Mearis

Hi Dave!

I actually quite enjoy your blog on Slate, and I greatly enjoyed the 'friend of Hamas' story takedown.

A few quick questions:

1- How do you react to politicians (or spokespeople) that refuse to answer the question to asked and instead feed you talking points? There seems to be a bit of an unspoken rule that in the US (compared to the UK) politicians are allowed to dodge tough questions by journalists.

2- How much pressure is there on you to generate traffic at Slate?

3- Are there any particular politicians (that you might not agree with) that you particularly enjoy interviewing?

4- What other journalists do you particularly admire?

5- Will Slate drop it's awful SEO-optimized titles? The Dear Prudence stuff is frankly a bit embarassing.

What will a Senator/Congressman do to persuade a wealthy person on the fence to donate money for them? Implicitly and explicitly?

As an example of favour trading, can you justify in any way the way Blanche Lincoln fought incredibly hard against estate taxes that would hit the Walton family? Was it in the best interest of the people in her state?

I am quite sure everything was legal, but I am trying to draw a distinction between legal and moral.

There are an INSANE amount of examples of politicians who got lucrative sinecures following their careers because they played nice with a particular industry - for example Chris Dodd, Evan Bayh, etc, etc...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/the-sad-hypocritical-retirement-of-evan-bayh/2011/03/10/AB4MZzY_blog.html

Ok - but that's not how the game works anymore. In practice, a lobbyist will drop hints that 'they might have some openings' to an underpaid Capitol Hill staffer, and that staffer will do absolutely everything to stay in the good graces of the lobbyist, so they can pivot to a very well paid lobbyist position after their career is finished.