Matt Cooper makes some additional smart points about the stupid kerfuffle over Nico Pitney getting to ask a question at Obama's presser:
I think the basic idea that the White House didn't know the question before hand, only that it might come from an Iranian citizen means that this was all above board. And certainly the idea of trying to reach out directly to Iranians was a reasonable one for the White House to pursue. I was in Damascus in 1994 when the White House tried to arrange for an American journalist writing for an Israeli publication to post a question at a joint press conference of Bill Clinton and then Syrian President Hafez AL Assad. The idea then as now was to promote direct contacts. The press conference never happened and so the question wasn't posed. I didn't think it was an ethical lapse then or now. Besides, the Iranian who posed the question via Pitney offered up one a lot smarter question than some of the eyerollers offered by other reporters like, did you speak out on Iran because of Lindsay Graham and John McCain (CBS News's Chip Reid) or (Fox News's Major Garrett) What took you so long?
--Jason Zengerle