When Hillary's getting knocked around by the folks on the Hill is Bill going to go Larry King to knock her enemies around? Will he be going off to foreign countries on his own little diplomatic missions? I had assumed he'd remain a step in the background as he has through through most of this decade. But that doesn't seem to be the case. If the constitution allowed it, I'd happily have Clinton back. I'd happily have Hillary in his place. But I don't want them both.

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

For David Halberstam journalism was a calling, not a job. You couldn't fire him and he wouldn't quit.

With Jack Abramoff under indictment, a number of readers have suggested that now he might flip and try to offer the feds some figures higher up the food-chain.

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.

If you look at the people who are advising Rudy Giuliani it turns out that they seem to be all the people who were too insane or too extremist to even get on the George W. Bush team.