Jean Kennedy Smith with her brother President John F. Kennedy during the opening baseball game of the American League in 1961. Click the photo for a gallery with more photos of Smith and the Kennedy siblings. (Bettmann─Corbis)

 

After the passing of Ted earlier this week, only one of the nine Kennedy siblings remains. Jean Kennedy Smith, the second-youngest and last daughter, is now the sole survivor of a family shrouded in perhaps equal parts of triumph and heartbreak. Jean was just 16 when her brother Joseph Jr. was killed in World War II. But less than two decades later, she saw her other brother Jack sworn in as president. She also traveled the country with another brother, Robert, as he nearly clinched the Democratic nomination in 1968, although she was with him the night he was slain in Los Angeles. After losing her other siblings in tragic ways─a plane crash and a botched surgery that left her sister Rosemary incapacitated and isolated─she and her brother Ted, along with their older sister Eunice (who died earlier this month), have carried the family's legacy of public service.

By J. Lester Feder

Conservative Utah Senator Orrin Hatch struck up an unlikely and enduring friendship with Ted Kennedy over the years they shared in the Senate. It was a hugely unexpected relationship. Hatch had even told The Boston Globe that he ran for the Senate to fight against Ted Kennedy. Yet the two men worked together on a range of bills, including the children's health insurance program, and became personally very close. Hatch last spoke to Kennedy about a month ago, when they again discussed health care.  The Salt Lake Tribune reports: "He said, 'I want to do it with you,'" Hatch said. "I said, 'Well, tell your staff to work with me and we'll get it done.'"

Hatch also likes to write songs, and he's written one with singer Phil Springer which he released on his YouTube channel today. I've posted the lyrics after the jump. Enjoy. 

News broke early this morning that Massachusetts Sen. Edward (Ted) Kennedy had died, succumbing to a battle with brain cancer he started waging a year ago. He was 77. Kennedy first entered the U.S. Senate in 1962 as one of the body's youngest members (he was 30) after his brother ascended to the presidency. Since then, he crafted for himself one of Washington's highest profiles─not just because of his longevity, but also his legislative brokering on issues like health care, immigration, and education.

Kennedy was no stranger to the pages of NEWSWEEK, having appeared on our cover close to a dozen times, the last time in July, when the senator drafted a cover essay on his fight for health-care reform. But NEWSWEEK reporters and editors have captured Kennedy's bumps and milestones for decades. Our team has pulled together this collection of photos as a look back at some of those markers.

NEWSWEEK's Evan Thomas also has a colorful and in-depth look back at Kennedy's life as the youngest son of the most expansive political dynasty in American history. "At one level, his story is a familiar one to the many students of Kennedyiana, a tale of sin and redemption, triumph and tragedy," Evan writes. "But like all good human stories, his is not so easily reduced to cliché. Kennedy's saga is at once more complicated and more intriguing. And it begins with a personal mystery: how someone born into a life of wealth and privilege, into a family which defined itself by its greatness, could be made to feel like a nonentity."

Watch this space throughout the day for additional coverage, including remembrances from colleagues and our own political team's analysis of the life and legacy of Ted Kennedy.

That RNC Chair Michael Steele said something confusing isn't really news. Steele has been an erratic leader at best since he won the chairmanship earlier this year. His mixed messages on Medicare though reflect the difficulties of getting a straight answer in the health care debate. ABC News points out that in 2006, Steele told Meet the Press that Medicare cuts should be on the table to help "control runaway spending." But yesterday, Steele hit the airwaves to unveil a "Seniors Bill of Rights" which aims to protect Medicare from cuts, telling Good Morning America that seniors had come under fire in reform efforts. Steele also wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post urging the preservation of the Medicare system, which is of course, a government run system. "We need to protect Medicare and not cut it in the name of "health-insurance reform,"" Steele wrote.

Today on Fox and Friends Steele, perhaps understanding the contradiction between being both a vocal defender of Medicare and a critic of government intervention in the sector, changed his tune. Steele was asked what to respond to Rep. Anthony Weiner's claim that those who don't want to see cuts to Medicare are essentially making the argument for a single payer system. "The reality of it is that, you know, this single payer program known as Medicare is a very good example of what we should not have happen with all of our health care," Steele said, later adding "Government cannot run a health care system. They've already shown that. Trust the private markets to do it the right way." Steele wants to have his cake and eat it too, which isn't helping advance meaningful debate on healthcare. But then again, when it comes to Michael Steele, it's hard to expect anything different.

(As an aside, isn't it usually conservatives who argue that health care is not a right? And now the RNC proposes a bill of rights?)

On Sunday, John McCain told George Stephanopolous that Ted Kennedy's absence was sorely impacting the health care debate. "No person in that institution is indispensable, but Ted Kennedy comes as close to being indispensable as any individual I've ever known in the Senate because he had a unique way of sitting down with the parties at a table and making the right concessions," McCain said, adding that health care reform would likely be in a very different place today if Kennedy was present. Pundits tend to agree with McCain that Kennedy is uniquely placed to deal with Republicans. Ezra Klein doesn't. Here's Klein:

This stuff just isn't plausible. Kennedy was around in 1994 andthere was no deal. More to the point, Kennedy's committee, the HELPCommittee, has passed health-care reform. Kennedy's staff, as you might expect, led their effort. But neither Kennedy nor his staff can make the deals for another committee.If Kennedy were in the Senate now, health care would be exactly whereit is: Through Ted Kennedy's Committee and stuck in the morass of MaxBaucus's Gang of Six.

Greg Sargent over at The Plum Line is reporting that Chuck Schumer is urging his Senate colleagues to ramp up their criticisms of their Republican counterparts. Here's Sargent:

Senator Chuck Schumer is privately urging fellow Dem Senators to aggressively argue in the media that the GOP is wholly committed to blocking reform, in order to lay the political groundwork should Dems have to do reform alone, senior Senate aides confirm to me. Schumer’s private strategizing with fellow Democrats signals that the Dem Senate leadership is getting more serious about using the “reconciliation” process to get health care reform done without Republicans. Schumer has also told colleagues he believes political work has to be done in advance to sell “reconciliation” by persuading voters that the GOP is wholly opposed to reform of any kind, aides say. So he’s now urging fellow Senators to make the case about GOP obstructionism in a concerted way.

It's increasingly likely that Democrats will have to go it alone on health care, even leaving some of their centrist counterparts behind, so Schumer's pleas aren't that surprising. After running on promises of a new era of bipartisanship, Democrats urgently need to make the case that failure to achieve it isn't their fault. But is it too late? Voters have been subject to weeks of attacks that paint Democrats as bullies, who want to dictate a new health care system, take away choices and euthanize the incapacitated. Can they turn this around and point the finger at Republicans for failing to want to work with them? They're starting by pointing out that Republicans haven't offered viable alternatives, save blowing the whole thing up and starting again, which may as well be failure. But they're going to need a few more Anthony Weiners on the airwaves if this strategy is to work.

President Barack Obama plays golf Monday at the Farm Neck Golf Club in Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.

Onlya few days into his week-long getaway on Martha's Vineyard, PresidentObama has shown he can stretch his vacation muscle. He was photographedthis morning playing a round of golf with a plan to squeeze in sometennis in the afternoon. In response to a question about what the firstfamily has planned for the rest of the week, a White House spokesmansays that even Obama himself doesn't have a schedule--the true shakingof the organizational leash that comes with the presidency. We're alsotold he won't be making any public appearances.

All presidentstake some time off this time of year, but in decidedly different ways.Some have used August to have surgery, while others try to reconnectwith their families and home towns. We bring you the more colorful,contrived or just plain peculiar presidential vacations on which SecretService has had to tag along.

By Katie Connolly and Daniel Stone

Keen followers of health-care reform are about to become entranced by the workings of a man most have never heard of until now: Alan Frumin. No, he's not the sausage king of Chicago. He's the Senate Parliamentarian. Those who've watched Senate sessions on C-Span have probably seen the unassuming Frumin perched on the dais advising the Presiding Officer on arcane procedural regulations. These days, it's looking ever more likely that if health-care reform is to be passed this year, it won't be because of Barack Obama. It will be because of Frumin. His rulings could make or break the entire bill.

It's a tough, even mythical thing to do, to find middle ground for both environmental and business interests in one fell swoop. But both groups seem to be approving a move made late last night by Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. Addressing issues of collapsing fisheries and the decline of ocean health that is leading to and being caused by climate change, Locke made a sweeping move to limit the expansion of commercial fishing in U.S. waters in the north Pacific. Set to go into effect as soon as next year, the plan would halt increased industrial fishing over a 200,000-square-mile area in the icy waters of the Beaufort Sea as scientists can further research local species like Arctic cod and snow crab currently over sought by commercial vessels.

Issues of commercial fishing often come with intense economic undertones. Demand for scaled creatures currently stands at a worldwide high, especially for the species that humans eat most, like Atlantic cod and Bluefin tuna. But populations of both have hit near rock bottom over the past decade as loose fishing regulations have led to a virtual emptying of the seas. The situation paints the north Pacific in a unique and lucrative light: as permanent sea ice melts as an effect of climate change, waters that had formerly been locked up would now become open for business.

Locke, essentially, said no.

Over the past few weeks, misinformation circulating about Obama’s health-reform bill has gone from mildly plausible to downright demented. The myths are so pervasive that even the White House is worried. They've set up a Web site to counter some of them. “What we learned in the campaign is that in today’s world, where what qualifies as news is often something that you’ve heard from your neighbor who got it from another friend who is sure that they got it from an authority, you have to take that seriously,” Linda Douglass, communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform, told the Gaggle last week.    
 
There’s a discernible pattern to the emergence of health-care misinformation. The more startling claims often surface on conservative blogs like Hot Air or in Investors Business Daily editorials. They “go viral” being e-mailed through activist networks, referenced on respectable blogs like The National Review’s Corner or linked through news aggregators. Sometimes conservative think tanks will lend legitimacy to the claim (although rarely will they support it fully). Soon enough, the lie is repeated by Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck and is being discussed by bemused mainstream commentators, while Democratic operatives scramble to refute it.
 
Here at NEWSWEEK, we’ve heard our share of crazy myths. Here are some of the truly loopy ones:
 
-      Doctors will be imprisoned if they provide life-saving treatments not sanctioned by the government
-      Private insurance will be outlawed
-      Obama wants to revive a Nazi program of killing incurably or mentally ill people
-      Medicare will be ended
-      The bill allows the government to access your bank account

Perhaps it's the insanity of these myths that has led to an outbreak of unseemly "town hall face." Whatever the upshot, we're hoping to catalog and marvel at the absurdity of it all. So we want to know what you’re hearing. What crazy myths are ending up in your inbox? Have you heard anything nutty from your relatives or friends? Let us know in the comments.

Many pundits have noted of late that August has rarely been kind to Barack Obama since he hit the national stage. The folks over at First Read have pointed this out numerous times. Today, Ed Kilgore kicks the idea around in The New Republic. Here’s Kilgore:

As the Dog Days of August descended upon us, there developed across the progressive chattering classes a deep sense of malaise bordering on depression, if not panic—much of it driven by fears about the leadership skills of Barack Obama. The polling numbers seemed to weaken every day, and Democratic unease was matched by growing glee on the airwaves of Fox and in Republican circles everywhere.

Within ten weeks, however, Obama was elected president and joy returned to the land.

Yes, dear reader, I am suggesting that this August's sense of progressive despair feels remarkably similar to last August's. This week last year, the Gallup Tracking Poll had McCain and Obama in a statistical tie. The candidates were fresh from a joint appearance at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, which was widely viewed by progressives as a strategic error by Obama. More generally, Democratic confidence, so high earlier in the year, was sagging. "Liberals have been in a dither for several weeks now over Barack Obama's supposedly listless campaign performance following his return from Europe," influential blogger Kevin Drum summed up sentiments at that time, "and as near as I can tell this turned into something close to panic."

Today Gallup has posted some interesting figures on the percentage of uninsured people in each state, based on survey data they have collected over the first six months of the year. Unsurprisingly Massachusetts, which mandated universal coverage a few years ago, comes out on top. But despite the new system, 5.5 percent of the state's residents remain uninsured. There's not a single red state in the top 10 most insured: Massachusetts, Vermont, Minnesota, Hawaii, Delaware, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. But six red states feature in the bottom 10, with Texas taking the cake for the most uninsured with 26.9 percent. The red state performing best was North Dakota, coming in at 15th with 12.9 percent uninsured. Chuck Grassley's home state Iowa follows with 13.5 percent. 

Obviously there are dynamics at play in each state that influencethese numbers─unemployment levels, economic outlook, etc.─but it isinteresting to note that while Republicans resist health-care reformsthat aim to expand insurance coverage, it's their constituents whowould be the most likely beneficiaries. Democrats most vocally supportive of plans to expand coverage─like Barney Frank from Massachusetts and Anthony Weiner from New York─don't have as much to gain.

My colleague Kate Dailey, who writes our Human Condition blog, has an interesting post examining who precisely is outraged by Michelle Obama's decision to wear shorts during a recent sightseeing trip to the Grand Canyon. Kate can't find anyone who's geniunely perturbed by the shorts. She writes:

I searched The National Review and Googled "Ann Coulter Obama Shorts". I've polled co-workers. No one knows, or has read, or can think of any concrete proof that Americans are upset by Obama in shorts. Still, "Michelle Obama shorts" is a leading topic on Google, and there are dozens of other examples of blogs and news organizations citing "some critics" who are upset with the sartorial decision. It's entirely possible that  "some in the media" were a little shocked to see Obama wearing shorts and wanted to report on it. August is a slow news month, and covering people who are actually shocked and outraged about health care can only fill so many minutes in the Twitterfied news cycle. But why hide behind an anonymous attacker? Why not just come out and say, "Michelle Obama wore shorts, which most first ladies haven't done before," (Is this even true? Five dollars says there's a photo of Eleanor Roosevelt in short pants somewhere in the national archive). Because if there's not controversy, it's just the American public gawking at a woman's form. This is something that happens all the time, but needs to be cloaked in social relevance when the woman is not a traditional target for public consumption. Models, actresses, even athletes can be the subject of objectification, but to ogle the first lady on national TV requires a bit of news-related window dressing.

Click here to read Kate's entire post.

This morning, David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network posted a video of California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren being questioned at a public meeting about coverage of abortions in the health-care-reform legislation. As many town-hall meetings have illustrated this week, there’s much misinformation circulating about the reform bills, and it's seriously hindering rational debate over health care. Many of the crazier myths─like the one about death panels─are easy to dispel. But the question of whether the government will fund abortion is a little trickier. Why? Mainly because we’re still not sure what the final legislation will look like, but also because the answer is convoluted.

The House bill (H.R. 3200) doesn't mention abortion at all, prompting opponents of abortion in both parties to worry that federal funds could used to pay for the procedure. Twenty House Democrats signed a letter to their leadership emphasizing this concern. Their worries aren't entirely unfounded, but they are misleading. This issue isn't new, however─it was the impetus for a 1976 provision, the Hyde amendment, which prohibits Medicaid funds from being used for elective abortions. That won't change. Medicaid still won't be able to fund elective abortions. Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) offered a Hyde-like amendment that was approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee and has a good chance of ending up in the final legislation. (It is critical to remember here that we do not have a finalized piece of legislation yet, so both the concerns and their solutions are still somewhat speculative.) The Capps amendment bars the public option from using federal funds to cover abortion, but allows for private plans in the exchange to cover them. It does not require private plans to cover abortion, nor does it prohibit them from doing so. Abortions provided under a public plan could only be funded by premiums, not by federal subsidies. It's an attempt at a middle ground.

Robert Mackey, writing for the New York Times's Lede Blog, has a really interesting take on Hillary Clinton's testy answer to a question posed by a young man at a Congolese town-hall meeting this week. By now, no doubt, Gaggle readers have seen many times the clip of Clinton smarting over being asked to "channel" her husband's opinion. And you've also probably heard the cable-news rationale that the question was misinterpreted, and the questioner was actually asking for insight into Obama's opinion. Mackey's not buying that excuse:

It always seemed unlikely to The Lede that a translator working for Mrs. Clinton would make such a large error with a question asked in French—or that an African university student would say “Mr. Clinton” when he meant “Mr. Obama”—and my colleague Jeffrey Gettleman reports in Thursday’s New York Times that “further inspection of the audio recording of the event indicated that the translation was fine; the student had indeed said ‘Mr. Clinton.’ ” A second reporter traveling with Mrs. Clinton, a friend of your Lede blogger’s who is a magazine journalist, said the same thing in an e-mail exchange on Wednesday night, that a French-speaking colleague who was in the room confirmed that the student “did ask the question that way: ‘the mind of Mr. from the lips of Mrs.’ ”

Eleanor Clift has escaped D.C.'s infamous August mugginess to unwind at an undisclosed beach. But like most political junkies, she couldn't help but start thinking about health reform. Here's a quick insight she kicked in last night:

In his biography of Hillary Clinton, A Woman in Charge, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein writes about the 1994 Reform Riders campaign, a nationwide bus tour designed to build support for President Clinton’s health-care-reform agenda. The idea was to emulate the famous 1960s Freedom Rides, but the campaign was plagued with protesters. In Portland, Ore., the route was blocked by an “angry anti-Clinton mob” who had their own bus, which was covered in red tape and dragged by a tow truck with a sign reading THIS IS CLINTON CARE. A plane bearing protest signs flew overhead. Hillary Clinton met the Reform Rider activists in Seattle, where she delivered a speech on health care. The result was a mob scene. Here’s Bernstein:

By the time the caravan had reached Seattle the threat of violence was constant. All week, talk radio hosts, both in the Northwest and on national broadcasts, implored their listeners to confront the Reform Riders to “show Hillary” their feelings about her. This "call to arms," as she described it, attracted menacing hordes, many of whom identified themselves as militia members, tax resisters and anti-abortion militants. She estimated that at least half of the 4,500 people in the audience of her Seattle speech were protesters. She agreed for the first time to wear a bulletproof vest.Rarely had she felt endangered, but this was different. During her speech, the catcalls,screaming, and heckling drowned out much of her remarks. When she left the stage and got into a limousine, hundreds of protesters surrounded the car. They were rabid with hatred. Several arrests were made by the Secret Service, which impounded two guns and a knife.

Until now, President Obama has taken a relatively hands-clean approach to health-care policy, holding press conferences at times of his choosing and sending his frontman, Robert Gibbs, to respond to criticism about the president's proposal for reform. But today Obama heads into the trenches to do a town-hall meeting on his own, the first of four that the White House has planned this week. Later this afternoon, Obama will speak to residents of Portsmouth, N.H., inside a high-school gym, addressing some of the latest concerns surrounding his vision for expanding the American health-care system.

In today's L.A. Times, Peter Wallsten writes about the challenges confronting Organizing for America (OFA), the grassroots network spawned out of Obama's campaign apparatus that is gearing up to combat opponents of health-care reform. Obama's impressive campaign activism quickly became the stuff of political legend, so OFA already has some pretty big shoes to fill. But Wallsten touches on its biggest problems when he writes:

The network is powered by local volunteers who often have left-leaning goals. But the president, now that he is in office, has in many cases adopted a centrist approach that accommodates Republicans and business groups. That means some activists are being asked to devote evenings and weekends to build support for policies they may feel only lukewarm about. Last year, "Obama's sexy, he was hot, and everybody wanted a piece of that," said Candice Davies, a speech therapist in Cary who trained canvassers for last year's campaign and is trying to organize support for healthcare legislation. "Now, people are going to have to work for something that is not quite as slick or sexy."

Many of those hardworking volunteers who propelled Obama to victory were enthused as much by the idea of him─a young, progressive (although the campaign would never use that word) African-American─as they were by his policies. They're simply not excited by the centrist tack of his health-care policy. Moreover, knocking on doors and calling strangers to sell a candidate (or a nebulous but stirring idea of change) is an entirely different proposition from being asked to discuss the nuances of a complex and as-yet-unfinished health-care proposal. And for many of the recent college grads and grad-school dropouts who devoted oodles of time to getting Obama elected, agitating for health-care reform doesn't have the same allure because it doesn't hold that glimmer of hope that they'll land a coveted White House job at the end of it. The West Wing never showed Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn turning up at their local congressman's office to show support for a policy bill.

Is there something fishy here? Logo courtesy OFA

If you ever doubt the power of conservative talk radio, consider this: The No. 1 search term on Google right now is “Obama health care logo.” Your Gaggler had literally no idea what it was about so she, naturally, Googled it.  It turns out that radio host Rush Limbaugh on his show today went after the logo being used by Organizing for America in its push for health-care reform. Citing the conservative blog Sweetness & Light, Limbaugh told his listeners the OFA logo looks similar to a Nazi symbol. Limbaugh brought up the comparison in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comment about protestors at town hall meetings this week, telling a reporter that she spotted people “carrying swastikas.” “They accuse us of being Nazis, and Obama's got a health-care logo that's right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook,” Limbaugh said today. Seriously, Rush? Well, doctors everywhere should be in the doghouse then, considering the logo incorporates the caduceus, a symbol of medicine dating back to ancient Greece. As conspiraces go, this one seems pretty lame.

Chris Pizzello/AP (left); AL Grillo/AP

We here at the Gaggle do politics, but we couldn't help take note of Paula Abdul's recent departure as a judge on American Idol after eight seasons. The staging of her leave looks oddly familiar, we thought to ourselves. After all, it was only a month ago that we witnessed an equally bizarre and sudden exit of another big player in her own field: Sarah Palin. It turns out, both women and their resignations are far more similar than they are different. Let's pick apart the comparison:

By a vote of 68 to 31, the full Senate confirmed federal judge Sonia Sotomayor this afternoon to the bench of the Supreme Court. The confirmation makes Sotomayor, elevated from the U.S. Court of Appeals, the first Hispanic justice to sit on the nation's highest court. It comes as a victory for Sotomayor, who underwent a week under the lights of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but also for Senate Democrats who strongly supported her nomination and fought off GOP attempts to focus on personal missteps, including her reputation as a fierce questioner and a comment she made in a series of speeches that suggested her gender and race would lead to better decisions than other court members would reach. President Obama, who nominated Sotomayor in May, was pleased by the news that his first appointment to the Supreme Court had been approved. Speaking briefly at the White House immediately after the vote, he told reporters that he thought it was "a wonderful day for America."

photo by Jim Rounds/AP

John Edwards can't be happy to see this: Rielle Hunter, Edwards’s former mistress, showed up this morning at the federal courthouse in Raleigh, N.C., where a grand jury is reportedly probing whether the Democratic presidential hopeful misused his campaign funds. As your Gaggler reported earlier this year, the feds are looking into payments Edwards’s political action committee paid Hunter, who briefly worked as a videographer for the campaign. According to campaign finance records, Edwards’s PAC paid a firm affiliated with Hunter more than $100,000 for making a few short films. But as the Charlotte Observer has reported, the probe is also looking into the finances of several previously unknown non-profit groups with ties to Edwards who reportedly failed to disclose their fund-raising. Edwards has denied any wrong-doing.

With some exceptions, grand jury proceedings are largely kept under wraps. But a big question has to be whether the probe will look into some of the more salacious aspects of Edwards’s troubles.

When the Senate breaks for recess this Friday, the Capitol will become an eerily quiet place. House Members have already fled swampy DC, along with many of their staffers. So what do they all do over these sweltering weeks? (Aside from boning up on health care policy, that is.) Some take a break, some travel. For most, it's a chance to visit with constituents, fundraisers and home-state lobbyists. They also tend to do something your Gagglers love doing in summer: going to state fairs of course! (Holly will never forget the butter sculpture of Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson at last year's Iowa State Fair.) We asked Gaggle pal Rebecca Shabad to call a few folks on the Hill to find out exactly what their plans are.

Al Franken: America's newest Senator will be traveling to just about every corner of his state to meet with constituents. He'll hold a couple of roundtables on healthcare during August. (The Gaggle will be curious to see how many protestors the well known freshman attracts.) After spending some time in Maine with his wife's family, you"ll be able chat to the Senator himself at the Minnesota State Fair, where he plans to have his own booth.

Ron Paul: Unlike most of his peers, the former presidential candidate will spend much of his break in D.C. But don't worry -  he's still hosting his annual Ron Paul Family Barbeque in Galveston, TX, on August 15. He's not doing it out of the kindness of his heart though. The BBQ will raise funds for his re-election bid, so tickets cost $20 a pop.

The White House finally broke its silence on President Clinton’s trip to North Korea, where he facilitated the release of two detained U.S. journalists. Laura Ling and Euna Lee were pardoned Tuesday by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il after being detained four months ago after authorities there accused them of illegally entering the country. The women, both journalists for Current TV,  had been sentenced to 12 years in a hard labor camp, but North Korea freed the women after Clinton’s visit today. The two are now en route to California on Clinton’s chartered jet, where they will be reunited with their families early Wednesday.

Administration officials had refused to comment on the specifics of the situation until Clinton’s jet had departed Pyongyang out of fear they would jeopardize the talks. But late Tuesday, a senior administration official briefed reporters, shedding more light into how exactly the trip had come about. As Eleanor Clift reported earlier today, Clinton’s involvement was no accident. According to the White House, the North Koreans in mid-July hinted to Lee and Ling that if Bill Clinton were to come to Pyongyang, they would release them. Lee and Ling, who were allowed to talk to their families via phone occasionally, relayed this information to their loved ones, who in turn told the White House, State Department and former Vice President Al Gore, who owns Current TV.

The news just broke that President Bill Clinton, after meeting with the ailing North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il, has secured a pardon for two Current TV journalists. Euna Lee and Laura Ling had been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor after allegedly entering North Korea illegally. Although the White House and State Department have withheld comment on the situation for now, NEWSWEEK's Eleanor Clift spoke to an insider about how Clinton's trip came about.

When your GuestGaggler woke up this morning and saw that Bill Clinton was in NorthKorea, my first thought was poor Al Gore─overshadowed yet again by oneor the other Clinton. After all, the two women held in North Korea workfor Current, a cable-news channel cofounded by Gore. When theywere first captured, the buzz was that Gore would be dispatched tonegotiate their release. He offered to do that but the powers that be(a source says, namely, Hillary) thought it best to hold off, and Gore dutifully agreed. A source familiar with the back story said that theidea to send Bill Clinton came as a surprise to the Clinton camp andthat it emerged in conversations between the North Koreans and theState Department -- and it was the North Koreans who initiated theidea. Perhaps it's not so unexpected: Clinton was the president whoseadministration negotiated the first deal with the regime to cap theirnuclear efforts in exchange for food shipments and help with energy,and he has a relationship with them. It's not warm and fuzzy, but it's morethan anybody else has. Clinton talked with Gore extensively over thelast 24 hours, this source says, and Gore strongly encouraged thepresident to make the trip.

A digital scan of Obama's birth certificate courtesy Obama for America

President Obama turns 48 today. He’ll spend his birthday at the White House, where he’s having lunch with the entire Senate Democratic Caucus this afternoon. “Chuck E. Cheese was booked,” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs joked yesterday. Yeah, yeah—You laugh now, Gibbs, but wait until you see Harry Reid jump out of a giant cake.

In honor of the prez’s birthday, your Gaggler is posting what seems to be one of the more controversial documents these days: Obama’s birth certificate. Confirmed again and again by Hawaii’s state health department, the document shows that Obama was born on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu—though some folks just don’t believe he’s a U.S. citizen and likely never will. A Research 2000 poll sponsored by the liberal blog Daily Kos found that while a majority of those polled believe Obama is a natural-born citizen, 11 percent of those surveyed didn't buy it, while 12 percent just didn't know--small, but fairly disturbing numbers nonetheless.

As President Obama nears his 200th day in office, there’s one major thing we’ve learned about this White House: Increasingly, they don’t need the press. Case in point: Last night, administration officials posted a short video looking at the process by which Obama gets his mail. According to the White House, the president reads 10 letters from average people every day—correspondence culled from the literally tens of thousands of pieces of mail sent to Obama each week. This is not exactly breaking news. We’ve known about Obama and his letters for months—plenty of people have written about it and NBC included brief footage of the letters in its documentary on the Obama White House that aired in June. But the White House video goes significantly more in depth—showing the mail room where letters are sorted by topic and the staffers going through them to pick which ones will make it to the president’s desk. And then you have Obama himself reading the letters aloud and talking about the ones he’s read this week--most of them, he tells the camera, are about health care. (What a coincidence!) It looks and sounds like a news story, no doubt to the chagrin of TV reporters at the White House. The only real give-away, besides the fact you never actually see or hear the interviewer, is a little logo identifying it as a WhiteHouse.gov video.

The goal here isn’t much different than what administration officials envisioned when they set up the White House Flickr account. As your Gaggler has written before, by opening up Obama’s world to the public in ways no other president has done before, they are giving a sense that the curtain has been raised, that the bubble has been punctured. They want to show that Obama, although he may be the leader of the free world, is a human being, just like you and me. People tend to support people they like, and Obama doesn’t want to repeat George W. Bush’s mistake of being too walled off and out of touch. But there’s a dueling component here in posting all these photos and videos: By doing it themselves, the White House controls the images and the story. They are bypassing the media filter to get out to the public exactly the points they desire to make, without the messiness of perhaps an unexpected question or an unflattering image. In some ways, they aren’t busting the presidential bubble but increasing it.

Over seven months after Barack Obama took the oath of office, the long-awaited campaign book from Washington Post political writer Dan Balz and Pulitzer Prize winner Haynes Johnson hits bookstores tomorrow. We were lucky enough to get an advance copy of The Battle for America 2008, and sent Gaggle-pal Stuart Johnson out to read it and report back on the juicy bits. The Washington Post has been excerpting the book over the last few days, but if you don’t have time to wade through all that, here’s Johnson’s take on it, and a few spoilers.