Cameron Jessen works the controls of an EOD robot as his cousin, Michael Miller, watches through a protective mask. The two were at the 22d Chemical Battalion June 19 for the dedication of a conference room in the name of Cameron's father, Sgt. 1st Class Kevin P. Jessen, who was killed in Iraq. (Photo courtesy army.mil).

Journalistas in Washington and beyond the Beltway on Thursday were chortling over the news--brought to you by Politico--that the Watergate-famed Washington Post had cooked up a plan to hold private salons, where lobbyists and association heads could pay mucho bucks (up to $250,000) to wine and dine (or tea and snack) with Obama administration officials, lawmakers, and Post editors and reporters.

Selling access! Both anti-MSMers and non-Post MSMers jumped on Washington's big-gun newspaper for this violation of journalistic probity. And before the story could make the evening news, publisher Katharine Weymouth had strangled this for-profit salon in its crib, claiming the paper's marketing department had gone overboard. She noted that the paper had indeed decided to hold a series of dinners, but that the flier promoting the pay-to-sup salons had not been vetted by her or the newsroom. It does sound to me like the marketing guys and gals might have been too exuberant. No newspaper exec or editor in his or her right mind would have greenlighted the project described in that flier.

Still, there's nothing like kicking a newspaper when it's down. At the White House press briefing room, there was much eye-rolling and amusement over the caper. Journalists there joked with Washington Post correspondent Michael Shear about paying five bucks to have coffee with him. (All day long, Washington Post reporters were expressing their own outrage to friends and associates.)

When it was Shear's turn to ask a question of press secretary Robert Gibbs--he said he wanted to ask about health care, as other journalists giggled in anticipation--Gibbs could not refrain. He quipped, "the counsel's office has advised me to ask Mike exactly how much each of these questions will cost me." Pretty funny. But Shear took his lumps for his team well and pressed ahead with his queries. (What were they? Who was paying attention to that?) 

Next up for questioning came Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times. And what was the most pressing issue of the day for the newspaper of record? The troops pull-back in Iraq? The opposition in Iran? North Korea missile launches? The god-awful job loss numbers? No, it was that embarrassing story about the Washington Post. Zeleny asked if any White House officials had been solicited by the Post to be special guests at these salons. Gibbs said not that he was aware of any WHite House aides who had been invited, but the press secretary indicated that administration officials at other agencies might have been roped in by the Post. He said he could check on that. So far, the White House has not released any statements expanding on his answer.

What does all this mean? Probably not much. It's obvious that drenched-in-red-ink newspapers are trying to find new revenue streams. The marketeers of the Post just went a wee bit too far. It's not as if they were trying to be sneaky about it. After all, the story emerged because the business side of the Post was circulating a flier promoting the salons. And as soon as this terrible idea became public, it was killed. But as one somber New York Times reporter told me, this episode is a sign that at all major newspapers--including his own--the marketing people are in ascendance. That's natural, considering the state of newspapers, and, on one level, those of us who enjoy and support papers like the Times and the Post (even though they can be quite aggravating at times) ought to be rooting for the marketing teams. But this tale is a reminder that the marketing of journalism can be a two-edged sword. Today, a lot of media folks eagerly grabbed that sword and slashed away at the Post.

Although President Barack Obama pledged that taxpayers would be able to monitor "every dime" of the $787 billion dollar stimulus bill, a government website that is supposed to track the expenditures is off to a rocky start. Months after going live, Recovery.gov provides only sketchy information about government purchasing and is undergoing a rushed bidding process to be revamped. The problems that Recovery.gov faces are the central problems of the stimulus: The need to roll out projects quickly while meeting long-term goals and preventing taxpayer money from being wasted.

From the start, Recovery.gov was an ambitious project. Never before has the government sought to provide so much data about contracting in a single, user-friendly format. Moreover, the Obama administration is requiring that stimulus money be tracked not only to recipients like state agencies--which is normal practice for federal spending--but also to sub-recipients that could include individual contractors. Yet so far, Recovery.gov hasn't delivered on that promise. It's little more than a collection of press releases and general breakdowns of spending.

After taking considerable flak over the site, the Federal Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board issued a request for bids to revamp Recovery.gov on June 15th, requiring proposals to be submitted a mere 11 days later. Bypassing the typical "full and open competition" bidding process, the board limited bids to 59 pre-approved contractors "because of the speed with which we have to handle this particular procurement," a spokesman told Federal News Radio. Whoever won the contract would have to roll out the new site in less than a month. On Tuesday, Federal News Radio reported that only two contractors actually submitted bids--far from an ideal level of competition.

"They are required to have open competition, but everyone pretty much knew that the incumbent vendor was going to get the contract," says Tom Lee, a technology director at the Sunlight Foundation, an open government advocacy group that had considered submitting a bid of its own. "There's just no way another organization could get up to speed quickly enough to get the work done."

John Bolton says that Iranians' rejection of their rulers means now is as good a time as any for the Israelis to bomb Iran. I actually heard this argument bandied around last week by a friend who had heard it at a dinner with high-powered New York business and media types, but I couldn't really take it seriously. I guess I underestimated the Right once again. Is it any surprise that the man who joked about nuking Chicago and virulently supported the Iraq war thinks that bombing Iran will solve Israel's problems?

The broader point is that Bolton does a lot to attack Obama's position but very little to defend his own. It's as if he believes the burden of proof is on those who don't favor war. But this is not 1981, Natanz is not Osirak, and the Iranian nuclear program will not be easy to destroy. The best the Israelis could hope for from an attack on Iran is a temporary setback to Iran's bombmaking capabilities, offset by a redoubled Iranian desire for a bomb. That doesn't seem like a good outcome for Israel.

When it comes to the Bush White House's decision to withhold from the public Dick Cheney's interview with FBI agents investigating the CIA leak case, the Obama administration says its predecessor did the right thing. And it's fighting hard to do the same.

On Wednesday night, in another move that puts the administration on the side of secrecy over openness, Obama's Justice Department filed a memo supporting its ongoing opposition to a lawsuit requesting the release of the Cheney interview. This memo included a declaration from Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who said that if the Cheney interview is made public it could cause public officials in the future to not cooperate with criminal investigations.

Breuer, who heads the department's criminal division, noted:

As a general matter, the non-public nature of law enforcement interviews can be a significant factor in securing the voluntary cooperation of witnesses. Indeed, it is not uncommon for prosecutors and law enforcement investigators to inform witnesses that, subject to applicable statutes, regulations and rules, they will attempt to maintain the confidentiality of information provided. A non-public interview can be particularly important in gaining the cooperation of senior-level White House officials given the public role of such witnesses, the sensitive nature of the subject matters that may be discussed, the potential politicization of these sensitive issues, and the possibility that whatever matter is being investigated ultimately may not warrant any law enforcement action.

In other words, top government officials may only cooperate with a criminal investigation--that is, submit to questioning without being subpoenaed--if they are promised confidentiality. Now what sort of public servant would a person be if he or she refused to help the FBI during an investigation? But Breuer claimed this is a real threat to future investigations: 

A White House official's reluctance to submit voluntarily to an interview or share certain information in an interview could hamper an investigation in several important ways....A law enforcement investigation based upon interviews subject to an expectation of confidentiality also benefits from senior officials more inclined to provide identifiable leads, name percipient witnesses, offer credibility assessments of the accuser or other witnesses, and even articulate inferences, insight or hunches that can be invaluable to a law enforcement investigator. A law enforcement investigation could lose these potential benefits if the senior official believes his or her statement will be subject to public disclosure.

But Citizens for Responsiblity and Ethics in Washington, the public interest group that filed the lawsuit seeking the Cheney interview, points out that "Cheney was never promised confidentiality, as Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald confirmed in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), then Chairman of the House Oversight Committee." That is, Cheney participated in the investigation voluntarily without the cloak of confidentiality. If he could do so, why won't future officials? Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director, notes, "It is astonishing that a top Department of Justice political appointee is suggesting other high-level appointees are unlikely to cooperate with legitimate law enforcement investigations. What is wrong with this picture?"

The Justice Deparment also filed a declaration noting that because the Cheney interview covered "confidential deliberations" he held with other senior administration officials, its disclosure "could chill future internal discussions about matters of national importance, thus limiting...full, frank, and open discussion." This separate declaration also maintained that the Cheney interview can be withheld because it also covered "confidential communications" he had with Bush. This is the argument that the Bush administration routinely used, such as when it opposed the release of information related to Cheney's energy task force.

By fighting the CREW lawsuit--adopting arguments made by the Bush administration--the Obama administration is demonstrating that even as it encourages greater transparency in government operations, it still is reluctant to yield secrecy that applies to White House actions. For instance, it is still seeking to block the release of White House visitors logs. Cheney, no doubt, is appreciative.

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Yesterday, I tweeted the Washington Monthly's Steve Benen about his post reminding liberals that the Democrats don't really have 60 votes in the Senate. I argued that while Benen and Ezra Klein are making valid arguments—Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy really are sick and the political system really is messed up—neither the mainstream media nor the voters themselves are going to accept those excuses come election time. Last night, Benen responded in an email:

You raise a good point about the governing possibilities of a caucus with 60 members. Reid has 58 Dems and 2 Indys who caucus with Dems, and with that comes a rare and valuable opportunity.

My post, which in retrospect probably should have been clearer, wasn't intended to suggest that Senate Dems have an excuse for failure. Rather, I was responding to the exuberance I saw in a variety of corners, insisting hassle-free governing is the inevitable consequence of the resolution in Minnesota. I'd be delighted if that were true, but it seems to me the limitations -- some logistical, some ideological, and some congenital -- make this highly unlikely.

That said, I don't disagree with your observation at all. In fact, I'd like to think Reid & Co. would take it to heart. Come Midterms, voters aren't going to be especially impressed when Democratic Incumbent X tells voters, "Well, we would have done more, but Kennedy got sick and Nelson's a pain in the ass." They'll tune that right out, looking instead at the record of accomplishments -- or lack thereof.

So, to answer your question directly: yes, there are 60 Democrats in the Senate (technically 58 +2, but whatever). But what that should mean and what it will mean are two different things.

It seems like Benen's come around, which is great. But there are still plenty of other people out there making excuses for Senate Democrats not doing their jobs. And while I understand people's desire to correct irrational exuberance over the Franken result, I think that making these kind of excuses for Harry Reid et. al. is counterproductive. The excuses are valid ones—passing health care reform is going to be hard—but they're still just that: excuses. Democrats are not going to get many better chances than this. They're in a position of greater power than they've been in at least three decades, and probably four. They have a window of opportunity to pass the health care legislation their party has been trying to enact for sixty years. If their party stands for anything, it's this. They need to get it done or get out of the business. And that goes for President Obama, too.

When it comes to the economy, America favors the square-wheel approach.

According to satirist Mark Fiore, this usually doesn't work out so well.

On Wednesday, Mir Hossein Mousavi released a statement in which he declared the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was "illegitimate," called for continuing protests, and demanded the release of opposition supporters detained by the security forces.

One of those detainees appears to be Hossein Zaman, an Iranian pop singer. He appears on one list of detained Iranians. Various Twitter users have cited him as one of the many reformists detained. And a Tehran filmmaker tells me that he is still in prison. There's little publicly available information—especially in English—about his arrest or current whereabouts.

Zaman, who once served in the Revolutionary Guard, has long identified with the forces for reform in Iran. An article that appeared in the Iranian Times in 2000 noted that Zaman had performed at "political events" for the reformists. In 2002, according to Agence France Presse, he blasted the country's culture minister for not defending the rights of artists after he was blocked from performing near a shrine of a descendant of Mohammad. "It seems that certain people signed a petition during Friday prayers seeking to stop the concert,'" he told an Iranian newspaper, "and the judiciary thought it best to stop it." The next year, according to AFP, Zaman ran for a city council position in Tehran. And his music has been banned from state-controlled radio and television.

Throughout his musical career, Zaman has received little, if any, attention outside Iran. But a YouTube search turns up a video posted in 2007 for a Zaman song called "Parandeh."

At the White House press briefing on Wednesday, I asked press secretary Robert Gibbs if President Barack Obama would join Mousavi in urging the Iranian government to release its political prisoners. Gibbs said that "the President strongly believes in the right for people to gather in protest without fear of harm or violence." He added,   "I think I'll leave it at that."

And "parendeh" is farsi for "bird."

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I recently was chatting with one of the folks who run Organizing for America, the offshoot of the Barack Obama presidential campaign that is now housed within the Democratic Party, and I mentioned that I thought OFA had come late to the climate change party—meaning that it had only moved to mobilize its millions of supporters in support of the cap and trade bill a few days before the legislation hit the House floor this past Friday. I got no argument. And it's even arguable that the Obama-backed Waxman-Markey bill barely passed (219-212) partly because the White House did not put much of its organizing muscle behind the measure.

Sure, a win is a win. But this narrow victory will certainly embolden the bill's opponents for the next—and more difficult—round: the Senate, which may or may not take up similar legislation in the fall.

This close win might also make life more difficult for the US official whose job it is to save the planet: Todd Stern, the Obama administration's climate envoy. He's now preparing for the Copenhagen conference, scheduled for December, where a successor to the Kyoto climate change accord is supposed to be negotiated. One of Stern's big jobs is to persuade China, India, and other developing nations to cut back on their rising emissions of greenhouse gasses. But to have a chance of doing that he has to show them that the United States, the number-one emitter in historic and per capita terms, is serious about reducing its own emissions. Foreign governments looking for a sign of US seriousness could take a 219-212 vote (for a bill that will not reduce emissions as quickly as some scientists call for) as a mixed signal.

For more on Stern and the tough position he's in, see my just-posted article on him.

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When Donald Rumsfeld became Secretary of Defense in 2001, he vowed to bring change to the Pentagon. If anything, he was harsher in his criticism of the DOD's dysfunction than Gates and Obama are now. In a speech on September 10, 2001, Rumsfeld called the department's bureaucracy "an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America. In this building, despite this era of scarce resources taxed by mounting threats, money disappears into duplicative duties and bloated bureaucracy..."

Rumsfeld pledged to fix the DOD's archaic accounting system—which had lost track of $2.3 trillion in transactions—to root out waste, and to fix a procurement system that routinely delivered expensive, outdated weapons programs. Unfortunately, things didn't exactly work out that way. So what happened? Well, Bradley Graham's new 600-plus-page opus on the life and works of Donald Rumsfeld provides a couple of intriguing clues.