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.

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.

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.

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

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

Success can be built on a strong relationship between a lobbyist and a single, powerful lawmaker.

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.