...she was, of course, legendary for the light pass she gave bush while covering the white house -- at one point admitting how no one in the white house press corps wanted to ask him a hard question in the run-up to the iraq invasion because they didn't want to be seen as unpatriotic.

gosh, there are so many memorable bumiller moments -- maybe the time in the 2004 new york democratic primary when she was on the panel asking debate questions and screeched into an ear-bleeding interrogation of kerry: "are you a liberal? are you a liberal? are you a liberal?"

or the time when she dedicated a whole column to what was on bush's ipod.

or covering the white house correspondent's dinner at which stephen colbert gave his famous performance and -- wait for it -- DID NOT EVEN MENTION HIM, preferring instead to talk about an opening act.

bumiller is a member in good standing in "shills r us."

...an absolute core virtue of an obama presidency will be his replenishing the ranks of the supreme court and lower federal courts with, you know, qualified candidates. a country based on the rule of law needs judges who respect that rule.

i know this topic is nearest and dearest to your heart (as mine), since it was the bushites' illegal usurpation of constitutional powers that galvanized you to start up your original blog.

i had forgotten how it felt to bask in the glow of an election day. sure enough, below is an excerpt of a letter i wrote a friend four years ago.

"this is from a new biography of Thomas Jefferson. Here is

part of a letter Jefferson sent in 1798 after the passage of the

Sedition Act:

"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over,

their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight,

restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the

meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of

a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt......If the game runs

sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and

then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have

lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake."

"i just finished reading kerry's concession. very graceful. i'm getting tired, though, of graceful losses, when what it means is that things will be getting worse before they get better. and the prospect of them getting better seems much smaller now than it did yesterday."

this time around? soooooooooooooooo much better.

But just wait a few years and reverse roles, a judge who has empathy for rich white guys because society is always putting them down and, darn it, they're just taxed to death, and they need a break.

no chance of THAT ever happening, is there? unless you include, say, the last 8 years, and most of the history of jurisprudence.

money doesn't talk, it swears -- bob dylan

...i am holding out hope that he will be an effective chief of staff for a president obama who will not permit this kind of demopublican mentality.

and pigs could fly in an obama administration. i'm holding out hope for that, too.

...the official washington chattering-class disconnect between our ideals, as in celebrating the true defense of and adherence to first amendment principles, and our actions, in which our government operates illegal torture centers and is defended in the same editorial pages of the washington post for doing so. foolish to expect consistency, i guess...

you're spot on about the true obama defining himself in this cascade of appointments -- no surprise that he's truly centrist, only surprising if you've not been paying attention (or busy constructing false narratives). the brennan ascension is troubling, but who are acceptable alternatives? the intelligence community has seen its work become so politicized that anyone from the outside coming in would be immediately suspicious.

...that is, the electorate is encouraged to read into these nominees what they want to. then, often, the winning candidate turns around and works from another agenda.

not only was bush 2000 predicated on that kind of vague reassurance, you could make a compelling case that clinton 92 was as well.

others here have noted the fisa vote. that's the defining one for me -- that's who obama is: a politician, gifted, yes, oratorically soaring, able to invest millions with hope, but a politician still. on fisa, he said he would do one thing, then did exactly the opposite, then tried to make the case he had not changed course at all. and this on the single most important vote of his senate career.

so yes, i guess we have to be satisfied that after 8 years of crazy, the center starts to look pretty good. but i think we also have to realize that regardless of how ready the country would be for a true progressive agenda, washington is not, nor may it ever be.