Friend, it's called POLITICS. Also, log-rolling, also, scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours, also, what's in it for me? Expecting Emanuel not to talk to the governor who is going to make the appointment is living in cloud-cuckoo (or Rush) - land. Under any circumstances, with any politician in a any state, there would be some exploration of the possibilities for mutual benefit.

If there was mention of a bribe, that is a different story, but absent any recorded conversations there is no basis for asserting that there was anything like that. Of course, the standard technique here (Clinton rules) is to make up a hypothetical conversation, dropping into as many innuendos of skullduggery as possible, then demand that the target PROVE that such a conversation never took place (which is of course impossible). Also, you can say that questions are raised, without ever saying what the questions are or having any basis in ascertainable fact for them. Then the great Rightwing echo machine begins to hum...blogs quoting statements equally dubious from other blogs, until the endless repetition (a basic propaganda technique noted by Goebbels) makes at least a portion of the public (those who are bursting with resentment looking for a target) believe that there is something there.

Sometimes where there is smoke, there is nothing but a smoke machine. Whitewater, which wasted 10's of millions of taxpayer dollars and never found anything, is the perfect textbook example.

Obama won. Deal with it.

Another President from Illinois traveled by train to Washington in 1861...incognito because of serious assassination threats. He was ridiculed for doing so, and even was the butt of made-up-stories that had him disguised as a woman,which would have been difficult what with his height and beard (Today's made-up stories have to do with non-existent deals with a semi-psychotic Illinois governor.)

I fervently hope that Mr. Obama does not travel the return journey by train as Lincoln did. Although I don't doubt that there are not a few who would like to see that, or even try to bring it about.

Full disclosure: I am an American Jew, somewhat left-leaning.

I came to awareness of the outside world at the time when evidence of the Holocaust became irrefutable. I remember too well how those Jews that survived were treated in the Europe where they had lived, albeit uncomfortably, for millennia, and emigration to Palestine, where Jews as well as Arabs had always lived (Historical note: there has always been a Jewish population there, what was destroyed by the Romans was Jerusalem's Temple as the focus of the faith...the result was the creation of rabbinical Judaism. And there was no Arabs claim to Palestine until the Muslim conquest some 8 centuries later). I remember only too well the times when Israel was founded and was hanging to existence by a thin thread. And I remember the fear that gripped the Jewish community in the runup to the War of 1967, which was precipitated by the Egyptian blockade of Sharm-el-Sheik and the eviction of the UN peace-keepers in the Sinai, and the relief and pride in the victory that showed, if nothing else, that Jews were not cowardly weaklings who could not or would not fight back.

In the years since, I have watched with growing dismay, lately bordering on disgust, as Israel has imprisoned itself (morally and strategically) in the West Bank, as the fanaticism of Arab rejectionists has bred the fanaticism of the Israeli settlers (many of them Americans who sneer at me because I am not observant). For me the turn came with the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, with the weeks-long shelling of Beirut. (However, I think it might be fair to note that however badly the Israelis treat the Lebanese and the Palestinians at times, it is hardly unprovoked and is hardly worse than many Arab factions treat each other.)

I have always found Dr. Cole's comments interesting and informative, with a grain of salt or two (I have bookmarked his site for years), but I have to agree with a previous commenter that his insistence that Israel is always the transgressor has become tiresome at best and hateful at worst. I ask him: what would you have the Israelis do? Pick up the whole enterprise and move somewhere else (where, indeed? Antarctica? Alaska ...hmmm, that's an idea).Commit mass suicide?

It's very easy to find fault (and there can't be too much opprobrium on the likes of Perle, Feith, and the neocons for the arrogant and boneheaded way that they're fantasies have made every aspect of the problem worse), but can't a knowledgable person like Juan Cole, fluent in the local languages, and conversant with the history and culture, find some more constructive approach?

A start might be to acknowledge, and not just in passing, that the Israelis are hardly monolithic in their attitudes and opinions, except perhaps in not wanting to be obliterated. That should hardly be news; Israelite-Jewish history (and myth as in the OT) is one long record of intra-tribal strife, from the murder of Abel to the splitting of the kingdom to the Maccabees versus the Hellenizers, to the sicarii (knife-men) who, while the Romas were besieging Jersulaem in 66 AD, were inside the walls assassinating fellow Jews not felt to be devout enough.

I agree that the present attack on Gaza is disproportionate and will not achieve its political purpose (except maybe to restore Bibi to power, which is hardly a victory), and that Martin Peretz is a sheer embarrassment. But as the history of Israel itself shows, to be an underdog is not automatically to be right and blameless for all that happens. When the Israelis turned the tables, they expelled many Palestinians. If the tables should turn again and the likes of Hamas prevail, I fear the result would not be expulsion but extermination. That may be paranoid, but there is some historical basis for it.