Fun While It Lasted

The NYT does its Hillary-as-manager piece, a day after its Rudy-is-in-the-grip-of- neocons piece:

"Her meetings have clear agendas and rarely devolve into open-ended 'brainstorming' sessions. She might indulge gossip at the outset (Who's pregnant? Who saw 'Grey's Anatomy'?) but hates wasting time. 'Every meeting should be transactional,' said Tamera Luzzatto, Mrs. Clinton's Senate chief of staff.

"So should each e-mail message. Mrs. Clinton's are spare ('yes, let's do it.'), uncluttered with jokes, emoticons or out-of-nowhere 'whassups.' She carries a BlackBerry, on vibrate, in her purse.

"When asked about her as a manager, people who have worked for Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic senator from New York, described her as 'organized,' 'methodical' and 'disciplined.' They also note that those words were never applied to her husband, Bill Clinton."

Time's Joe Klein backs illegal immigration--and rips the Republicans:

"It's long been my belief that the GOP hole card in 2008 is going to be a rancid furriner-bashing anti-illegal-immigrant smear campaign. Make no mistake, whatever lipstick they put on this pig, the bottom line is the same old know-nothing nativism that has been a minor American stain since the Protestants began to get worried about the Irish Catholic surge in the 1840s (among some of our earliest settlers, the only acceptable immigrants were slaves).

"I tend to be an extremist on this issue. I am wildly in favor of immigration, legal and illegal. I realize that national security--i.e. terrorism--requires that we secure the borders, and that's a good thing, if almost impossible. But as a New Yorker, I'm deeply grateful to the immigrants, many of them illegal, who saved the city by bringing commerce (and sales tax revenues) to some of the toughest neighborhoods in the 1970s and 1980s. I've found that any Haitian willing to get in a rickety boat and risk all to get here is going to be an aggressive, entrepreneurial hard-working American when he or she arrives. In an unscientific sample, I've also found that 98.9% of all Latinos who cross our southern border looking for work are just fabulous, hardworking people.

"I find the tendency of some of the Republicans running for President to play to our very worst instincts--and I mean racism, in this case--is just nauseating. A few months ago, I asked Mitt Romney if he thought illegal immigration was a net economic plus or minus. He said . . . he wasn't sure (but, of course, he knows that it's a net plus)."

Conservative bloggers erupt over the latest setback for the New Republic in the case of Scott Thomas Beauchamp, who, as I reported yesterday, would not defend his "Baghdad Diarist" piece in a recorded Sept. 6 interview with the magazine's editors from Iraq. The transcript was leaked to Drudge.

Incidentally, New Republic Editor Franklin Foer told me that Beauchamp was under duress because his commanding officer was present during the interview. An Army spokesman, Maj. Kirk Luedeke, told me yesterday that no commanding officer was there, just a squad leader and public affairs officer. "The squad leader is a staff sergeant and direct supervisor but does *not* hold a command position within the unit," Luedeke said by e-mail. He continued: "A 'chilling effect' is certainly possible, but I'd add that a squad leader is much closer in rank to Beauchamp and can be more of a coach/mentor than a superior in many cases."

National Review's James Robbins accuses the New Republic of a cover-up:

"TNR's first response to the release was typical of the tone-deafness with which they have approached the entire affair -- denouncing the selective leak of official documents. It is always suspect when journalists take a principled stand against leaks. It might be more convincing if TNR pledged never to use leaked information in its reporting ever again, maybe then they'd have some credibility. As it happened, the Army report recommended releasing the findings to the media, while TNR was frantically trying to get Beauchamp to cancel all his press interviews. TNR Editor Franklin Foer said that Scott owed it to the magazine to talk only to them to let them 'control the way the story proceeds.' I suppose because they were doing such a great job of controlling it thus far.