized losers - so I suppose that her blatant plagiarism of Josh Marshall represents an attempt at being original.

"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17dowd.html?_r=1

"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/05/bubbling.php

I welcome her efforts to branch out (she actually calls for a full investigation of the torture regime in this op-ed). If she wrote it, we'd actually have a decent column here, aside from the Dowd-esque characterization of Nancy Pelosi as a "stammering child." Anyway, if you're going to steal, you could do worse than Josh Marshall. It would be fun to see Dowd behind a phalanx of flags answering questions about this incident, surely in the manner of a stammering child herself. But of course that would assume a certain level of media accountability.

Memo To The New York Times

Arnold Schwarzenegger will not support a Democrat. He never has since he became Governor, and he never will. He said he could support Dianne Feinstein for Senate in 2006, and didn't. He said he could support Jerry Brown for Attorney General in 2006, and didn't. He markets an image of post-partisanship that the national media swallows whole. Republicans hate him, because they believe that crap, but Democrats are too smart to buy it, so they hate him too.

Please stop this.

Thanks.

CA-36: Jane Harman Will Have A Primary Challenge, Or She Will Leave Congress

Here's the latest on the Jane Harman/AIPAC story that I haven't previously discussed here. We know that she discussed the case against two AIPAC lobbyists with a suspected Israeli double agent, possibly Haim Saban, and made at least an implicit arrangement to push for the dropping of the case against the lobbyists in exchange for help getting appointed the chair of the House Intelligence Committee. It is unclear whether this actually represents a violation of the federal bribery statute (doing a favor in exchange for something of value), but according to the story by Jeff Stein at CQ Politics, the Justice Department felt they had Harman in a "completed crime." Nancy Pelosi was briefed that Harman had been picked up on a federal wiretap but was barred from disclosing it to her House colleague, and this could explain why Harman was not appointed to that Committee Chair. The reason that the DoJ failed to charge Harman was because Alberto Gonzales intervened on her behalf, because, among other things, he knew she would be helpful in the forthcoming battle over, amazingly enough, the Administration's warrantless wiretapping program.

A person who is familiar with Mr. Gonzales’s account of the events said that the former attorney general had acknowledged having raised with Mr. Goss the idea that Ms. Harman was playing a helpful role in dealing with The Times.

But Mr. Gonzales’s principal motive in delaying a briefing for Congressional leaders, the person said, was to keep Ms. Harman from learning of the investigation before she could be interviewed by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A spokesman for Ms. Harman said the congresswoman had never been interviewed by the bureau.

There's also the charge that then-NSA Director Michael Hayden provided talking points for a Harman discussion with NY Times Washington editor Philip Taubman BEFORE THE 2004 election, to get the paper to squash the warrantless wiretapping story. And today, Stein advances the story by noting that a whistleblower informed then-Speaker Dennis Hastert about the Bush Administration suppression of the wiretapped Harman call (it's a violation of standard procedure to withhold information involving national security and a member of Congress from either Democratic and Republican leaders in the House).

Needless to say, this is a tangled web of intrigue, and with more disclosures it's likely to get worse. This has led to speculation that Harman would either not run for another term, or face a primary challenge. I can confirm that Marcy Winograd is likely to run if Harman does seek re-election. Winograd, who took 38% of the vote in 2006, was not planning a run until the AIPAC/wiretap revelations. But she is uncomfortable with Harman not being held to account, and saw no other option on the horizon. She has a federal account and will take the pulse of the district before a formal announcement.

"I think she's clearly in trouble and I think she knows it and is doing whatever she can to turn the tables on the situation," Winograd said. "And now she is the spokesperson for the ACLU or the Bill of Rights Foundation. It would be comical, if the stakes weren't so high." [...]

One of Winograd's first steps is going to be "taking the pulse" of the district on issues like military spending and single-payer health care, among other issues. It's entirely possible that Harman might bow out and try to annoint a successor. Or that another establishment Dem might try to take advantage of her weakened position. Which is why I wanted to get the word out as quickly as possible that there's a really credible progressive alternative. Winograd has already run a primary once in the district. Activists there know who she is, and a lot of them have already worked for her in 2006. This would not be a net-based candidacy, but it will certainly help to have it be net-supported.

In addition, the name of blogger John Amato has surfaced as a possible challenger.

(Howie) Klein said a group of bloggers met earlier this year to discuss challenging Harman in a primary, weeks before the recent revelations. He said many in the blogging community would like a fellow blogger, John Amato, to challenge Harman and that Amato is considering it.

Winograd said that she would step aside for the right candidate, and that she’s taking up the mantle at least for now.

“I don’t know who else will answer the call, if not me,” she said. “People with great name recognition and track records in public office are not going to take her on.”

I think Marcy feels the duty to run. At the same time, she agreed that there needs to be one progressive alternative to Harman. But my sense from people in the district is that Harman is unlikely to try another re-election campaign. Even the above-mentioned NYT article refers to this.

While the two women do not display overt hostility, Ms. Harman seems to have never quite gotten over the slight. Colleagues say that since Ms. Pelosi, 69, thwarted her ambitions for a more prominent role on security issues, Ms. Harman, 63, has grown weary of Congress and has been eyeing a post in the Obama administration, perhaps as an ambassador.

This tracks with everything I've heard from locals. She wanted the Intelligence Committee chair, and failing that she wanted an Administration job, and failing that she wants out.

There would be a whole host of elected officials who would jump in if Harman retired. Ted Lieu, the Assemblyman in this district, could be enticed away from his Attorney General campaign. City Councilwoman Janice Hahn would take a look. And there would be others. But if Harman stays in, none of these electeds would run, avoiding what would be an expensive primary. Harman is the richest member of Congress and has no problem spending her own money to keep her seat.

Either way, there will be a contested race in CA-36 in June 2010. And I do believe that a primary would feature only one major challenger. The question is, who would that be?

CA-36: Wherein Jane Harman Tries To Throw The 2004 Election

This Jane Harman/AIPAC scandal continues to grow. It jumped from the inside the Beltway rag CQ Politics to The New York Times.

One of the leading House Democrats on intelligence matters was overheard on telephone calls intercepted by the National Security Agency agreeing to seek lenient treatment from the Bush administration for two pro-Israel lobbyists who were under investigation for espionage, current and former government officials say.

The lawmaker, Representative Jane Harman of California, became the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee after the 2002 election and had ambitions to be its chairwoman when the party gained control of the House in 2006. One official who has seen transcripts of several wiretapped calls said she appeared to agree to intercede in exchange for help in persuading party leaders to give her the powerful post.

But that's not what advances the story today. Harman has denied contacting DoJ abut the AIPAC case, though she left out contacting the White House, and she did not deny that the phone call existed. Remember that a key part of the story concerned the idea that Harman was saved from prosecution on this by Alberto Gonzales, who "needed Jane" to help front for the Administration's warrantless wiretapping program. In today's article, the Times drops this bombshell:

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement Monday that Ms. Harman called Philip Taubman, then the Washington bureau chief of The Times, in October or November of 2004. Mr. Keller said she spoke to Mr. Taubman — apparently at the request of Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then the N.S.A. director — and urged that The Times not publish the article.

“She did not speak to me,” Mr. Keller said, “and I don’t remember her being a significant factor in my decision.”
Shortly before the article was published more than a year later, in December 2005, Mr. Taubman met with a group of Congressional leaders familiar with the eavesdropping program, including Ms. Harman. They all argued that The Times should not publish.

Ultimately, it's on Bill Keller whether or not to publish, so I don't want to give Harman too much credit here. But as Greg Sargent notes, this is a startling turn of events. A Democratic Congresswoman acted on behalf of a Republican President's NSA director to spike a story about illegal activity in the executive branch before a close Presidential election. The ramifications are enormous.

This discussion between Harman and Taubman apparently happened before the wiretapped phone call between Harman and the Israeli agent, according to the TPM Muckraker timeline. So Gonzales knew that Harman could be counted on to support the warrantless wiretapping program, because she had years of experience doing so at that point.

This gets uglier and uglier. Small wonder that Harman was passed over for a position in the Obama Administration.

...Harman has released a letter calling on the Attorney General to release all transcripts and investigative material related to her collected by the Justice Department in 2005 and 2006. This is a bit of misdirection, since by all accounts these were legal wiretaps of foreign agents. But given the revelations about continued illegal wiretapping at the NSA, I understand Harman's strategy.

What Backtracking From Campaign Promises?

Though I appreciated the NYT's call for the impeachment of Jay Bybee today, their news pages have been consumed lately with trying to classify President Obama as offering little change from George Bush. Earlier in the week, Peter Baker characterized Obama's foreign policy as shifting "only a little" from George Bush's. And today, David Herszenhorn and Jackie Calmes they cite Obama's characteristic caution as evidence of him "taking softer stands."

It was inevitable that Mr. Obama’s lofty pledge to change the ways of Washington would crash into the realities of governing, including lawmakers anxious to protect their constituents and an army of special-interest lobbyists.

Mr. Obama has not conceded on any major priority. His advisers argue that the concessions to date — on budget items, for instance — are intended to help win the bigger policy fights ahead. But his early willingness to deal or fold has left pundits and prognosticators, and some loyal Democrats, wondering: where’s the fight?

I agree with Eric Boehlert that this misrepresents Obama's words on the campaign trail. With stars in their eyes, these reporters imagined Obama's soaring rhetoric to promise much more than he actually did. In both of these articles, there is little evidence to suggest that the President ever made such sweeping statements as a candidate or that he's shifted on any major issue (hence the "Mr. Obama has not conceded on any major priority"). For example, they cite Obama's reluctance to renew the assault weapons ban, when he pretty much didn't promise that during the campaign, and when he has not closed the door on the option.

With regard to foreign policy, I don't know how you can say that he hasn't followed through on his promises, even the ones I don't particularly support. He said he would withdraw from Iraq and move forces to Afghanistan. He said he would negotiate with enemies and work with allies. He said he would push for the eradication of nuclear weapons from this planet. And that's exactly what he's done. This speech would not come out of the mouth of George Bush.

There's been several remarks directed at the issue of the relationship between the United States and Cuba, so let me address this. The United States seeks a new beginning with Cuba. I know that there is a longer -- (applause) -- I know there's a longer journey that must be traveled to overcome decades of mistrust, but there are critical steps we can take toward a new day. I've already changed a Cuba policy that I believe has failed to advance liberty or opportunity for the Cuban people. We will now allow Cuban Americans to visit the islands whenever they choose and provide resources to their families -- the same way that so many people in my country send money back to their families in your countries to pay for everyday needs.

Over the past two years, I've indicated, and I repeat today, that I'm prepared to have my administration engage with the Cuban government on a wide range of issues -- from drugs, migration, and economic issues, to human rights, free speech, and democratic reform. Now, let me be clear, I'm not interested in talking just for the sake of talking. But I do believe that we can move U.S.-Cuban relations in a new direction.

As has already been noted, and I think my presence here indicates, the United States has changed over time. (Applause.) It has not always been easy, but it has changed. And so I think it's important to remind my fellow leaders that it's not just the United States that has to change. All of us have responsibilities to look towards the future. (Applause.)

I think it's important to recognize, given historic suspicions, that the United States' policy should not be interference in other countries, but that also means that we can't blame the United States for every problem that arises in the hemisphere. That's part of the bargain. (Applause.) That's part of the change that has to take place. That's the old way, and we need a new way.

You can argue whether Obama has gone far enough, and whether his policies are best for the country. I certainly have argued on those grounds. But you just cannot say that he's backed off his major campaign promises, because it's simply not true. Why the Times keeps going to this idea is beyond me.

And by the way, apparently Obama's handshake with Hugo Chavez has caused a tizzy on the right, as if no Republican has ever shook the hand of an adversarial world leader before. This act has gotten so stale. By the way, Chavez has restored his US envoy so there are already tangible steps toward resolution as a result of basically nothing but a handshake. The dirty secret here is that the neocons NEED enemies because they can only rule by fear.

"Congress should impeach him..."

The New York Times today called for the impeachment of Jay Bybee.

In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.

These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors’ statutory obligation. They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country’s most basic values [...]

At least Mr. Obama is not following Mr. Bush’s example of showy trials for the small fry — like Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib notoriety. But he has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners — in violation of international law and the Constitution.

That investigation should start with the lawyers who wrote these sickening memos, including John Yoo, who now teaches law in California; Steven Bradbury, who was job-hunting when we last heard; and Mr. Bybee, who holds the lifetime seat on the federal appeals court that Mr. Bush rewarded him with.

These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it.

I'm not sure there can even be much argument about this. Jay Bybee's continued presence on the federal bench constitutes a moral outrage.

My petition to the California Democratic Party to pass a resolution of impeachment has as of 9am PT 684 signatures. Please sign it if you haven't already. We're going to have a lot more actions around this as the week progresses.

More Responsible Then The New York Times

Stephen Colbert's vivisection of Glenn Beck is some of the funniest television I've seen in years.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The 10/31 Project
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

Incidentally, there is a 10.31 Project website, but it only has the picture up write now.

The transcript of this would actually be a direct contrast to the respectful take on Beck from the New York Times, so eager are they to ingratiate themselves with conservatives and not offend their delicate sensibilities. My favorite part of that:

In an interview, Mr. Beck, who recently rewatched the 1976 film “Network,” said he identified with the character of Howard Beale, the unhinged TV news anchorman who declares on the air that he is “mad as hell.”

“I think that’s the way people feel,” Mr. Beck said. “That’s the way I feel.”

Network was a satire, you idiot. About the vacuous nature of the news media. Which you exemplify.

Here We Are Now, Entertain Us

Jamison Foser and Eric Boehlert are hammering the press for their lazy, idiotic reporting on Barack Obama's press conference last night. Apparently the new meme is that the President was "boring" last night. I mean, he didn't juggle flaming bowling pins or play the spoons ONCE! How dare he ruin the evenings of the White House press corps with all that talk of "issues" and deficits in the out years. Foser and Boehlert are right, this is journalism as theater criticism.

And their biggest complaint is that they weren't chosen for the pick-up game and had to sit on the bench with all the losers.

In one Baker-Nagourney sentence, even a compliment is only a prologue to a dig that, come to think of it, might help explain why they're so petulant:

"He showed his usual comfort with a wide array of subjects, even as he excluded the nation's big newspapers from the questioning in favor of a more eclectic mix."

My italics but their pique. Take that, Barack Obama, you pompous pedagogue, stringing together whole sentences and indeed paragraphs as if Americans were entitled to hear a line of reasoning. Take that if you dare to exclude "the nation's big newspapers" even as they prove less big every day.

Contrast, for a moment, NYT coverage of George W. Bush's first press conference, on Feb. 22, 2001, a month into his first term. Bush, wrote Frank Bruni in the operative clause of his lede, "sought to redirect public attention to, and amass public support for, his proposed $1.6 trillion tax cut."

That is, Bush had a political goal and pursued it. He was purposeful. His style of pursuing it wasn't Bruni's prime subject. The fact that some of his statements made no sense, or worse, was not worthy of notice.

If you wonder why America seems grounded, unable to move forward on bold initiatives for the past 30 years, without the vitality or innovativeness necessary to tackle major challenges, look no further than this petulant, spoiled, anti-intellectual group of children that represent the modern Fourth Estate, who think that politics exists for their personal amusement. Serious times call for... well, anyone but these people. Here's the close to one of Foser's posts today, and you can substitute "Mr. Malcolm" with just about anyone else in the traditional media:

So here's a suggestion, Mr. Malcolm: Quit. Do it now. Hand in your press pass. There are plenty of out-of-work and soon-to-be-out-of-work-reporters who actually give a damn and who won't have any trouble staying awake for a presidential press conference and who are capable of producing a substantive article that will actually help readers understand what is happening in the world, instead of simply whining that they are insufficiently stimulated. Let one of them have your job. Take up skydiving or running with the bulls or whatever it takes to get you sufficiently excited, and let serious people do your serious job.

Could Have Been A Lot Worse

Ross Douthat is not somebody I agree with all the time, but I've read him enough to know that he's at least slightly more intellectually honest than a Bill Kristol. What's more, his getting the number two editorial job at the New York Times signals that at least they're willing to take a chance on a 29 year-old instead of some retread from the conservative movement. Knowing that this was going to be a conservative choice, it could have been way more awful.

A bit of a secret - I don't make an appointment to read a lot of op-eds. Unless I really trust the source or I need more of an understanding of a particular topic, I feel like I can make the assessments entirely on my own. I guess I tired of the stupid somewhere along the line. I stopped watching the Sunday chat shows for the most part, too. It's very refreshing.

...just because it could have been a lot worse doesn't mean that Douthat isn't a maniac. It's a low bar, after all.

Talking Points Memo After Dark

Nice headline by Josh Marshall on David Vitter's efforts to take family planning money out of the omnibus spending bill: "Angling For Bareback?"

Quote of the Day material.

...by the way, two thumbs up to the New York Times for taking TPM's lead and reporting the exact same story about banks trying to get grieving mourners to pay their loved one's posthumous debts, without citing them whatsoever. The list of traditional news stories plucked from the blogosphere just got longer.

"This Is William Kristol's Last Column." We Wish.

Yes, there will be no more Bill Kristol on the New York Times op-ed page. And he exits with one of my favorite quotes from a conservative in years:

Conservative policies have on the whole worked — insofar as any set of policies can be said to “work” in the real world.

Feel the pride! Or maybe that's nihilism.

Don't weep for Irving's son, however - he's headed to the Washington Post to sully their op-ed pages for a bit. There is simply nothing he can do, no amount of wrong he can spout, to get him kicked out of the little pundit club.

This also means there's an opening for a new conservative at the Times. Joe the Plumber, this is your moment. I'd love to see dozens of columns recapitulating "I don't think the media should have a right to have an opinion on anything!"

...Fred Hiatt on Bill Kristol: "I thought he wrote a good column."

The optimistic view is that Hiatt is just trying to provide an economic stimulus for his corrections department. The more measured view is that he's a neocon jackass.

Right Wing And Pentagon Remnants Work Overtime To Fearmonger

This completely unsourced New York Times article is yet another in the drumbeat of warnings to Obama that he can't very well use the rule of law as a guidepost when terrists wanna kill us in our beds and that.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

His status was announced in an Internet statement by the militant group and was confirmed by an American counterterrorism official.

“They’re one and the same guy,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity because he was discussing an intelligence analysis. “He returned to Saudi Arabia in 2007, but his movements to Yemen remain unclear.”

Wondering if that counterterrorism official just happens to not be part of the new Obama team. Signs point to yes.

It really doesn't matter if they're in power or out of power, conservatives can plant their stories in the media whenever they choose. Glenn Greenwald links to a bunch of them today. There are hosts of howls from the right that we'll all be killed if we try terror suspects in US courts, shut down gulags and release the innocent.

National Review's Jim Geraghaty spent all day yesterday fantasizing about all the scary things that could happen if we have Al-Qaeda Terrorists in our communities (near nuclear facilities and airports!). Former Bush aide and chief speechwriter Marc Thiessen warned yesterday in The Washington Post that if there is a Terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Americans will blame Obama because he stopped torturing and closed Guantanamo, and Democrats will be "unelectable for a generation." Today, at National Review, Thiessen, citing yesterday's Executive Orders, declared Obama "to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office." And yesterday, of course, The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt echoed the standard claim that our regular federal courts were inadequate to try dangerous Terrorists.

All of this is pure fear-mongering -- the 2009 version of Condoleezza Rice's mushroom cloud and Jay Rockefeller's "we'll-lose-our-eavesdropping-capabilities" cries. Both before and after 9/11, the U.S. has repeatedly and successfully tried alleged high-level Al Qaeda operatives and other accused Islamic Terrorists in our normal federal courts -- in fact, the record is far more successful than the series of debacles that has taken place in the military commissions system at Guantanamo. Moreover, those convicted Terrorists have been housed in U.S. prisons, inside the U.S., for years without a hint of a problem.

Not to mention this zombie lie that I mentioned yesterday, the new "big stat" thrown around by major news organizations, that 61 terrists have "returned to the battlefield" from Guantanamo. Putting aside the difficulty in believing this nonsense - past examinations of Pentagon claims have shown that they're counting people who've never been to Gitmo and people who have written letters to the editor to newspapers - Atrios points out the absurdity:

Without even getting into the actual accuracy of the latest bit of wingnut porn about how 61 released Gitmo detainees supposedly returned to take up arms against the US, can anyone explain how this is supposed to represent a failure of Obama's policies? He didn't let them go. Liberal bloggers didn't let them go. The ACLU didn't let them go.

And if George Bush has "kept us safe," what exactly is it that these terrorists have done?

All this folds in on itself at some point. But the point is to make sure everyone is aware that we can be killed at any moment, to restrict Obama's break from the past and ensure that their little fantasies are not repudiated. I believe we do have to be skeptical of those loopholes, and work on our own side to ensure their removal.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the committee, said that despite the executive orders she still planned to press for legislation mandating a single standard for military and C.I.A. interrogators. Such a law would be harder to reverse than Mr. Obama’s executive order, which he could alter or cancel at any time by issuing a new order.

“I think that ultimately the government is well served by codifying it, by having it in law,” Mrs. Feinstein said.

Some liberal groups, while praising the Obama orders, said they supported legislation like Mrs. Feinstein’s because they were concerned about what his task forces might propose. They also said they would continue to press for a full investigation of detention and interrogation programs under President George W. Bush.

Of course, this isn't totally about legislation for the wingnuts. It's about scaring an electorate for political advantage, hoping to pin whatever terrorism might arise in the next several years on Obama and using that in the next election.

...by the way, this is how you deal with terrorists, through law enforcement and detective work. But there isn't enough crushing of testicles involved, so it's deeply disappointing to the man-childs on the right.

Interview As Scene Building

I'm fairly lukewarm on Caroline Kennedy's Senate "campaign," which has consisted of her hiring insider consultants affiliated with Bloomberg and Lieberman and ringing up elites and putting pressure on the Governor to appoint her. But I have to say that I respect her a bit more after this interview with the New York Times, where she says something that probably most politicians have thought at one time or another.

With several weeks to go before Mr. Paterson makes his decision, she is doling out glimpses of her political beliefs and private life. But when asked Saturday morning to describe the moment she decided to seek the Senate seat, Ms. Kennedy seemed irritated by the question and said she couldn’t recall.

“Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something?” she asked the reporters. “I thought you were the crack political team.”

If you read the transcript, you get a better sense of where that comes from. They were more than halfway through the interview at this point, and the whole thing had a certain People Magazine quality about it. The reporters asked Kennedy repeatedly about an imagined conversation they have in their heads, out of a bad biopic or something, a "moment of clarity" where she blurts out "I'm going to do this!" When Kennedy suggests that it didn't actually happen that way, because, um, life pretty much doesn't happen that way, they basically ask her to create a story where it does. That's when the woman's magazine crack comes in.

NC: So when in your own mind did it go from, ‘It’s kind of an interesting idea’ to ‘Maybe I should do this?’ (Pause) Or was that —

CK: Over the last couple weeks. (She chuckles.)

NC: Was there any moment where —

CK: No, I don’t think there was a moment, I mean, this kind of thing is too important for it to be, like, an on-off switch, right? This is a process, and as I became more serious about it, and talked to more people, you know, I thought — and then obviously I called the governor and expressed interest, and um, you know, so...

NC: The signs were on what day? Was it before you called the governor?

CK: The what? Oh yeah, that was a while ago.

NC: That was a while ago?

CK: Yeah.

NC: So that was after Senator Clinton had announced — so it was after the vacancy became possible?

CK: Well, yeah. Obviously.

NC: OK. (CK laughs.) I just wanted to make sure of the chronology.

DH: We just don’t know if it was after we started writing about you or —

CK: No, you guys had nothing to do with it. (Laughs.)

DH: No, we didn’t mean that. The timing.

NC: Uh, so sometime before those stories about your discussion with the governor, sometime after Senator Clinton had been tapped for —

CK: Yeah — yeah [...]

NC: Was he the first person you told — do you know if you uttered the words, ‘I think I’m gonna go for this?’ Or, something like it?

CK: Well, I don’t know if I utter those kinds of words, but yes. You know, it was a mutual decision.

NC: Could you, for the sake of storytelling, could you tell us a little bit about that moment, like, where you were, what you said to him about your decision, how that played out?

CK: Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something? (Laughter)

DH: What do you have against women’s magazines?

CK: Nothing at all, but I thought you were the crack political team here. As I said, it was kind of over a period of time, you know, obviously we talked about politics, we talked about what’s going on, we’ve been watching the team that the president-elect is putting together — Hillary Clinton is going to be a spectacular part of that team, you know, then there was a vacancy here, you know, just like everybody else, you know: who’s going to fill it, isn’t that interesting, there’s a lot of great candidates, you know, obviously I have become much more politically involved than I have in the past, so you know, I figure, why not try, I really think I have something to offer.

NC: But there was no one moment you can draw on —

CK: I know I wish there was, I’ll think about it.

NC: If there isn’t, that’s what it was, that’s fine too. We’re not the crack political team, we’re always looking for good anecdotes and good stories.

CK: I know, and I understand. I’ll think about it a little more.

Kennedy's mistake is assuming that there's any kind of marker or dividing line between political media and magazine personality profile at all anymore. Sometimes those kind of profiles elicit vaguely interesting questions, but they sure have nothing to do with being a Senator. When they finally get to an issue, which they back into by asking Kennedy why she sent her children to private school and if she really should be credited with raising money for public schools, the entire thing is framed along whether or not she would break with a "conventional Democrat".

DH: Just to talk a little more about issues: a lot of your political positions seem pretty straight-up-the-middle, conventional for a Democrat.

CK: Does that surprise you?

DH: No. But I wonder, what are the biggest areas where you disagree with Democratic party orthodoxy? We want to know what sets you apart. You’ve cited a lot of examples and influences; what would be a subject that we would expect your position to be a real surprise on?

CK: Well, I think that there’s a range of views in the Democratic party. And you know, I am a proud Democrat, those are the values, you know — middle class tax relief, helping working families, fixing the health care system — those are the national priorities right now. So those are the issues that I would expect — I mean, I am a Democrat, that is, you know — I am trying to become a Democratic senator, so I don’t, um — I mean, there are issues along the way, that I’m sure that people have differences of opinion. There’s controversies in all these areas.

DH: One where you have a clear-eyed idea about where you stand on something that is diff —

CK: That is different from who? Anybody?

DH: The party platform. I mean, pick some standard. Just something that would surprise —

CK: I support gay marriage, I support, you know, I’ve had problems with Nafta, I mean, I don’t — if we’re not comparing it to anybody specifically it’s hard to say where I’m going to disagree.

NC: How about Governor Paterson?

CK: But I’m a traditional Democrat, so that’s what I want to fight for, those are the values I want to fight for.

NC: Is there any issue on which you and Governor Paterson disagree that you can think of?

CK: Well, I think Governor Paterson has — I can tell you two of the areas where I think he’s done great work. Which is, alternative energy —

NC: That wasn’t the question. Is there anything on which you two disagree?

CK: No, I’m not going to talk about my disagreements with Governor — I think he’s done a great job as a leadership, yeah, absolutely.

DH: Two powerful, respected people are allowed to differ.

CK: They are. They are.

DH: We just wonder where we’ll find out that you differ.

CK: Well, you’ll find out over time. You know, as issues come along.

It's a bizarre, accusatory tone, showing that typical reporter bias that the only way for a Democrat to show any integrity is to break with their own party. This fetish makes little sense to me, and the only explanation I have for it is that the reporters aren't well-versed enough on the issues to talk about them substantively, so they use the "how are you different" shorthand even though they have little sense of what the Democrat should be different from.

Of course, the only reason a possible Senate appointee is getting grilled in this fashion is because she's Caroline Kennedy, part of Camelot and American royalty and all that, and that belief that she sells papers, especially now that the narrative is set that she's flailing about, which this interview is clearly designed to elicit. There are at least a dozen aspirants nationwide for Senate appointments - in New York, Illinois, Colorado - but none of them are being exposed to confrontational interviews where they are subjected to endless variations of the question "What makes you so special?" My preference would be for NOBODY to get appointed to a Senate seat, and all of them decided by special election. But while I think a Kennedy appointment ought to be open to questioning, we'd have to find another media to conduct that questioning, if we want any insight other than how ridiculous 21st-century reporting has become.

Most fitting in all of this is the Politico's takeaway, as insubstantial as the interview itself:

One thing Caroline Kennedy would bring to Washington: A new, distinctive Kennedy verbal tic: She said "you know" 142 times in her Times interview.

Journalism par excellence.