From someone who works relatively near the guy at Georgetown, who just emailed me: “The office is pretty hysterically liberal, but Paul Offner seems to be one of the more balanced liberals among the faculty and staff at the institute. I can’t imagine him running around the office making up stories or spreading unfounded rumors to stop a cabinet appointment (unlike some other people there who will be talking conspiracy theories about the Bush administration for the rest of their lives).” This is just to establish the fact that a) Offner is not some lefty ideologue with an ax to grind; b) everyone who knows him believes him. There’s no way to settle this, but there’s no harm in adding data.