Hillary Clinton began one of her last appeals to Iowa voters by lifting Barack Obama’s signature line.

"We are fired up and we are ready to go," she said in the Starlight Building of Davenport’s Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds. Later in her speech, she talked about “hopeful, hopeful programs for the future.”

Whether the imitation was a direct expression of faltering confidence or merely a fatigue-induced slip-up, even some of her genuine admirers in the crowd couldn’t help but notice that things felt a little flat.

“It was kind of a sad contrast,” said Owen Rogal, a 59-year-old English teacher at St. Ambrose University, who had seen Obama speak that morning. “He’s got people walking around in ‘fired up’ t-shirts and I sort of felt he was my high school football coach. He elicited a much more visceral response.”  read more »

The recent Brooks vs. Krugman (with an assist from Herbert) smackdown on the New York Times op-ed page has left a lot of people wondering: Why aren't Times columnists allowed to attack each other by name?  After all, doing so would make these arguments a lot easier for readers to follow.

Well it turns out that, as near as anyone can tell, they are allowed. So why don't they?  We've put in queries to Messrs. Brooks and Krugman, as well as Times op-ed page editor Andy Rosenthal, and we'll let you know what we find out.

“If you mention the words ‘subscription’ and ‘Internet,’” said Andrew Rosenthal, “the bloggers come after you with pitchforks!”

Mr. Rosenthal, the New York Times editorial page editor, of course won’t have to deal with pitchfork-wielding bloggers, now that TimesSelect, the newspaper’s paid subscription service—complete with a op-ed columnist-shielding pay wall—has officially been killed off.

Nor will Mr. Rosenthal have to fend off the 22 opinion columnists who had been behind the paywall.  read more »

In the wake of the Murdoch bid, the editorial boards of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have engaged in a war of words.  read more »

Now that New York Times staffers are finally moving into the new tower at 620 Eighth Avenue, the gossip mill has started churning over who got the choicest digs.

The latest: Could it be that editorial-page editor Andrew Rosenthal’s new office is just as big as publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.’s 16th-floor spread?

“Let’s kill that rumor now,” said Mr. Rosenthal. “It’s not. His is a slightly different geometry.”  read more »

And how! The release describes Rosenthal's journalistic background, including stints as a Washington correspondent, Denver bureau reporter and AP sports stringer. It does not mention his earliest connection with the profession--and the Times: his birth, in 1956, to a celebrated young foreign correspondent named A.M. Rosenthal.