Happy Birthday, Helen

Today in Winchester, Kentucky, in 1920 Helen Thomas was born. An Arab-American and a woman, she's forged a path few of any ethnicity or gender have followed. The longest-serving White House reporter, she has covered every president since Kennedy, first for UP and then UPI (until 2000), and then as a columnist. For 45 years she has covered them with "respect for the office but no awe for the man" - which, as you can imagine, has earned her the dislike of more than one of them. The current previous president felt "blindsided" by her first question ("Why don't you respect the wall of separation between church and state?") and their relationship didn't improve; he simply didn't call on her for a question for more than three years. When he finally did (in 2006), this is what she asked him: "Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war?" He didn't answer, saying only that he didn't accept the "premise" of the question.

But since the election, she hasn't been afraid to call Obama on what she perceives to be his failings: secrecy and "controlling" the press, a reluctance to fight hard for things like universal healthcare ("no stomach for the political battle," she says), and turning a blind eye to Israel's conduct in Gaza.

She's nobody's lap dog, this lady.