"Though Klein suggests in his subtitle that he has written a study of a power-hungry politician -- 'What She Knew, When She Knew It, And How Far She'll Go to Become President' -- he's produced something quite different. An unduly celebratory biography is called a 'hagiography.' Klein's book is a 'hate-eography.'
"Despite a distinguished journalistic pedigree including stints as the editor of both Newsweek and The New York Times Magazine, Klein has chosen to emulate the works of the highly dubious bio-defamer Charles Higham, who with the slimmest of evidence wrote books claiming that Errol Flynn was a gay Nazi spy and Howard Hughes was a bisexual.
"Klein may offer a few words here or there about Whitewater or Travelgate, but what really floats his boat is the Higham-like notion that Sen. Clinton is secretly a lesbian.
"He has no proof whatever for this claim save that she has had some lesbian friends. (So do I. Does that make me a lesbian?)"
Slate provides the book's juicy bits.
Now here's one of the, ah, burning issues facing America:
"The House on Wednesday approved, for the sixth time since 1995, a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the American flag," the Los Angeles Times reports. "The measure now goes to the Senate, which has consistently rejected similar proposals."
Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum tries to move beyond the fixing-the-intelligence flap by examining the British memos for "what they say about the Bush administration's postwar plans:
"David Manning Memo: 'From what [Condoleezza Rice] said, Bush has yet to find the answers to the big questions . . . what happens on the morning after? . . . I think there is a real risk that the Administration underestimates the difficulties. They may agree that failure isn't an option, but this does not mean that they will avoid it.'
"Straw Memo: 'We have also to answer the big question -- what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything.'
"Downing Street Memo: 'There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.'
"The message from these memos is is pretty clear: the administration didn't have any postwar plans. They figured they'd invade, mop up, and then leave.
