Robby Soave

The House of Medici patronized Michelangelo, Botticelli and da Vinci. The House of Obama patronized Nicola Green: the artist wife of David Lammy, who served as deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom until Monday. From August 2008 to January 2009, Green was offered, according to her website, “unprecedented artistic access to President Obama’s monumental campaign,” the fruit of which was In Seven Days…, a portfolio of seven abstract paintings of the new president, released in 2010. Cockburn’s favorite is “Day Six, Sacrifice/Embrace,” which shows the head and hands of the 44th president, splayed on a sky-blue field.

The fires of liberty Dramatic scenes at the new Dupont Circle headquarters of Reason this week, as the libertarian magazine’s staff evacuated due to billowing plumes of smoke from a first-floor fire.“The staff of Reason was briefly driven out of our Connecticut Avenue offices by a literal dumpster fire nearby on Tuesday,” editor-in-chief Katherine Mangu-Ward confirmed to Cockburn. “Everyone is fine, and our only regret is there was no private firefighting company to call in our time of distress.” The Spectator’s Washington editor Amber Duke was on the scene for a taping of her new YouTube show with Robby Soave. She offered Cockburn her retelling of events.