But the original article didn't, as far as I recall, say even that someone was concerned that there was an affair, rather that it looked bad, and that aides were trying to keep McCain and Iseman from spending so much time together. If someone can be found to testify that this was a fact, then it would seem that Iseman has no case.

They may be banking on the Times agreeing to settle rather than reveal sources, who would likely be McCain staffers who don't want to be fired.

Whoever wrote that estimate of Genghis Khan's descendants doesn't understand how these things work. It's more likely that most of the world's population is descended from him.

Mark Humphrys showed, for example, that essentially everyone with any European ancestry is descended from Charlemagne. Genghis Khan was more recent, to the point where his genes didn't spread quite so far.

Consider how many 30th-generation ancestors you have: 2 to the 30th power is just over a billion.

Yes, the Mongol empire was unusually religiously tolerant. But the Mongol response to rebellion, or the failure to immediately surrender when asked, was to kill every resident of a city that did not manage to escape. Compared to this tactic the Nazis were angels.

All Obama needs is a House majority and a couple of Republican senators to vote for cloture. The rest can posture if they want, but they should be reminded that the public already rejected their policies on Nov. 4. It is especially laughable to give McCain a forum to attack Obama's stimulus package, as if he had any grounds to criticize anything.

So it's bipartisan if, say, Sen. Snowe or Collins or Voinovich votes for it, and the rest of them don't.

Bill Clinton's most long-lasting accomplishments were his successful enactment of Republican priorities, namely NAFTA, the GATT, and welfore "reform" into law. And today's New York Times shows the result:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/us/02welfare.html

The welfare rolls are the lowest they've been in 40 years, despite the soaring unemployment rate. And more and more people are hitting their five-year maximum, meaning that they and their children get nothing. But Clinton's defenders praised him for taking an issue away from the Republicans.

Likewise, Clinton's team contributed to the deregulation mania that led to the current crisis, again by signing on to Republican proposals (like the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act, which overturned Glass-Seagal and let the investment banks run wild).

Clinton was vastly superior to Bush, but that's faint praise. He tossed Democratic principles under the bus and hired Dick Morris to help ensure his personal survival. A brilliant man, no question. But such a waste.

What both the Republican critics and this article ignore is that the criterion for the New Deal's success wasn't just whether it improved the standard economic numbers. The New Deal saved democracy. At the time, it was widely believed that capitalism had shown itself to be a failure, that the failure was tied in with the American system of democracy, and some new system was needed. There were two models available to replace capitalism: the right and many in the business world favored the fascist approach, while those on the left favored communism. Doing nothing and waiting for the invisible hand of the market to fix things was not seen as an option by most, and there would have been blood in the streets had it been tried by the time Roosevelt got into office (the same year Hitler took office).

We still have constitutional democracy in this country, because the New Deal worked. The capitalists who attacked FDR refused to acknowledge that he saved their asses.

... and the Republicans might very well decide to help, since they'd be happy to check Obama's power.

Congress should be able to go to court on its own to demand that the courts compel testimony if the executive branch refuses to do it. The courts could rule in a specific case that Congress is overstepping its power, but if the ruling goes Congress's way, then the refusing party will have to appear or be dragged there. This would be better than "inherent contempt" because the judicial branch would serve as referee between Congress and the White House.

"it occurred to me as I was watching how rare it is to see two women discussing politics on a hard-news program".

Excuse me? "Larry King Live" is a hard news program? It's the fluffiest thing on CNN, which is a pretty high bar of fluffiness indeed.

Fortunately, there's Rachel Maddow's show, which actually is a hard news program, where you can see two women discussing politics pretty much every single night (it's very rare when she doesn't have a female guest).

When an industry is nationalized, this implies that the intent is for the government to run that industry indefinitely. What the FDIC does is seize failing banks, recover assets for the depositors, and then sell off what assets it can to private industry. That's exactly what should be done with the bigger banks. The idea is that we save the depositors, but the investors who messed up lose, just the way they deserve to, and eventually remnants of the bank emerge under new ownership.

Some have suggested (e.g. on Talking Points Memo) that we call it receivership: the government temporarily takes over a bankrupt bank, with the intent of selling it off later. This makes much more sense than giving billions to failing banks and allowing them to use the money to pay themselves bonuses or buying other assets (putting good assets under demonstrably bad management).