No Laughter Allowed?

"If Britney Spears is smart enough to dump K-Fed, surely the valedictorian of the Wellesley Class of '69 can figure this out."

Yo: Maybe she's still into him.

The New Republic's Jonathan Chait comes up with a novel scheme to derail Hillary's candidacy: Repeal the 22nd Amendment.

"The Hillary Clinton campaign is a product of the fact that her husband can't run for reelection. She is certainly highly intelligent and qualified to hold the presidency, but if her husband was running, she wouldn't be. People react to her candidacy largely on the basis of how they felt about Bill Clinton. Those who yearn for a return to his policies generally support her; those who disliked his policies don't."

He'd like Bubba to run against W.

Big buzz about the Ari testimony-under-immunity yesterday, where he said that Scooter Libby told him about the CIA status of Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame:

"Mr. Fleischer's day on the stand provided a riveting moment because of the detailed description of the conversation, which he said occurred in his last week at the White House and was the only time Mr. Libby had ever asked him to lunch," the New York Times reports.

" . . . But it was Mr. Fleischer's testimony that seemed the most damaging to date. He said he had heard again about Ms. Wilson four days later from the White House communications director, Dan Bartlett, aboard Air Force One as it was heading to Uganda. He said Mr. Bartlett was reading documents and began 'venting' that reporters kept repeating Mr. Wilson's claim that it was Mr. Cheney who had sent Mr. Wilson on his fact-finding trip.

" 'His wife sent him,' Mr. Fleischer recalled Mr. Bartlett saying. 'She works at the C.I.A.'

"Mr. Fleischer said he relayed that information to reporters from Time and NBC, a fact that figured in his later demand that he would testify only after being given a grant of immunity from prosecution." The reporters were Time's John Dickerson and NBC's David Gregory.

"When the investigation began in the fall of 2003, he said he was suddenly afraid he had inadvertently violated the law.

"He said that, upon reading that Ms. Wilson's identity was classified, he thought to himself, 'Oh my God, did I somehow play a role in outing a C.I.A. operative?' "