Leaker-in-Chief?

"I confess to being a little baffled by the excitement. . . . As for leaking portions of the National Intelligence Estimate, yes, it was classified, although it would later be declassified. But it should be remembered that when the president decides to make something public, then it can be made public."

That's right, and if we had learned that Bill Clinton had leaked CIA data to Sidney Blumenthal at the New Yorker to justify the war in Bosnia, I'm sure conservatives would have yawned and said the prez was merely exercising his legal powers.

Anyone see a contradiction between these next two paragraphs?

"Senate Republicans killed an immigration bill yesterday that they said would grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens and then cast doubt on the fate of a new bill that would grant the same amnesty to a slightly smaller portion of illegals," says the Washington Times .

"'We've made huge progress,' Majority Leader Bill Frist said of the new bill, co-sponsored by Republican Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Mel Martinez of Florida, that would give a direct path to citizenship for workers who have resided illegally in the U.S. for five years or more."

So much for compromise.

I know you're all following the "Today" show bakeoff as breathlessly as I am, so click here if you want to know how Meredith Vieira worked a sexual term into her first news conference as Katie Couric's successor.

Brian Montopoli at CBS's Public Eye mocks the Katie coverage:

"The whole thing had more than a faint whiff of high school, with the nerds -- that would be the media critics -- obsessing over the lives of the popular kids, chief among them Katie, the queen bee around whom the Matts and Dianes and Soledads revolve. I'm not trying to be too hard on the nerds here -- they're my people, after all -- but it seemed like they got so blinded by the Couric story, with its celebrity protagonist, that they forgot one of the primary rules of journalism: If a particular topic offers you nothing to write about, well then don't write about it."

A nerdy observation: Under that rule, newspapers would shrink by at least half.

Peggy Noonan spins some observations on news and ideology:

"Katie Couric leaves the 'Today' show, where she has presided 15 years, to go to the 'CBS Evening News.' This is leaving something important (the demographic and huge profitability of 'Today') for something less important, the fading network evening news shows that used to be appointment television and now seem more like relics. Still, relics that get substantial, if aging, numbers. Ms. Couric's move may suggest a renewed interest on the part of the old Tiffany Network to reimagine and reinvigorate the nightly news. I suspect, however, that the move is strategic. CBS chief Les Moonves just spent a lot of money to take the queen of morning news off a competitor's No. 1 morning news show. He rocks 'Today' and puts everything in play. . . .

"The rise of Katie Couric to the 'Evening News,' however, raises an interesting question, and may be suggestive of the media environment of the future. I am not referring to the fact that Katie's a woman and will be the first to 'fly solo,' as everyone is saying. It's not 1967, and she's not replacing Walter Cronkite, who counted. We're all happily used to women bringing us the news.

"It's this. The evening news shows have traditionally had an air of greater formality than the morning news, where the parameters for comment and personal views were understood to be broader. They have two hours to fill, not 23 minutes, of course personal views emerge. Ms. Couric's on-air comments the past decade have led many people to understand that her political and cultural beliefs are pronounced, rigid, and part of her public presentation of herself. And that this is true in a way that does not apply to the beliefs, whatever they are, of Bob Schieffer, Brian Williams and Elizabeth Vargas. (Yes, Dan Rather also consistently signaled and declared his views, but in the end that contributed to his ouster.)

"Is the appointment of Katie an acknowledgement by CBS that it doesn't feel it has to care anymore about political preferences, that the existence of Fox News Channel has in effect freed up the network broadcasts to be what you and I might call more politically tendentious and they might call edgy? In a fractured media environment where everyone can have a voice, why wouldn't the broadcast networks take the new freedom as new license? After all, if America is one big niche market, liberals make up a big niche."

When it comes to Katie, everyone's got an opinion.

Jeff Jarvis is underwhelmed: "It's about the name. It's about celebrity. This is halfway to hiring George Clooney to read the news."

But wait: "LATER: Judging from the comments, I clearly left out an important factor: People like Katie Couric. They really like her."