The country is in the news this week for threatening a preemptive nuclear strike on the United States after new U.N. sanctions, and after Dennis Rodman's own bizarre visit. We asked Richardson how seriously we should take North Korea's saber-rattling, and if Rodman's visit helps or hurts U.S. relations with the autocratic country.

How worried should we be about this North Korea threat of a preemptive nuclear strike after the U.N. Security Council passed new sanctions? Should we be scared?

My view is that it’s typical North Korean bluster, however the intensity is the strongest I’ve seen, so I do think we have to be cautious and be prepared.

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On Thursday, a Richardson spokesman, Gilbert Gallegos, took a little victory lap, saying in a statement that the governor is "gratified that this yearlong investigation has ended with the vindication of his administration."

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Decisions about charging high-ranking political figures are generally made in consultation with main Justice back in Washington, D.C., which typically has final say. That appears to be what happened here, as the AP reports the decision "was made by top Justice Department officials." The AP's source doesn't appear to be happy about it, saying, "It's over. There's nothing. It was killed in Washington."

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In a surprise visit, former President Bill Clinton arrived Tuesday in Pyongyang, North Korea, to meet with the isolated nation's leader, Kim Jong Il. While North Korea's nuclear program and recent spate of missile tests have caused growing consternation around the world, the main purpose of Clinton's trip was to negotiate for the release of two U.S. journalists currently imprisoned there.

ABC News is now reporting that Clinton also met with the jailed reporters, Laura Ling and Euna Lee. A government source described the meeting as highly emotional but told ABC that those on Clinton's team in North Korea are hopeful the journalists could be released as early as tomorrow.

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Locke, who left in office in 2005, served two terms and opted not to run for a third; he was the first Chinese-American governor in U.S. history.

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Richardson maintained that the decision to withdraw was his, and said he came to make that choice because an investigation into state contracts given to CDR Financial Products Inc., whose president is a Richardson donor, had gone on longer than he expected it to -- he'd hoped it would be done in December, removing the cloud from over his head before confirmation hearings were to begin. The governor said, as he had in a statement on Sunday, that the country couldn't afford any delay in confirming a new head for the department. "Sometimes your own dreams and plans must take a back seat to what is best for the nation," he told reporters.

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While denying any wrongdoing, Richardson cited a pending investigation into an unspecified company that has done business with the state of New Mexico: "Let me say unequivocally that I and my administration have acted properly in all matters and that this investigation will bear out that fact," he said Sunday on NBC News. "But I have concluded that the ongoing investigation also would have forced an untenable delay in the confirmation process." Richardson plans to continue in his role as Governor of New Mexico.

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The press conference at which the announcement was made featured several rather unsubtle reminders of one reason Richardson is politically valuable: namely, he's Hispanic, and Obama owes a great deal to Hispanic voters. As he said goodbye to the state he leads, Richardson made an extended digression in Spanish. And one of the three questions Obama took from the press was from a Hispanic reporter, Telemundo's Vicente Serrano, who had a question about whether Richardson's nomination was a consolation prize for Hispanics who wanted to see him become secretary of state.

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If Todd and Mitchell are right, there will be some big names included in the roll out. They say Tim Geithner -- the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and a longtime Treasury official -- will be returning to his old haunt, this time as Treasury Secretary, and that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will be Commerce Secretary. The Wall Street Journal, too, has a report about the big Monday announcement, and the paper also says Geithner will get the Treasury nod.

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If the fall campaign brought with it the risk of drowning in a tidal wave of polling data, the occupational hazard during the transition period between presidents is dying from thirst in a parched landscape devoid of any reliable information. Even the ballyhooed release Wednesday of the identities of Obama's major transition team leaders in Washington may have been a diversion from the real drama in Chicago. As one veteran of the Clinton White House says, "The only transition that matters is in Barack Obama's living room."

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This year New Mexico didn't deliver any mixed messages. On Nov. 4, Democrats dominated at every level. Barack Obama beat John McCain, Tom Udall took an open Senate seat that had been Republican, and Martin Heinrich and Harry Teague took two formerly Republican House seats. And every one of them won in a landslide, with margins of 10 percent or more; Obama prevailed by 15 points, Udall by 22. New Mexico is now bright blue, with Democrats in nearly every elected statewide office, control of the state House and Senate, and an all Democratic congressional delegation.

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No state has seen presidential elections as consistently close as New Mexico the past two cycles -- Al Gore won it by 366 votes in 2000, and George W. Bush took it back by 5,988 votes four years later, the margin still less than 1 percent of the total vote. Now Obama leads John McCain in most recent polls by a few points, but Democrats and Republicans alike say they think the final margin could be as tight as it has been in the past. Both campaigns are advertising heavily here; the Wisconsin Advertising Project estimated McCain spent $214,000 on TV in New Mexico the week after his convention, Sept. 6 to 13, while Obama spent $155,000 in the same time period. But with fewer than 3 million residents, grass-roots organizing might make more of a difference.

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As George W. Bush's impartial vetter-in-chief in 2000, Dick Cheney accidentally discovered in the shaving mirror the only living Republican who could meet his exacting V.P. standards. Now former Fannie Mae chairman Jim Johnson -- who was fast becoming a Democratic Washington "wise man" on the model of Clark Clifford and Bob Strauss -- has had to resign as Barack Obama's chief vice-presidential talent scout. Johnson's image problem (beyond making as much as $21 million in a single year at Fannie Mae) stemmed from charges that he may have gotten bargain-basement personal mortgage rates from a company at the center of the subprime scandal.

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Governor Richardson has never questioned Senator Obama's electability. He believes Barack Obama is the right person to lead this country and he will be America's next President.

In fact, the Governor endorsed Senator Obama based on his ability to bring this country together both domestically and internationally.

The Governor wants to move beyond this he said-she said nonsense. It's irrelevant and petty. The focus should be on ending the war in Iraq, improving the economy and passing universal health care, which is exactly what Senator Obama is talking about.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/04/04/richardson_5/feed/ 60 http://www.salon.com/2008/04/03/clinton_richardson/ http://www.salon.com/2008/04/03/clinton_richardson/#comments Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:43:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2008/04/03/clinton_richardson At a press conference Thursday, Hillary Clinton was asked about a report that she had tried to dissuade Bill Richardson from endorsing Barack Obama by saying, "He cannot win, Bill. He cannot win."

According to ABC News' Political Radar blog, Clinton denied she had said this, telling reporters, "That's a no... We have been going back and forth in this campaign of who said what to whom and let me say this, that I don't talk about private conversations but I have consistently made the case that I can win."

If Clinton were indeed making the latter case, it wouldn't be surprising. Both Democratic campaigns have made electability a hallmark of their messaging, and we already knew, among other things, that the Clinton campaign is going to superdelegates and discussing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former pastor, as an example of a potential weakness for Obama in a race against John McCain.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/04/03/clinton_richardson/feed/ 46 http://www.salon.com/2008/04/03/richardson_obama_3/ http://www.salon.com/2008/04/03/richardson_obama_3/#comments Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:38:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2008/04/03/richardson_obama Wednesday night, ABC News reported that Hillary and Bill Clinton have been telling Democratic superdelegates that Barack Obama cannot beat John McCain in November. ABC described one conversation specifically:

Sources with direct knowledge of the conversation between Sen. Clinton and Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., prior to the Governor's endorsement of Obama say she told him flatly, "He cannot win, Bill. He cannot win."

Richardson, who served in President Clinton's Cabinet, disagreed.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/04/03/richardson_obama_3/feed/ 89 http://www.salon.com/2008/03/28/surrogates/ http://www.salon.com/2008/03/28/surrogates/#comments Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:05:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/03/28/surrogates The loose-lips rogue's gallery includes a mega-billionaire Hollywood dealmaker, a retired Air Force general, a legendary Democratic political consultant, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Kennedy School professor, the former Iowa Democratic chairman, an African-American billionaire businessman, the husband of a popular two-term former Democratic governor and a history-making feminist political icon. Even without their names (which range from David Geffen to Geraldine Ferraro), any hardcore cable news viewer or insatiable political Web surfer probably recognizes them instantly. They are the Chastised Eight, all campaign surrogates guilty in the court of public opinion of shouting (or writing) fighting words on the fringes of the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton presidential brawl.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/03/28/surrogates/feed/ 99 http://www.salon.com/2008/03/21/richardson_obama_2/ http://www.salon.com/2008/03/21/richardson_obama_2/#comments Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:23:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2008/03/21/richardson_obama New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will endorse Barack Obama at a press conference in Oregon Friday, the Associated Press reports. According to the AP, Richardson -- who was himself in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this year -- will release a statement in which he says of Obama:

I believe he is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime leader that can bring our nation together and restore America's moral leadership in the world. As a presidential candidate, I know full well Sen. Obama's unique moral ability to inspire the American people to confront our urgent challenges at home and abroad in a spirit of bipartisanship and reconciliation.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/03/21/richardson_obama_2/feed/ 53 http://www.salon.com/2008/02/06/new_mexico/ http://www.salon.com/2008/02/06/new_mexico/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2008 22:18:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2008/02/06/new_mexico It's the day after New Mexico's Democratic presidential caucuses, and yet the only thing we know about the status of the race there is that Bill Richardson -- the state's governor, who was a presidential candidate earlier in the cycle -- is suddenly sporting what Salon's New York office has collectively determined to be the best political beard ever.

As of 2 p.m. EST, 180 of the state's 184 precincts were reporting vote totals. At that point, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were separated by just 210 votes, with Clinton leading. However, roughly 17,000 provisional ballots -- about 10 percent of the total vote -- remain to be checked and counted; that process was supposed to begin Wednesday afternoon, though there's no word on when it will end. Perhaps as many as half of the provisional ballots will be thrown out, New Mexico Lt. Gov. Diane Denish told a local radio station Wednesday.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/02/06/new_mexico/feed/ 7 http://www.salon.com/2008/02/01/oprah_3/ http://www.salon.com/2008/02/01/oprah_3/#comments Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:51:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2008/02/01/oprah Pop quiz, hotshot: With two days left before what could be the most important single day in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, to whom do you turn for that all-important last push, especially in a key state?

Well, if you're the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, you might think about putting the candidate himself out there. Then again, you might want to turn to seemingly the only person in the U.S. who can attract a more worshipful audience these days: Oprah Winfrey. And that's what the Obama campaign has done; it has just announced that Winfrey, who campaigned for Obama in December as well, will appear in Los Angeles with Michelle Obama and Caroline Kennedy on Sunday. They're not offering any more detail than that yet, though.

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