The NYT, quoting a source close to Governor David Paterson, is reporting that problems involving taxes and a housekeeper derailed Caroline Kennedy’s Senate bid. BAD NEWS: She won’t get to be a Senator. GOOD NEWS: She can still be Treasury Secretary.

Just watched Robert Gibbs’ first press conference–and yeeesh, it was ugly. A good part of this was the W.H. press corps perpetual, institutional instinct for the capillaries: a whole bunch of time wasted on Obama’s retaking the oath of office; a whole bunch of questions looking for the bottom line on tangled policy issues that [...]

Just now in a signing ceremony in the Oval Office, where red apples were displayed in a large bowl, Obama followed through with two of his campaign promises: He signed an order mandating that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, be closed within a year. He also ordered that all agencies of Government (read: [...]

Moments after Barack Obama announced new ethics rules Wednesday, the Republican National Committee gleefully emailed reporters with some opposition research. Obama had announced that recently registered lobbyists could not work in either the agency they lobbied or on the subject matters they were hired to lobby. But as the RNC promptly pointed out, at least [...]

This is how it should be done. The Bush Administration derided the “police work” approach to rolling up Al Qaeda, but–of course–police work is precisely what it takes in many cases. (In war zones, like Waziristan, more kinetic tactics, like the use of armed Predator drones, is also appropriate.) One hopes that with less public [...]

Maybe she just should have hired Mike LaFontaine of High-Class Management to run her pseudocampaign in the first place. Here is a rough time-line of how things went last night: 7 p.m. or thereabouts: The New York Post reports she has told Governor David Paterson that she is withdrawing her name from consideration for the [...]

From a hastily typed White House pool report: At 735 pm, [Chief Justice John} Roberts administ[e]red the oath of office again to obama in the map room. Robert gibbs said the wh counsel, greg craig, believes the oath was fine Tuesday, but one word was out of sequence so they did this out of a [...]

Both the New York Post and New York Times are reporting this evening that Caroline Kennedy has told New York Governor David Paterson that she does not want to be considered to fill the now-vacant seat of Hillary Clinton in the United States Senate. (UPDATE: The New York Post, which initially reported the Kennedy withdrew [...]

In the new issue of dead-tree TIME, Michael Scherer and I wrote this story on the man who may have the second-hardest job in Washington.