CHIP On Their Shoulder

"He is not a likely nominee because many Republicans, of all stripes, tend to believe he 'ran against the party' in 2000, as a prominent Republican told me. Indeed, McCain won the New Hampshire and Michigan contests with the help of Democrats and Independents who crossed over to support him. Those votes won't be so available this time. But it is wonderful to have McCain, the old suicidal, masochistic McCain, back roiling the waters."

Liberal bloggers aren't wild about the House-passed journalists' shield law, which limits protection to those who earn a significant portion of their income from reporting. Says Atrios:

"I don't really like any shield law which attempts to define journalism as a class rather than an act, I don't like that such law uses an income test to define that class, and I certainly don't understand why the emphasis is on protecting the journalists from testifying rather than the whistleblowers who need protecting."

But there already is a whistleblower protection law.

Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum sees it as half a loaf:

"I agree that defining 'journalist' as someone who makes a sufficient amount of money doing journalism is a lousy idea. This was almost certainly done as a way to prevent abuse (i.e., mob figures starting up blogs and then claiming they don't have to testify in court because they disseminate information), but it's a dumb way of addressing the problem. There are perfectly good ways of defining the activity of journalism, and judges are perfectly capable of then making common sense rulings about someone's bona fides. They do it all the time.

"But I disagree on the whistleblower thing . . . When reporters get leaks from anonymous sources, those sources don't want to know that they'll be 'protected.' They want to know that they won't be revealed. Period. Nothing else even comes close to providing the security they need against an administration ( anyone's administration) that will do whatever it can to ruin their career, law or no law."

Finally, on the coziness watch, this news from the Boston Globe:

"The editor of the Lowell Sun, which last December published a special section in tribute to Martin T. Meehan under a controversial arrangement between the newspaper and Meehan's staff, has purchased Meehan's house."

And here's the eye-opener: Editor Jim Campanini bought the former congressman's 3,000-square-foot house for $585,000 (a bit below the assessed value). Trying finding that kind of space in D.C. for a half-mil!