I get my news from hidden clues

... in political blogs. Having been offline most of yesterday, I found late in the day a cryptic remark in one blog to the effect that Hillary Clinton will resign her Senate seat, but not yet. I presumed that meant she has indeed, as widely rumored, been nominated for Secretary of State - but rumors are just rumors (remember Dick Gephardt, John Kerry's running mate?), so I'd been waiting for the real news. I was able to confirm it, but if I hadn't seen that remark I might not have heard about the appointment for a while. The announcement that morning was not high on any news sites I checked, and in this morning's paper it was buried obscurely near the bottom of the front page, underneath a huge headline that we are now officially in a recession. Well, I already knew that, even if the government didn't.

And a similarly cryptic remark in an LJ about political doings in Canada led me to check that out - things do get exciting there when you're not expecting it, and of course the US media hadn't been covering it - and since then other bloggers have been on it, including pecunium and PNH. For which thanks.

(Briefly, for those disinclined to wade through this: dismay at the minority Conservative government's response to the financial crisis - plans that are simultaneously postponed and rushed, anemic and draconian - has caused all the normally fractious opposition parties to get together and propose themselves as a coalition alternative, something perfectly allowable in multi-party parliaments but almost unknown in Canadian federal practice. Now Prime Minister Harper is maneuvering to try to postpone or prevent a parliamentary vote on his plan, which he'd lose and would crash his government.)

Meanwhile, lots of detailed and thoughtful material in the mainstream news about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, or whatever the place's name is, but virtually nothing in those parts of the blogosphere that I read. Nothing to say that hasn't already been covered, I guess.