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- Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is likely to become Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, which would leave the governor's mansion in Republican hands and probably remove any serious competition to John McCain in 2010. Although, as Think Progress observes, DHS has become a dumping ground for political cronies of Michael Chertoff and George Bush, burrowed into the agency under the guise of preparing for a smooth transition. Gov. Napolitano is certain to have her work cut out for her.
- In other transition news, Penny Pritzker has turned down an offer to be Commerce Secretary, and John Kerry, still a remote possibility for SoS, will take the gavel at the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee which he first appeared before as a serious young Vietnam veteran in 1971.
- Henry Waxman has prevailed over John Dingell to win the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Harold Meyerson: "Now, after a 14-year winter, it's legislating season again. Greenhouse gases are rising, the farms and factories producing the things we ingest have been spread across the globe, the number of uninsured has risen. Obama needs an ally on the Hill who can craft bills and obtain votes for the change he's pledged to deliver. He needs a master legislator. He needs Henry Waxman."
- Steve Clemons floats the idea that Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State could set up a good-cop, bad-cop routine: "If Obama wants to change the strategic game on Iran, Israel-Palestine, Syria, Cuba, Russia and other challenges, he will need partners who are perceived as tough, smart, shrewd and even skeptical of the deals he wants to do. Clinton is all of these. ... Because she is trusted by Pentagon-hugging national security conservatives, she may legitimize his desire to respond to this pivot point in American history with bold strokes rather than incremental ones. ... He intends to, in part, be his own secretary of state, focused on re-sculpting America's global social contract and working in partnership with a diverse team of hard-edged policy players like Clinton to make even his rivals do his direct bidding."
- Even as Norm Coleman's lead over Al Franken has been reduced in the Minnesota recount, some ballots are leaving state officials in a Rashomon-like state of confusion. Try this quiz, courtesy of Minnesota Public Radio, to see how you would call these ballots.
- Recalling Matt Yglesias' short essay at Cato Unbound on practical politics compromising libertarian purity, Brian Doherty suggests that even though the idea of Barack Obama appointing Ron Paul as Treasury Secretary will never happen, it remains "a good idea." Perhaps it never occurred to Doherty that the very reason why such an idea is so implausible is because, you know, it's just a really bad idea.
- One hopes that the rest of George Bush's life resembles this video from the G20 summit where world leaders simply ignore the 43rd president while he walks about, in the words of Rick Sanchez, "like the dejected most unpopular kid in high school."
- Chris Bowers has a good post on the shaky future of the Democrats' 50-state strategy now that the election's over and DNC workers are being laid off.
--Mori Dinauer
