In a bad sign for Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney‘s presidential hopes, senior Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod set his sights on current GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich today, a rare deviation from their constant whipping of Romney. At a press conference at the DNC, Axelrod told reporters “the higher a monkey climbs on a pole, the more you can see his butt.’ So, you know, the Speaker is very high on the pole right now and we’ll see how people like the view.”

There are currently about… seven thousand Republicans officially in the presidential race so far, and yet many in the media cannot take their eyes off Sarah Palin. Whenever the former Alaska governor appears in public, she gets a fair amount of coverage in the mainstream media. Is the coverage excessive? That’s what today’s Reliable Sources panel examined.

In case you couldn’t tell by the twinkle in Bill O’Reilly’s eye tonight, it’s a good day to be working at Fox News. While some people may not be thrilled with the network getting the bump up to the front row, the Factor host couldn’t have been happier with the White House Correspondents Association’s choice. He warned viewers tonight that he planned on hogtying Major Garrett and getting right up in Robert Gibbs’ face.

The Chicago Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet reported, yesterday, that celebrity restaurateur and state dinner guest chef Rick Bayless was circumventing White House directives by Twittering from the White House kitchen. Overnight, Bayless took major exception with Sweet’s story, calling it “offensive” and saying she “made (it) up.” (h/t Billie Hill)

I think that a far more productive use of everyone’s time would be for the President to conduct one briefing a month, unannounced and on a day chosen at random, from Gibb’s podium in the Brady Briefing Room. This would result in a much freer exchange, a more diverse roster of questioners, and more relevant, spontaneous questions.

Hard not to think this isn’t the long arm of the Salahis at work. It’s just been reported that Desiree Rogers will step down as White House social secretary next month. Rogers, you may recall, got into some hot water back in November after the Salahis “crashed” a state dinner at the White House.

Apparently, the surprise daytime visit President Obama paid to the White House briefing room last week was not nearly enough to quell complaints that by not giving a full presser to the White House press corps. Obama is trying to do an end run around the 4th Estate. Is Obama afraid of tough questions?

It’s the end of the year, the time for handy lists and timelines recapping the touchstones of the past 12 months, freezing them in our ever-shortening collective memory.

Of course, some people just have to be different. Mediaite contributor and White House reporter Tommy Christopher pulls back the curtain on covering politics in 2009, and shares photos and videos that have never been seen before. Find out who the Secret Service did manage to keep out of the White House, what Joe Biden told his young mentorees, and much more.

Where were you a year ago today? If you are a political journalist — or media hanger-on — chances are you were living out of a suitcase at the 2008 Presidential Conventions, with the Dems nominating Barack Obama in Denver and the GOP nominating John McCain in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Remember those heady days?

The NY Times’ David Carr writes about AOL’s transformation from gated-community ISP to content powerhouse. And while AOL deserves a ton of credit for righting a ship that appeared destined to to sink, a closer look at how the Internet giant gets its massive traffic numbers actually belies the true value of both its content and traffic. Is all this focus on content part of a larger communications strategy in advance of Time Warner’s plans to spin-off AOL as a separate company?

I can’t say I started crying during the opening credits of the upcoming HBO documentary By The People: The Election of Barack Obama, but only because I got to the theater five minutes late. The film — which will air on November 3 on HBO — begins in Iowa in 2007, eight months before the caucuses and light years before today, and spends nearly half of its two-hours focusing on the state and the young supporters populating its campaign headquarters.

On Friday, President Barack Obama surprised the Washington Press Corps with an impromptu jacking of the daily press briefing. The president “recalibrated” his statements after some caterwauling from … ahem … everywhere. He called the arresting officer a good cop. He wanted to take back the “stupid” comment and reassure everyone that he had no idea his little statement would obscure his health care initiative.

What a difference a day makes. We started the day speculating that the Obama-Gates story was the main takeaway from last night’s press conference, and have ended it, after a blaze of media coverage, wondering whether this whole thing is about to turn into something Obama can’t easily brush off. Or maybe he doesn’t want to.

There was a report in US News, yesterday, that has different corners of the blogosphere going at the White House Press Corps like ‘roid-raged 5th graders at a pinata. The criticism centers, not around the corps’ threat of a “more adversarial tone” with the Obama White House, but around the reasons for it: Print reporters [...]