"Washington's 60 Sizzling Power Couples"....Media...

[KoKo]

Washinton's 60 Sizzlingist Power Couples (You wondered about Nora O'Donnell.& David Gregory?)

by Nick Baumann and Oliver Hadock
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0705.chart.html

(PDF Chart)

Ken Pollack Middle East scholar, Brookings Institution
Andrea Koppel congressional correspondent, CNN
He’s a former CIA officer who ran the National Security Council’s Persian Gulf affairs division under President
Threatening Storm, about the security threat posed by Saddam Hussein, was crucial in persuading many
She’s Ted Koppel’s daughter. The couple met in 1999 when he was a source for a story she was reporting

***************-------------------**********
Geoff Tracy owner, Chef Geoff’s restaurant
Norah O’Donnell chief Washington correspondent, MSNBC
He’s a power-chef whose restaurant hosted Scooter Libby the night before his conviction. She was recently named by Washingtonian
magazine as one of D.C.’s 100 most powerful women. The couple is a fixture on the Washington social scene.

**********-------------------------***************

David Gregory chief White House correspondent, NBC News
Beth Wilkinson general counsel, Fannie Mae<
Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, with whom she worked at Latham & Watkins, attended their son’s baby shower.

Tim Russert host, NBC’s Meet the Press
Maureen Orth special correspondent, Vanity Fair
His testimony during the Scooter Libby trial was crucial to the prosecution’s case. She covers pop culture
recent book is The Importance of Being Famous: Behind the Scenes of the Celebrity-Industrial Complex.

--------------

Philip Perry former general counsel, Department of Homeland Security
Elizabeth Cheney former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs
At DHS, he blocked measures that would have required the chemical industry to safeguard its plants against terrorism (see “Dick Cheney’s
Dangerous Son-in-Law,” Washington Monthly, March 2007). She’s Dick Cheney’s daughter, and one of her father’s many loyalists scattered
throughout the executive branch. Neither had relevant policy experience or training before they were appointed to their positio

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RobertKagan neoconservative author and cofounder,
Project for a New American Century (PNAC)
Victoria Nuland United States permanent representative, NATO
He’s been a vocal supporter of the Iraq War and recently wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post declaring the “Surge” to be working splendidly—without
mentioning that his brother, Fred, is the architect of the strategy. Prior to joining NATO, Victoria worked in the office of the vice president.



-----------------------------------------------------------
Ron Brownstein political columnist, Los Angeles Times
Eileen McMenamin communications director, Sen. John McCain, (R-Ariz.)
In an April 2005 L.A. Times column, he touted a potential third-party presidential run by McCain. Three weeks later the couple was married. Times editors
subsequently banned him from covering the senator, but the paper recently announced that he’ll write a weekly political column for the op-ed page—
steering clear of McCain. He was once married to Nina Easton (see page 50), who, like him, now has a spouse who works for McCain.

-----------------------------------------------
Pollack Middle East scholar, Brookings Institution
Andrea Koppel congressional correspondent, CNN
He’s a former CIA officer who ran the National Security Council’s Persian Gulf affairs division under President Clinton. His 2002 book, The
Threatening Storm, about the security threat posed by Saddam Hussein, was crucial in persuading many liberals to support the Iraq War.
She’s Ted Koppel’s daughter. The couple met in 1999 when he was a source for a story she was reporting on Iraq.

[shain from kane]

1. I just had to laugh when I saw Norah O’Donnell's name on the list. n/t

[Warpy]

2. Barnacles on the bottom of the ship of state

GOP "power couples" are grabbing all they can get, heedless of the damage their party is doing to this country and its people.

The only up side is how difficult it is to be a power couple right now. The inner circle in the White House do not go out and schmooze on the DC social circuit. They're as socially isolated as they are intellectually isolated. Even the power couples are being excluded.

Still, bring on the tumbrils! My knitting awaits.

[goclark]

3. Pollitics makes strange bed fellows

Now I see what's wrong with the "MSM."
It's controlled by ROVE through marriages.

[Totally Committed]

5. Here's a "Power Couple": Joe and Hadassah Lieberman

TruthDig Blog, by Joe Conason: Sen. Lieberman Literally in Bed With Drug Lobby

Posted on Jul 12, 2006

Editor’s note: In this column, Conason points out that the Connecticut senator who would lecture us on ethics drafted a bill in 2005 that made generous giveaways to pharmaceutical companies—one month after his wife went to work in the pharmaceuticals division of a major lobbying and PR firm.

Whenever Sen. Joseph Lieberman complains that he is the target of a “single-issue” challenge by upstart millionaire Ned Lamont, the three-term incumbent proves he doesn’t quite get what is happening to him. It is true that the Lamont campaign began as a protest against his slavish support of the war in Iraq. It is untrue that growing antiwar sentiment is the sole reason for his peril in next month’s Democratic primary.

That he would dismiss the disastrous occupation as merely “one issue” suggests how remote he is from his constituents—the great majority of whom now view the war as a costly strategic and moral error that should be concluded as soon as possible. He sounds equally detached from that failed policy’s awful reality when he proclaims that “the situation in Iraq is a lot better” than a year ago.

Connecticut’s voters are not obliged to prove their “moderation” by ratifying his bad judgment.
Yet the war issue alone probably would not have threatened him, as anyone who listened carefully to his critics might learn. After 18 years in the Senate, his fervent insistence that he is a lifelong devotee of “progressive causes” and his endorsement by major liberal organizations only seem to mask his accommodation with Washington’s conservative status quo.

Lieberman dutifully recites his opposition to “tax cuts for the rich” and “privatizing Social Security,” and his support of “universal health insurance” and “affordable healthcare.” When he utters those phrases, unfortunately, they ring hollow to many rank-and-file Democrats.

Actually, the syndrome afflicting him is found among entrenched veterans of both parties, especially those who appear more concerned with connections and contributions than values or ideals.

Sen. Lieberman has long been known to cultivate the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, which provide jobs in his home state and contributions to his campaign fund. But he has literally been sleeping with one of their Washington representatives ever since his wife, Hadassah, joined Hill & Knowlton last year. The legendary lobbying and PR firm hired her as a “senior counselor” in its “health and pharmaceuticals practice.”

This news marked Hadassah Lieberman’s return to consulting after more than a decade of retirement. “I have had a life-long commitment to helping people gain better health care,” she said in the press release announcing her new job. “I am excited about the opportunity to work with the talented team at Hill & Knowlton to counsel a terrific stable of clients toward that same goal.”

It would be uplifting to imagine that Hill & Knowlton—after spending the past decade as a defendant in tobacco class-action lawsuits because of its role in propaganda disputing the deadly effects of smoking—is now devoted to improving everybody’s health. More likely, the firm remains devoted to improving the profits of its clientele, which has historically included Enron, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Saudis, Kuwaitis, American International Group and Boeing.

When a senator’s wife works for one of the capital’s largest lobby shops, appearances tend to matter. In this case, something happened immediately that didn’t look very good.
Mrs. Lieberman signed up with Hill & Knowlton in March 2005. The firm’s clients included GlaxoSmithKline, the British pharmaceutical giant that manufactures flu vaccines along with many other drugs. In April 2005, Sen. Lieberman introduced a bill that would award an array of new government “incentives” to companies like GSK to produce more vaccines—notably patent extensions on other products, at a cost of billions to governments and consumers.

That legislation provoked irritated comment by his hometown newspaper, the New Haven Register. In an editorial headlined “Lieberman Crafts Drug Company Perk,” the Register noted that his bill was even more generous to the pharmaceutical industry than a similar proposal by the Senate Republican leadership. “The government can offer incentives and guarantees for needed public health measures,” said the editorial. “But it should not write a blank check, as these bills do, to the pharmaceutical industry that has such a large cost to the public with what may be an uncertain or dubious return.”
No doubt Lieberman would do the bidding of the pharmaceutical lobby whether his wife was on its payroll or not, but this kind of coincidence is best avoided by a man who lectures the world about morality and ethics.

The senator has demanded that Ned Lamont, his challenger in next month’s Democratic primary, release his income tax returns, which must mean that he plans to do likewise. His latest financial disclosure lists Mrs. Lieberman’s compensation from Hill & Knowlton only as “more than $1000.” Presumably his tax returns will show how much more—and measure his distance from the people he represents.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060712_conason_lieberman_drug_lobby/

Edited to add one more "power couple" for your consideration:



TC

[tanyev]

4. Very interesting. Nice, cozy, incestuous little group.

[KoKo]

6. Fixed Broken Link ...if anyone wants to read the whole list:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0705.chart.html