Solomon is living in some kind of fairyland if he thinks that any GOP "legislative accomplishments" are going to make it through this Congress.

The rest of the Bush term will be a painful ordeal of investigation and oversight. Any initiative by the White House to push their policies through Congress is DOA.

This is simply explained by "the Stockholm syndrome" which is a psychological response sometimes seen in a hostage, in which the hostage exhibits loyalty to the hostage-taker, in spite of the danger (or at least risk) in which the hostage has been placed....

Soloman is a hostage to the WH in gathering any news and if he bites the hand he loses his job.

It is a stiff syndrome as in the code word

From one perspective, that of prior Bush administration postures, the offer of a closed-door interview with no transcripts in precisely "in the middle."

At one end of the spectrum, you have the ordinary procedure of testifying under oath while at the other, you have Dick Cheney, President of the Senate, telling one of the Senators to go fuck himself.

When commentators suggest that the Bush administration has decided to pick its battles, that simply means they use four letter words only on select occasions.

Congress: We want to buy your house and we want to pay $250,000 for it.

White House: The price is a one-bazillion dollars.

Congress: Um ... That's not even a real number.

White House: ONE BAZILLION! That's our compromise.

Congress: That's not a compromise ... That's your initial position - and it's not even a real number.

White House: We just want to do this deal. Quit stone-walling! Why don't you talk to our agent. Here's his card: John Solomon. Heckuva a guy!

The fact that he jumps from discussing legislative negotiation to the Bush Administration's position on Congressional testimony is telling all on it's own -- is there a reason he opened discussion on this topic when no one asked? Sounds a bit hard-sell to me.

DC press is completely pussified.

Why not just stonewall?

Manly Reporter: Because Bush has to try to look reasonable while he tries to head off what looks to be a real scandal ...

Certainly it's in the middle. It's right in the middle between Karl Rove and Darth Cheney.

I don't think Mr. Solomon is covering this stuff. I think that, like many in his profession, he's hitched his wagon to the current administration and is along for the ride.

"Journalists" like Solomon remind me of aliens masquerading as humans in old sci-fi flicks. There's something clearly wrong with them—anyone can see that—yet they seem strangely unaware of their own odd behavior.

One can imagine Solomon's response to a different question.

Q: Mr. Solomon, wouldn't the administration be better off demanding that Congress pass its legislation giving the president the right to eat live babies?

Solomon: No, I think they understand they have to pick their battles, which is why I suspect they'll agree to a solution somewhere in the middle -- like Sen. Specter's proposal that the president be required to kill babies before eating them.

I mean, isn't that what Beltway journalism is all about these days?

Like Mike Allen, John Solomon is a GOP operative. Read his articles (and Allen's)in that light and they all make sense.

Sometimes reading these Republicon comments just turns me "green" and then I can't go outside.

Washington Post = Operation Mockingbird implemented by Phil Graham, end of story as to that paper being anything other than a Soviet Pravda organization. They are in league with the Bush family working actively against the interests of Democracy and ordinary working people and are fully lined up with the oligarchy that is destroying this country for all but the richest elite . . . their columnists and reporters are a joke, traitors to the rest of us actually, and their real mission is propaganda and mind control. Code word "screw" as in wake up to the fact that this is what people like Solomon, Broder etc. are doing to the rest of us who are not part of their millionaire pundit class.

That's . . . remarkable, that chat. Soloman does in fact defend the admin using its own talking points on every facet of every question that he's asked. A-mazing.

My fave? The CLENIS!

To whit:

"Dan Eggen and I at the Post were the first to notice the RNC email accounts and to write about them. It turns out both Democrats and Republicans since the 1990s have set up separate accounts for their political staffs at the White House to avoid Hatch Act violations. So this issue isn't unique to the Bush administration."

Oh, oh, oh, oh, and Jonny was FIRST to see this! He was OUT IN FRONT!

Good lord. Sickening.

Anyone with a scintilla of intellectual honesty who looks at this atty. scandal sees it for what it is: The exposure of purely political,systemic abuses of power, not just at DOJ, but throughout every branch of this government. The recent hysteric rants from Hiatt, Cohen and even Limbaugh(Media Matters) signal one thing. They understand the potential political firestorm that is brewing and are running around like cornered jackals trying to put out the small fires. This process may take time, but the underlying abuses everywhere one looks will eventually gain critical mass. These White House sycophants see their world caving in, bit by bit, and will do anything to keep this criminal enterprise going. Call Henry Waxman and Sen. Leahy and John Conyers and give them an atta boy and a heartfelt thank you.

John Solomon is a total pud but in this case, I don't think what he said is so egregious. If you consider the full scope of responses to a request for having someone testify under oath -- on one side, they testify under oath in front of the full committee, on the other side, they hide behind executive privilege and don't go in front of the committee until they're hogtied and dragged there -- then no-transcript, no-oath is something in the middle. yes it's the White House's offer and yes it's a terrible one, because without a transcript there is no accountability, but technically it's there somewhere in the middle.

that said, his words make it seem like the WH is meeting in the middle which they're not.

As Froomkin notes, "the 'outpouring of editorials at small- and medium-sized newspapers across the country,' which I wrote indicated that 'there may be something about violating the Constitution that riles up Americans no matter where they live or where they stand on the political spectrum." Why isn't a reporter for the Washington Post similarly incensed?

Solomon has shown, over and over again, that he is simply a rightwing hitman, a WH parasite.

When the Dems take the Presidency AND overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate in 2008, he will become as irrelevant and marginal as one can be. It will be interesting to see how many of these opportunists will suddenly change their tune when the Dems take back control. With the incredible amount of documented blog-evidence these days it will be much harder than they think.

Dems should take the Bush offer, but don't let any republican members attend. THen they can make up whatever they want Rove to say. They can say he admitted to treasonous crimes and plan his execution. Doesn't matter what Rove says afterward. Eight? congressman heard him say it!! He even implicated Cheney!! Ready the impeachment papers. Hell, Bushco makes their own reality all the time. Maybe Dems should too.

coded word: what Bush has none of.

Why isn't a reporter for the Washington Post similarly incensed?

The clue is in your question. And the title of the newspaper. And the fact that John Solomon will be at the hacks' junket this weekend.

Wow, that's bad even by Solomon's standards. Molly Ivins captured his mindset well when she wrote "The American press has always had a tendency to assume the truth must lie exactly halfway between any two opposing points of view." (I have a post on false equivalencies on this.) It's been obvious for some time we can't expect the Bush administration to protect the Constitution, but it's sad the same isn't true of reporters such as Solomon. One would think a reporter would want to hear all the dirt!

RE: "compromise" as a mid-point between a ridiculously extreme position and a reasonable position: Paul Krugman beautifully summarized the flacidity of the pendejos (lookitup) in the American press when he said that if the scientific community said "the world is round" and the conservatives said "the world is flat", his paper, NYT, would headline the next day:"Shape of the World: Views Differ".

RE: Stockholm Syndrome- assumes that initially the hostages DONT WANT to be loyal to the kidnappers--is seems Soloman was EAGER to be kidnapped.

Solomon, Matthews, Russert, Broder, et al, would unzip Bush's fly and perform oral sex if asked to.

Totally unprincipled bunch of turds.