Scoops from lame ducks

Washington Monthly, Nov, 2007 by Charles Peters

One reward of having endured life in Washington for the forty-six years that I have lived here is that you come to understand a few eternal tendencies of the natives. One, observable in the last year of any administration, is a phenomenon that has earned the somewhat harsh name of "lame-duck guts." As the fear of being fired diminishes for the political appointee who is already preparing to leave, he becomes more willing to speak out about what's wrong. Civil servants also know they're freer to talk during an administration's dying days, since the will for the administration to go to the trouble of firing a civil servant also diminishes.

The reason I mention this is to alert my fellow journalists to the bonanza of good stories that awaits them, offering ordinarily hard-to-get glimpses into Washington's inner sanctums.