(Note: this is way out of date, but I wanted to put it up anyway.) A week and a half ago, before Silvestre Reyes was announced as HPSCI chair, there was a mini-groundswell of support within the blogosphere – TPM, Matthew Yglesias, Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly, David Corn at The Nation, and Joe Conason at Salon, et al – for a low-ranking New Jersey Democrat named Rush Holt. And that groundswell pleased me.

When it became clear (in mid-November) that Alcee Hastings wasn’t going to get the chairmanship, Rush Holt was my first thought. He's smart, he's well-liked, and he's got the background (the man's literally a nuclear physicist) to be very effective. But I was all the same surprised to see him get so much support among the lefty muckety-mucks. Because my second thought – the one that came right after "Hey, Holt would be good for that" – was "Who am I kidding? I'm not even sure the leadership knows who Holt is."

As it turned out, the political stickiness of sidestepping the CBC would have made it very difficult for Pelosi to tap Rush Holt even if she'd wanted to. I understand that, and I have no problem with Reyes; I'm sure he'll do a fine job. But I wanted to note for the record that I think Holt would have been the right choice. And apparently, I'm not alone in that.