And Now We Return to 'Dead Men Suffer No Bias' . . .

He challenged readers on Oct. 2 to match the names and faces he listed with their Cabinet jobs. And he provided the answers so they could check themselves.

Problem was, a red-faced Noah found out, he got a couple wrong himself. He identified the agriculture secretary as Mike Johanns, but Johanns left on Sept. 20. And Jim Nicholson had left the job of veterans affairs secretary on Oct. 1.

How could Noah have made this error? Well, he relied on the White House Web site. What was he thinking?

Noah duly corrected his list. A few days later, the White House corrected the site, with pictures of Chuck Conner as acting secretary of agriculture and acting secretary Gordon H. Mansfield running VA. Peter Keisler was listed as acting attorney general.

But Wednesday, the White House, in a Sen. Larry Craig-like move, un-resigned Gonzales, re-listing him as attorney general and vaporizing Keisler.

And Gonzales was back at the White House on Wednesday afternoon at a celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. Bush singled out his old buddy when he addressed the crowd: "I appreciate my friend, my dear friend, former attorney general of the United States, Al Gonzales."

As of yesterday afternoon, Gonzales, who has retained white-collar defense lawyer George Terwilliger to represent him in investigations into whether he lied to lawmakers and allowed politics to influence hiring and firing at the Justice Department, was still listed as attorney general.

More Presidential Sax

This just in yesterday from the Los Angeles Times:

"Disgraced Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu had a well-known affection for fine living and all things Clinton. And his collector's taste and eye were on display Wednesday, when federal authorities unsealed documents showing they had seized more than 180 bottles of pricey wine from Hsu's New York apartment, as well as a saxophone believed to have been autographed by President Clinton."

Was the reed still wet?

Arms Control -- What, Me Worry?

Michael Allen, formerly the senior director for legislative affairs on the National Security Council, has moved over to become the senior director for counterproliferation. That's the post vacated by John Rood in September 2006 when Rood went to the State Department to be assistant secretary for international security and nonproliferation. (He's been nominated to be undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, but that nomination is going nowhere.) The NSC job remained vacant until a few weeks ago, when Allen formally took over. The move raised eyebrows among the arms-control crowd because Allen doesn't have much experience on these issues. He's in his mid-30s, and before working in the administration had been a counsel to Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who's not seen as much of a foreign policy expert. Now Allen is in a position previously occupied by serious heavyweights, including Bob Joseph, Bob Bell, Gary Samore and Dan Poneman.

Our colleague Dafna Linzer's article in March 2006 focused on the youthful crew that had assumed major NSC positions.

"At the NSC, staffers said the gap is most noticeable when their boss, National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley, recounts his years as an arms-control negotiator during the Cold War.

" 'We're like 'Arms control, what's that?' " said Michael Allen, Hadley's special assistant for legislative affairs.

" 'I often hear about arms control from the old-timers, but it's so different now. It's about all the places we don't have embassies now and it's very rare, it seems, that [Congress] is lobbying the executive branch to engage. Most of the times it's isolate, how can we isolate a country even more?' said Allen, a lawyer who grew up in Mobile, Ala., and could easily win an Owen Wilson look-alike contest. Don't ask the 32-year-old Allen about the era of bipartisanship; he never experienced it."