We are Republicans. How I see our mission is we always want to be transparent with readers about what we think, about our opinions. But, fundamentally, we are out there to collect and report facts. And that's always our guiding mission.

Authoritarianism and secrecy breed incompetence; the two feed on each other. It's a vicious cycle. Governments with authoritarian tendencies point to what is in fact their own incompetence as the rationale for giving them yet more power.

One of the failings of ideologues is their inability to see that everyone else isn't necessarily an ideologue like them.

The President appoints the U.S. Attorneys. They're political in a certain respect. But the Department of Justice - the power that they hold is so great, it's life and limb, you know - put you in jail, make you run up hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal costs. Even though we understand that political appointees take these jobs. We don't assume that the party in power is going to use that kind of power to advance its political interests.

That D.C. grand jury investigation of Abramoff can't go on forever. Eventually the lawyers at the Public Integrity Section will go to their bosses with some decisions about just who they want to indict. That's when Al Gonzales will have to show his cards.

Officials and journalists live in parallel but separate realities; they see and talk to each other, may have a meal and gossip together, but their worlds never touch, because officials use words that don't mean what they say, while for those reporters in Vietnam - Halberstam, Peter Arnett, Morley Safer, and others - words were vessels of reality.

There's this old line the wise folks in Washington have that "it's not the crime, but the cover-up." But only fools believe that. It's always about the crime. The whole point of the cover-up is that a full revelation of the underlying crime is not survivable.