Anyone returning to Washington after the holidays hoping for a calm and quiet reentry must have been sorely disappointed by the first week of the new year: From Capitol Hill to the White House, it was a clamorous, chaotic, and, yes, teary spell that emphatically marked the end of one political phase and the start of another. But this is not a column about the commencement of the Boehner or the Daley era, or the conclusion of the reign of Gibbs. Instead, it’s about a story that broke even earlier in 2011—on January 1, in fact—and then got drowned out by the bang and clatter at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, but which certainly merits more attention.
