Big congratulations to all of the Pulitzer winners this year. As always, they seem worthy.

You can argue about whether this series or that cartoonist should have won instead but it's hard to look at the winners and not think them worthy of the distinction bestowed on them.

I would think TPM readers would particularly love, as they should, David Barstow's piece on the military message machine.

Taken as a whole, though, the prizes seem a little odd. First, it's kind of weird that more of the prizes didn't focus on the 2008 campaign and the financial crisis which were kind of, oh, big last year.

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It's no surprise that Republicans have supported Norm Coleman's (now all but doomed) effort to be reelected in Minnesota. After all, the Senate's closely divided and Republicans hate Franken who has been tweaking them for a decade. But at some point, I think, Republicans will give up the fight not only because there will be pressure on them to do so but because they'll realize that they are better off with Al Franken in the Senate than without.

I also think the fact that Coleman, who no doubt would like to run again someday, will bow to Minnesota's good-government culture and not stretch this thing out, thereby giving Pawlenty the space to certify Franken. I could be wrong. Maybe they'll make this a scorched earth policy for months to come, the opposite of Gore's exit after the legal battle was lost. But I don't think so. Coleman's self preservation instincts will combine with the need of GOP's consultant culture to put Franken in the Senate. Mitch McConnell won't like it but I think he'll be stuck with it.

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Reader CT Voter notes that John Negroponte, Bush's ambassador to Iraq, and another much esteemed career diplomat--although his tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras came under criticism--didn't have Mideast experience. He'd been at the U.N. dealing with Mideast issues as part of his tenure there but that's not the kind of specific expertise Graham and McCain seem to want. It's all very odd. TPM readers are encouraged, though, to search for more examples of McCain and Graham not asking for regional expertise for a major appointment.

Just to add to what my colleague, Elana Schor had earlier on Chris Hill: At his press briefing today, Robert Gibbs stood behind Chris Hill as the President's choice to be the next Ambassador to Iraq. So for the moment at least, there's no backing down to the McCain-Graham assault on Hill as being unready for Iraq. Hill is one of the most accomplished career diplomats at State but his assignments have all been European and Asian. He speaks Polish and Serbo-Croatian, according to the State Department web site.

But here's something interesting. McCain and Graham had no problem voting for Hill to be come George W. Bush's Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs even thought his previous experience was overwhelmingly European with one tour in Seoul. In general the country's supported the idea that senior State Department officials can move around the world and not have to prove their credentials each time they're assigned to a new region. McCain and Graham are imposing a new standard that seems odd. It's not wildly irrational to want an Iraq ambassador with Mideast experience but it's a bar that I've never heard Senators ask of any other career diplomat before. Perhaps TPM readers can think of other examples where Graham and McCain had no qualms about supporting a nominee for a key diplomatic post who had no previous experience in the region?

I realize that the very word Lieberman sends a lot of liberals into fits of apoplexy. But it's worth making an additional point to the fine post from my colleague, Eric Kleefeld. Lieberman is talking about leaving the door open to returning to the Democratic party. I think that's unlikely since he would probably be eviscerated in a primary. Still, it's a remarkable shift from a few months ago when it seemed entirely possible that Lieberman would choose to caucus with Senate Republicans.

It's worth noting what's happened to Lieberman since Obama took office. He never wavered on the stimulus. He's supporting the Employee Free Choice Act. He's been fulsome in his praise of President Obama. Think of how much harder things would be for the president if Lieberman had bolted on those issues or had chosen to caucus with Republicans.

I understand Democratic anger with Lieberman. After all, he not only opposed Barack Obama but actively campaigned for the McCain-Palin ticket and endorsed Norm Coleman in Minnesota. The sentiment to kick him out of the caucus had a lot of merit to it. And I'm not suggesting that Lieberman won't stick it to Obama and the Democrats in the future. He probably will.

That said, I think it now seems clear that Harry Reid and Barack Obama were wise not to follow the Netroots call for a Lieberman purge and to let him keep his chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. I assume most readers will disagree but while the anger of kicking him to the curb would have felt good at the time, wouldn't it have made life harder for President Obama? Discuss.

If I was a gambling man, I would bet that Michael Steele is going to make it.

I realize that he's not popular, that a lot of people in the Republican Party would like to see him go and as Josh Marshall pointed out he doesn't have a single, solid constituency like the conservative Christian activists or state party chairs united behind him.

But look at Roland Burris. I point to him not because of race, although surely the forcible removal of the first African-American chairman of the Republican National Committee would have racial overtones. Burris is arguably much less popular among his peers than Steele is with the Republican National Committee members who elected him RNC Chairman in January. Burris seems like a goner just a few weeks ago. Now, he's a Senate regular and his ouster seems unlikely in the extreme.

Still it's worth examining just what the party rules say about removing a chairman if it comes to that. If you look at Rule 5 of the RNC rules it says explicitly: "The chairman or co- chairman may be removed from office only by a two- thirds (2/3) vote of the entire Republican National Committee." The ballot has to be open under Roberts Rules of Order which is the playbook for RNC rules--which is kind of amusing given the opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. That is a pretty high bar.

And the vote could only come--as best I can tell; I have a call into the RNC-- at one of the two semiannual meetings of the RNC. Thus, you couldn't have a phone coup d'etat or the Executive Committee of the RNC lead the fight.

Can Steele hold a third of RNC members? My bet is yes although the fact that it's even a question is pretty amazing.

By the way, the shortest chairmanship of the RNC ever was C. Wesley Roberts of Kansas who served four months as chair in 1953. According to Wikipedia, Alvin Scott of The Kansas City Star won a Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for local reporting for a series of articles that drove Roberts to resign. Roberts was accused of collecting a $10,000 commission on the sale of a hospital to the State of Kansas which the state already owned. His son, interestingly, is U.S. Senator Pat Roberts.

This morning, Matt Lauer continued the meme by asking Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer whether the president had "bitten off more than he could chew." Romer responds here:

Most of the he's too-busy meme has been absurd. But the always-smart Bill Galston, over at The New Republic, raises a more nuanced proposition here.

Galston notes that, unlike FDR, Obama doesn't have the same clout in a more divided Congress and that FDR really did keep things focused on the economic emergency in his first months. Galston notes:

Roosevelt delayed most of the structural reforms that did not bear directly on the economic emergency. For example, he did not even propose a commission to consider social insurance until June of 1934. Social Security legislation was introduced six months later, in January 1935, and was not signed into law until August of that year, after the provisions relating to health care had been stripped out.

Roosevelt organized his first term around two principles that the Obama administration would do well to ponder. First, he kept his (and the country's) attention firmly fixed on a single task: ending the crisis of confidence and restarting economic activity. While he was more sensitive than previous presidents to the links among seemingly disparate issues, these interconnections in his view did not warrant trying to move on all fronts at once. The people and the Congress had to be brought along with an agenda and a narrative that they could understand.

Fair enough, but I think there's a response to that, too.

First, distraction is a two-way street. Congress is constantly deviating from the economic emergency to deal with other stuff. I watched a fulsome debate on the transportation of chimpanzees and other primates the other day on C-SPAN. The House was taking up a bill in the wake of that chimp attack. It's not reasonable to focus just on one branch of government.

Second, Obama is talking about a lot of things but he's not sending up a torrent of legislation. There was the stimulus bill but everyone agreed there needed to be some kind of stimulus. He's encouraged Congress to come up with a health care plan but he hasn't forced a bill on them to consider. And besides is health care really a distraction? The facts show that you can't get entitlement reform or any control over future red ink without it. Why wait?

Third, Congress is a much bigger institution than it was in 1933 or even 1977, the other example the Galston cites. Staffs are bigger, there's more capacity to deal with more issues. If we have more of a logjam these days, it's owing to the partisan redrawing of districts, the culture of lobbying and so on but not an innate inability of Congress to handle more than a few things at a time.

As I said originally, if Obama suddenly decides to immerse himself in an obscure border dispute or something truly far afield, he ought to be called out on it. But green energy, health care, education, and other things he's pursuing all seem germane to the economy. You can disagree with them individually but it's hard to chide their relevance to the crisis at hand.

Hmmm? Where would Chuck Schumer come down on the withdrawal of Chas Freeman? In the shy and retiring style which Brooklynites and all New Yorkers know so well, the Senior Senator declared:

Charles Freeman was the wrong guy for this position. His statements against Israel were way over the top and severely out of step with the administration. I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing.

I will confess to being a total agnostic on Freeman's appointment to the National Intelligence Council. My friend James Fallows made a good case for him as did my boss, Josh Marshall. My former New Republic colleague and friend, Jonathan Chait, made the case against him here. All are pretty thoughtful looks at the guy, unlike Schumer's I-told-you-so.

President Obama took on the can-he-walk-and-chew-gum media today:

I know there are some who believe we can only handle one challenge at a time. They forget that Lincoln helped lay down the transcontinental railroad, passed the Homestead Act, and created the National Academy of Sciences in the midst of Civil War. Likewise, President Roosevelt didn't have the luxury of choosing between ending a depression and fighting a war. President Kennedy didn't have the luxury of choosing between civil rights and sending us to the moon. And we don't have the luxury of choosing between getting our economy moving now and rebuilding it over the long term.

My friend, Jane Hamsher, at Firedoglake has this gem today about a Citgroup analyst downgrading Wal-Mart because of possible passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. Jane runs through all the idiocy of this moment. First, the law isn't passed yet. Second, it would give workers more purchasing power probably helping Wal-Mart sales. I'd just add that only 7.5 percent of private sector employees belong to unions. That's going to keep falling because of the loss of manufacturing jobs. So if EFCA could increase union membership in the private sector by 50 percent, which would be a stunning achievement and hardly guaranteed byt the law's passage, you'd still have far fewer than the number in unions 25 years ago.

The story of the Employee Free Choice Act, however it ends, is going to take a long time to playout. We noted last week that the bill would get dropped today and it has with labor talking up the measure that would make it easier to form unions and business striking out against it. While its passage is ensured in the House of Representatives, where it passed last year, it's fate in the Senate is less certain. Last year, it looked like all Democrats would support the measure and at least one Republican, Arlen Specter. (In the House, only one Republican supported the measure: Pete King of New York.)

So what is the administration doing to shore up support for the measure? Well, most importantly they've spoken out for it. Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis all endorsed the measure at least week's meeting of the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO in Florida. At the moment, there's no massive White House lobbying campaign to get the bill passed. I'm told it's not what they're lobbying for right now. That will come later.

For now, labor and EFCA-supporting leaders in the House and the Senate have the reins although it's a safe bet that EFCA will come up when Joe Biden travels to Arkansas to kick off the reelection campaign of Blanche Lincoln, one of the wavering Dems. Labor is confident, though, that the Democrats will come around in the end. Says one labor official: "We're confident we'll get to 60 one way or the other."

Is Barack Obama "trying to do too much"? It's been a topic on the morning talk shows and again today.

For an example, see this video from The Page by Mark Halperin.

Halperin is joined by Louis Burgdorf from MSNBC who says this question of distraction is a big deal and suggests that if Obama put other things aside it will "restore confidence in the consumer." Halperin asks Bergdorf if Obama should cancel today's stem cell event. Bergdorf says no, citing it as an important issue and noting that his stepmother has MS.

The whole conversation seemed slightly ridiculous, if you ask me. Presidents obviously do more than one thing at a time. No one asked Reagan to ignore the Cold War and focus on the recession.

Yes, a president can wander too far afield. If Obama suddenly devoted significant energy to a border dispute between Columbia and Venezuela or a revamp of the Law of the Sea Treaty that would be a distraction from the pressing matters facing the country. But to sign an executive order reversing George W. Bush on stem cells and to do an event publicizing the new order seems eminently reasonable in a country where so many are looking to embryonic stem cell research to improve their lives. And, of course, many of the things that may seem like a distraction--health care, green energy--are inextricably linked to the economic health of the country. You can disagree with Obama's policies but to talk about distraction seems like a misunderstanding of what presidents do. Send in examples you see of the "distracted" meme.

There's been interesting buzz about an item from Ken Silverstein of Harper's about Richard Gephardt, the former House Majority Leader and presidential candidate, whose firm is doing lobbying for the Chamber of Commerce.

When the item first appeared online last week, it seemed to suggest that the champion of organized labor might be doing something untoward. Was Gephardt betraying his union brothers and sisters to work for the man?

Lobbying disclosure forms are notoriously vague and so an item from PRWatch.org, Gephardt's firm noted Gephardt's firm, the Gepardt Group, is registered to represent the Chamber on "intellectual property," environmental and manufacturing issues.

So what's the real deal? Gephardt's office told me that it has represented NBC/Universal and U.S. Chamber as part of it work for a group called the Coalition Against Counterfiting and Piracy, dedicated to stamping out intellectual piracy. (Labor is a member of the group too.)

Gephardt's firm's work for NBC/Universal and the Chamber was on an intellectual property bill, the Prioritizing Resources and Orgainzation for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 of PRO IP bill which became law last year. And they're working on other legislation related to intellectual property. So did the Chamber pay Gephardt? Yes. Was it for something anti labor? No.

If you care about health care, you have to care about the Senate Finance Committee. It's the choke point for any health care legislation. Make it work there in a bipartisan way and you'll get health care. Fail there and kiss it goodbye--again.

One of the tragedies of the Clinton-era effort to reform health care is that Pat Moynihan, then the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over health care, was eager to promote some kind of health care deal with Bob Dole, the Senate minority leader at the time, who had expressed interest in finding a deal. That's why it is so encouraging at the moment that Charles Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, is working on a health care proposal with Max Baucus, the committee's chairman.

If they can come up with something health care has a much better chance of passage. If they can't, it's hard to imagine health care passing. Such is the importanxw of the Senate Finance Committee.

So I was surprised to see last week, after the health care summit with all its bonhomie and the president's encouaging words for the Baucus-Grassley effort, this item on March 5 about the administration canceling an effort at collecting back taxes. The effort used private companies to collect back taxes and was fought heavily by the union representing Treasury workers. TIm Geithner called Grassley on Friday evening to announce that he was putting the kibosh on the program which happened to cost 60 jobs in Iowa. A source close to Grassley says he's still "very unhappy" about the cancellation although, thank goodness, Geithner, understaffed and overwhelmed, managed to make the call. Grassley would surely had been more angry if he'd read it in the papers.

Leaving aside the merits of the debt collection program, one would think that with so much at stake on health care, the administration would be going out of its way to court and soothe Grassley. Granted, Grassley is not the vindictive sort who would hold up health care because of 60 jobs in Waterloo, but a move like this can't help relations. (Some senators are more mercurial. In 1993, the Clinton administration punished Sen. Richard Shelby, then a Democrat, for not supporting it on a number of issues by moving some NASA jobs from Huntsville, AL to Houston. It was one of the factors in Shelby converting to the GOP in 1994.)

Let's hope the administration is working a charm offensive on Grassley in other ways. Grassley and Baucus are working on their bill now and hope to have some kind of mark up by June although that's not realistic, one staff member told me. So let's see where it goes from here.

For those who want to follow Grassley, I highly recommend his Twitter account. Note the entry complete with original misspellings and abbreviations: "Geithner call to tel me he's cancling 60 jobs in Wloo. No renewal of contract to collect bk taxes. Vry disapted"

Let's hope he doesn't stay dissapointed

One of the many amusing lines from President Obama's wrap up of the health care summit at the White House. Here's something of note: Obama pointed to Rep. Jim Cooper saying we can get health care done. This is something we noted here the other day and it belies easy stereotyping of fiscal conservatives as obstinate. Here are some highlights from the Obama Q & A:

Ted Kennedy looked great and talked about the importance of the issue. Mitch McConnell asked about the Conrad-Gregg proposal on reforming Social Security. The prez kicked it back to Congress saying that Medicare and Medicaid is the 800-pound gorilla. Henry Waxman talked about the importance of trade offs and willingness to negotiate. Rep. Joanne Emerson, the kind of moderate Republican Obama will need on many issues going forward, was very complimentary about the discussions as was Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the pivotal Senate Finance Committee.

Most interesting was Dan Danner of the National Federation of Independent Business. The group was a key opponent of the Clinton plan in 1994 and while he didn't pledge to support Obama he wasn't hostile either. For Obama's part he told "bleeding hearts" they needed to take cost control into account just as fiscal conservatives needed to know they couldn't control costs just by "throwing seniors off of Medicare."

No shortage of critics on the left have whacked Obama for being too bipartisan but I don't see how a conference like this can do anything but it's hard to imagine how today's session was anything less than helpful in promoting universal health reform. It's not impossible to imagine meetings like these become a practice that's continued by future presidents.