Sidney Blumenthal departs

An editor's note at the top of Sidney Blumenthal's column this week breaks the news, but I thought I'd share it here as well: He's leaving Salon to join the Hillary Clinton campaign as a senior advisor. His incisive thinking and incomparable writing will be missed. Sidney was our Washington bureau chief during the 2004 election, presided over one of the best accounts of George W. Bush's missing year in the Texas Air National Guard, and has been a weekly Salon columnist since 2003. As the Bush administration destroyed most of what it touched, from Iraq to the Justice Department, his column has been must reading, for the way it captures big-picture themes as well as the small, sad portraits of major players, from Colin Powell to Alberto Gonzales to Scooter Libby to Karen Hughes. It's too bad we'll have to live through the closing days of the Bush administration without his weekly illumination, but we wish him well on the campaign front.