Time to Move On?

"But that's apparently all in the past. Now he's the GOP Savior of the Week."

There's a substantive debate about the Democratic move to expand the children's health program from covering 6 million kids to about 10 million--you know, the bill that Bush threatened to veto last week. But Time's Karen Tumulty says he is losing the symbolic battle:

"When Republicans try to prove their conservative bona fides by taking on a program aimed for children, the outcome is usually the same. Remember the Reagan administration trying to declare ketchup a vegetable? And the House Republicans deciding to 'curb the growth' of the school lunch program in 1995?

"That's why I'm mystified as to why President Bush is standing behind his veto threat on legislation that would expand SCHIP, the state health insurance program for children. After House and Senate negotiators reached a compromise yesterday, Bush faces opposition not only from Democrats but Republicans on Capitol Hill--enough, sources tell my colleague Jay Newton-Small, to override a veto. Given how averse this President has been to using his veto pen, he is under pressure from conservatives to take a stand. But this one strikes me as a fight he is going to lose, and one that will haunt his party right through 2008."

Is Bush really offering Hillary advice, as this new Bill Sammon book says, or just trying to box her in?

"President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president. In an interview for the new book 'The Evangelical President,' White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has 'been urging candidates: "Don't get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically." '

"Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that 'even a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there. Especially if it's a Democrat," the chief of staff told The Examiner in his West Wing office. 'He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.' "

A peek inside the world of pro basketball:

"A former Knick intern took the stand in the sensational sexual-harassment trial that's rocking Madison Square Garden and copped to having sex in a truck with hoops star Stephon Marbury -- but denied she told a female executive she felt pressured," reports the New York Post.

" 'Stephon Marbury is parked outside the strip club. He asked me, 'Are you going to get in the truck?' and I got in the truck,' Kathleen Decker said in the explosive testimony, her voice quavering. . . . 'I was in control.'

"Decker contradicted claims by plaintiff Anucha Brown Sanders that the former intern was distraught over her encounter with Marbury -- and told her boss she was drunk when she left the strip club and felt she 'had to' have sex with the point guard because of 'who he was.' "

Hollywood image-makers often try to deep-six unfavorable magazine pieces by promising access to some other movie star in their stable. Politico's Ben Smith finds the technique being used, quite effectively, by a presidential contender:

Early this summer, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign for president learned that the men's magazine GQ was working on a story the campaign was sure to hate: an account of infighting in Hillaryland.

"So Clinton's aides pulled a page from the book of Hollywood publicists and offered GQ a stark choice: Kill the piece, or lose access to planned celebrity coverboy Bill Clinton. Despite internal protests, GQ editor Jim Nelson met the Clinton campaign's demands, which had been delivered by Bill Clinton's spokesman, Jay Carson, several sources familiar with the conversations said.

"GQ writer George Saunders traveled with Clinton to Africa in July, and Clinton is slated to appear on the cover of GQ's December issue, in which it traditionally names a 'Man of the Year,' according magazine industry sources. And the offending article by Atlantic Monthly staff writer Josh Green got the spike."

Not exactly a profile in journalistic courage. And there's no denial in the piece.