There's a difference, though, between being a political appointee and putting a political operative in charge of a U.S. attorney's office.

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.

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

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

The further you get from power, the closer you come to the truth.

The President doesn't just appoint the Secretary of State, he appoints the Secretary of State, and then the Congress votes. And if the Congress approves that person, that person becomes Secretary of State.

This has been one of the more comedic aspects of this 72 hours - watching a cavalcade of extremely wealthy pundits, editorialists and political operatives from New York and Washington tell me how rural Americans won't stand for this.