Sweet.

He'll be Secretary of Commerce. If I were flogging a certain meme, I would also note that like Biden and Clinton, Richardson is a former rival.

Now perhaps the true test is whether Obama puts John Edwards in the cabinet. (I kid, I kid!)

BTW, I think this marks the third cabinet level post for Richardson -- UN ambassador, Energy, and now Commerce. Plus he was a Congressman, Governor, and presidential candidate. Not a bad career, eh?

Nate Silver's favorite punching bag makes fun of himself again, telling Alan Colmes that he thinks it's "rational" to believe Barack Obama is a Muslim.

We all know Barack Obama is Christian, but it's important to also say that it wouldn't matter if he were Muslim, or Jewish, or any other religion, because in this country, we don't impose religious tests.

At the same time, it's a smear to maliciously claim someone holds a religious faith other than their own, and to defend believing those smears as "rational" says more about how McCain nearly managed to get 46% of the vote than it does about anything else John Ziegler might choose to whine about.

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Notorious smear merchant Senator Saxby Chambliss looks like he'll hold onto his seat in Georgia, giving the GOP a lock on 41 Senate seats. Meanwhile, Al Franken and Norm Coleman are still locked in a tough recount battle.

Try to decode this logic from The Weekly Standard writer Stephen Hayes:

BORGER: You just can't say no, because that won't go over with the American people.

HAYES: I'm not sure, I think there's a strong part of the country -- more than 50% in a lot of polls -- that are just opposing right now, that are very skeptical of these bailouts, and I think that if you have somebody like a Sarah Palin or another Republican who can articulate that opposition by presenting alternatives...

BORGER: But what are the alternatives? That's the point. You have to have 'em.

HAYES: Well, one would be not, y'know, $7.4 trillion giveaways.

Unless I'm missing something, Hayes is saying:

1. Actually, you can just say no.
2. You should say no by "presenting alternatives."
3. The alternative is to just say no.

When they talk about the intellectual deficit on the right, this is the kind of thing they are taking about. (By the way, Hayes seemed to think passing the bailout was a political plus for McCain during the campaign.)

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I make the case over at Daily Kos:

Here's the deal: we won, and they are declaring victory.

In the same breath that they are saying that this is a center-right nation, conservatives like Limbaugh and Reagan are highlighting the appointment of Hillary Clinton as a victory for the right.

In 1998, they were impeaching Bill Clinton. Now they are claiming Hillary as one of their own.

The center has shifted....to the left.

Josh Orton debunks a false rumor about HRC's replacement, and he might just have inadvertantly started a grasroots movement for Jon Stewart for Senate.

Count me in!

President-elect Obama addressed the nation's governors earlier today in Philadelphia:

NBC selects David Gregory to host 'Meet the Press.'

Could they have managed a less inspired pick? I mean, Gregory (who is only 38) is possibly the most boring TV host on the market.

Apparently, Bush is going to be doing a series of exit interviews as he finds his way off the national stage, and he got things off to a pretty wild start with ABC.

Unfortunately, ABC hasn't yet posted the full video, but I'm dying to see this exchange:

GIBSON: You've always said there's no do-overs as President. If you had one?

BUSH: I don't know -- the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

GIBSON: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?

BUSH: Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld. In other words, if he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely.

GIBSON: No, if you had known he didn't.

BUSH: Oh, I see what you're saying. You know, that's an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate.

That's a pretty remarkable exchange right there. If you follow it out to its logical conclusion -- as Gibson and Bush almost did -- Bush would effectively have to admit that the Iraq war was a mistake.

:::

In other news, I'm still hoping to post the new look TJR today, but I ran into a couple of snafus yesterday, so it might not be ready until tomorrow.

You know how some folks are always trying to make the U.S. out to be a center-right nation?

Well, when picking Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State is seen as a "center-right" decision...doesn't that mean the center has shifted quite a bit towards the left?

Number of references on Mark Halperin's website, thepage.time.com, for each of the following, according to Google:

A friend of mine wrote me this:

i hope napolitano gets rid of these stupid 'threat level orange' announcements
(i'm at the airport)

Here's the first part of today's national security team introduction: