Newmark: Not too much, which is good. They asked for it. They thought it would clean up the site, eliminate all of the repostings. Since we started, the volume dropped precipitously. It is back up a little, but it eliminated a lot of the scams I was worried about, because a lot of the small brokers—the new ones—they don’t earn a lot of money, and they are not getting reimbursed for advertising costs. But when I asked them, ‘O.K., well, what did you do before, how did you advertise before?’—well, there was no good answer.

I brought along a printout from some ads. You can see, here and here, there is the same ad, posted within two days of each other. Can you tell me: Was that broker paying $10 each time, or did they get around it somehow?

It looks like it’s the same apartment. I would say that broker is not making the best use of money. It’s not a broker that I have heard of, so that is a good sign. But tell me, does that price look too low to you?

$1,300 for a one-bedroom in the South Slope? No. So you are saying that it’s not a scam?

Right. I mean, I don’t know. Is it too low?

Not necessarily. About fraud, last fall the City Council released a report saying that one-third of postings that were supposedly no-fee places really did have brokers’ fees. What are you doing about that?

Well, a lot of what I did was get together with the Council, and looked at their list, and I could tell them, ‘Well, that agency is generally trustworthy, and maybe they just had a new broker,’ or ‘This one we know is problematic.’

See, it depends whether problems occur offline or online. We can handle the problems that occur online, but when they happen offline—when people bait and switch, or when they say there is no fee but then, when everybody gets ready to sign the lease, the broker says, ‘Oh, by the way, there is a fee’—we don’t have control over that.

I mean, I guess we could implement some sort of e-mail tracking system, but that is more expensive, and [it’s] less expensive keeping track of it in my head.

Do you mean that here you are, a new-media company using a high-tech platform, and you find that you do better using your noggin?

Well, we are not really that high-tech of a company. I mean, we use computers, but the interface is fairly simple. I can imagine that there may be a way to track scams using I.P. addresses or e-mail addresses, but I actually find that we have done a pretty good job ourselves and through reader feedback. We can see scams develop and address them that way.

You made a distinction between online and offline scams. Do you feel a responsibility for preventing scams that happen offline?

I don’t know if “responsibility” is the right word. I think it is the right thing to do. But we don’t have the boots on the ground to go out and investigate them. And so we cooperate with the NYPD, we are working with the City Council, we are working with the Department of State, which has oversight over licensing in New York.

We feel very strongly about civil rights—but if the right procedures are followed, we also believe in cooperating with law enforcement.

How important is New York real estate to your site?

In New York, real estate is a blood sport. It has always been that way. A few years ago, I started to notice that it was a problem, that we were getting a lot of complaints about [fraudulent ads]. So it is a special focus of mine.

New York is the only city where we have the $10 listing fee for brokers. In terms of time, I would say I spend maybe 20 to 30 minutes a day dealing with New York real-estate problems. A lot of what I do is make sure the right person is taking care of the problem.

Are there things that brokers or newspapers, with their classified apartment ads, can learn from Craigslist?

I think there are issues about using Web sites that they can learn, such as keeping them simple and fast. On a deeper level, I think it is important that you want to treat people the way that you want to be treated. That is very important for a business.

Do you have any advice for how brokers should write ads on Craigslist?

Just cut down the hype. Just be on the level, be as straightforward as possible and include all the facts, and just talk to people like they were really people.

“I would say there is cheering both in New York and at Foggy Bottom,” said Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005.

Mr. Wilkerson was referring to the persistent tensions that have strained relations between Mr. Bolton and the State Department. Those tensions, in turn, are part of the bigger war within the administration between neoconservatives, who were in the ascendant during the first term of the Bush Presidency with the support of Vice President Dick Cheney, and the more pragmatic Republican foreign-policy establishment.

Mr. Bolton’s departure comes at a time when the neoconservatives are in retreat over Iraq, and the Republican Party is still shell-shocked from a heavy defeat in the Congressional midterm elections. Those developments helped ensure that Mr. Bolton would not have the votes to win Senate confirmation to keep him in his job. And so the blunt aggressor who charged into the United Nations with a mandate to overhaul its stagnant bureaucracy, was, in the end, a passive victim of political circumstance.

The ambassador’s defenders insist that his achievements at Turtle Bay were real, if underappreciated, in part because they belied the caricature of him as an endlessly belligerent and impatient figure. They point to the way he built consensus on North Korea, and to his work on the Security Council resolution that helped end the conflict in Lebanon earlier this year, as evidence of his solid diplomatic abilities.

But Mr. Bolton’s bigger goals, such as fundamental reform of the world body, were certainly not met. In part, this is because Mr. Bolton was simply not in his post long enough to make any real headway. Then there was the matter of his controversial style.

“Bolton has clearly been able to express the administration’s viewpoint, which is a plus,” said Professor Joseph Nye of Harvard University. “But he has expressed it in such an antagonistic way at times that it may not have served the administration particularly well.”

Mr. Wilkerson, who has previously been critical of the administration, criticized the ambassador’s tendency, as he saw it, to “make an end-run” around the State Department on a host of sensitive issues, from how to deal with North Korea to possible negotiations with Iran.

And, based on his time serving alongside Mr. Bolton in the State Department during Mr. Bush’s first term, Mr. Wilkerson accused his former colleague of carrying water for Mr. Cheney, sometimes against the policy aims of the department itself.

“I saw that any time the policy of the Vice President—and notice, I said the Vice President, not the President—looked like it might be violated, he would step in,” Mr. Wilkerson said of Mr. Bolton. “The Vice President’s spy in the State Department was Under-Secretary Bolton.”

Mr. Wilkerson’s use of the language of espionage was itself evidence of the suspicion and fear of betrayal that seems to fester on both sides in this battle. Several months ago, one of Mr. Bolton’s staunchest supporters, Frank Gaffney of the D.C.-based Center for Security Policy, told The Observer that the U.N. ambassador was actively being undermined by figures in the State Department, including Nick Burns, the current under-secretary for political affairs, who served in both the Clinton and George H.W. Bush administrations.

Mr. Burns’ name is among those now mentioned as a possible replacement for Mr. Bolton—yet another sign of the waning influence of the neocons.

To Mr. Wilkerson, Mr. Bolton’s departure is a chance to steer U.S. diplomacy in a more conventional direction.

His replacement, he suggested, “should be someone known and respected in the community of international diplomats. It should ideally be someone who has come up though the State Department and who would serve as a sort of appendage to Secretary Rice.

“If [the replacement] comes from that other crowd of people—the so-called neocons, or the neo-Jacobins, as I call them—then generally speaking, I think it will be another Bolton. But I don’t think this President is that dumb.”

Told about the remarks, Mr. Bolton’s spokesman, Rick Grenell, said: “We’ll take the high road there. We have no comment about that.”

Where some see Mr. Bolton as a stout defender of U.S. interests, and figures like Mr. Wilkerson loathe him for his abrasiveness, others offer a more mixed evaluation. Lee Feinstein, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a onetime Clinton administration official, recalled he was one of the few Democrats not to oppose Mr. Bolton’s appointment at the outset of his term.

“I thought there was some virtue in having a critic in that position if he was willing to fix the problems,” Mr. Feinstein said.

“I never thought this was an issue of manner—there have been U.S. permanent representatives with hot personalities and with cold personalities. But I think Bolton ultimately preferred to criticize rather than do anything about solving the problems at the U.N.”

At the U.N. itself, even the first rumors of Mr. Bolton’s departure were met, unsurprisingly, with a sense of relief. “We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but we would think it couldn’t be worse than Bolton,” one diplomat whose nation serves as a permanent member of the Security Council told The Observer.

Even so, he added, “We are not really dealing with a man or a woman, but with a country, and it is the policies of that country that matter.”

Whether Mr. Bolton’s departure presages a fundamental change in policy from the administration remains highly debatable. Mr. Bush’s aggrieved comments as he accepted the ambassador’s resignation—the President blamed “a handful” of Senators for “stubborn obstructionism”—hardly indicated that a new course of moderation was imminent. And interviews with Democratic staffers on the Foreign Relations Committee also suggested that they saw Mr. Bush’s earlier declaration that he would try to get Mr. Bolton approved as ambassador by the lame-duck Senate as a calculated insult.

Among the rumored candidates to replace Mr. Bolton, in addition to Mr. Burns of the State Department, are Congressman Jim Leach and Senator Mike DeWine, both of whom are considered relative moderates. Both men are serving out their final days in office after being defeated in last month’s elections. (A letter advocating Mr. Leach’s appointment was circulated in the House of Representatives last month by Republican James Walsh of New York and Democrat Earl Blumenauer of Oregon.)

Candidates likely to engender more enthusiasm among neocons include U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad and Paula Dobriansky, currently under-secretary of state for democracy and global affairs. Both were signatories to the 1997 Statement of Principles drawn up by the Project for the New American Century.

No one is placing bets with any confidence, however.

“Nobody knows who the next ambassador will be,” the Security Council diplomat said wryly, “but everybody here is wide-eyed and expectant.”

Despite the jubilation in some quarters, not everyone is happy to see Mr. Bolton depart.

“John Bolton is the most talented and capable man to have ever served in that position,” Tom Kilgannon, president of the right-wing Freedom Alliance, said in a statement. “All Americans should be grateful that this good man took a year and a half out of his life to serve his country at the U.N., which required him to consort with anti-American crooks and bozos.”

“I would say there is cheering both in New York and at Foggy Bottom,” said Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005.

Mr. Wilkerson was referring to the persistent tensions that have strained relations between Mr. Bolton and the State Department. Those tensions, in turn, are part of the bigger war within the administration between neoconservatives, who were in the ascendant during the first term of the Bush Presidency with the support of Vice President Dick Cheney, and the more pragmatic Republican foreign-policy establishment.

Mr. Bolton’s departure comes at a time when the neoconservatives are in retreat over Iraq, and the Republican Party is still shell-shocked from a heavy defeat in the Congressional midterm elections. Those developments helped ensure that Mr. Bolton would not have the votes to win Senate confirmation to keep him in his job. And so the blunt aggressor who charged into the United Nations with a mandate to overhaul its stagnant bureaucracy, was, in the end, a passive victim of political circumstance.

The ambassador’s defenders insist that his achievements at Turtle Bay were real, if underappreciated, in part because they belied the caricature of him as an endlessly belligerent and impatient figure. They point to the way he built consensus on North Korea, and to his work on the Security Council resolution that helped end the conflict in Lebanon earlier this year, as evidence of his solid diplomatic abilities.

But Mr. Bolton’s bigger goals, such as fundamental reform of the world body, were certainly not met. In part, this is because Mr. Bolton was simply not in his post long enough to make any real headway. Then there was the matter of his controversial style.

“Bolton has clearly been able to express the administration’s viewpoint, which is a plus,” said Professor Joseph Nye of Harvard University. “But he has expressed it in such an antagonistic way at times that it may not have served the administration particularly well.”

Mr. Wilkerson, who has previously been critical of the administration, criticized the ambassador’s tendency, as he saw it, to “make an end-run” around the State Department on a host of sensitive issues, from how to deal with North Korea to possible negotiations with Iran.

And, based on his time serving alongside Mr. Bolton in the State Department during Mr. Bush’s first term, Mr. Wilkerson accused his former colleague of carrying water for Mr. Cheney, sometimes against the policy aims of the department itself.

“I saw that any time the policy of the Vice President—and notice, I said the Vice President, not the President—looked like it might be violated, he would step in,” Mr. Wilkerson said of Mr. Bolton. “The Vice President’s spy in the State Department was Under-Secretary Bolton.”

Mr. Wilkerson’s use of the language of espionage was itself evidence of the suspicion and fear of betrayal that seems to fester on both sides in this battle. Several months ago, one of Mr. Bolton’s staunchest supporters, Frank Gaffney of the D.C.-based Center for Security Policy, told The Observe r that the U.N. ambassador was actively being undermined by figures in the State Department, including Nick Burns, the current under-secretary for political affairs, who served in both the Clinton and George H.W. Bush administrations.

Mr. Burns’ name is among those now mentioned as a possible replacement for Mr. Bolton—yet another sign of the waning influence of the neocons.

To Mr. Wilkerson, Mr. Bolton’s departure is a chance to steer U.S. diplomacy in a more conventional direction.

His replacement, he suggested, “should be someone known and respected in the community of international diplomats. It should ideally be someone who has come up though the State Department and who would serve as a sort of appendage to Secretary Rice.

“If [the replacement] comes from that other crowd of people—the so-called neocons, or the neo-Jacobins, as I call them—then generally speaking, I think it will be another Bolton. But I don’t think this President is that dumb.”

Told about the remarks, Mr. Bolton’s spokesman, Rick Grenell, said: “We’ll take the high road there. We have no comment about that.”

Where some see Mr. Bolton as a stout defender of U.S. interests, and figures like Mr. Wilkerson loathe him for his abrasiveness, others offer a more mixed evaluation. Lee Feinstein, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a onetime Clinton administration official, recalled he was one of the few Democrats not to oppose Mr. Bolton’s appointment at the outset of his term.

“I thought there was some virtue in having a critic in that position if he was willing to fix the problems,” Mr. Feinstein said.

“I never thought this was an issue of manner—there have been U.S. permanent representatives with hot personalities and with cold personalities. But I think Bolton ultimately preferred to criticize rather than do anything about solving the problems at the U.N.”

At the U.N. itself, even the first rumors of Mr. Bolton’s departure were met, unsurprisingly, with a sense of relief. “We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but we would think it couldn’t be worse than Bolton,” one diplomat whose nation serves as a permanent member of the Security Council told The Observer.

Even so, he added, “We are not really dealing with a man or a woman, but with a country, and it is the policies of that country that matter.”

Whether Mr. Bolton’s departure presages a fundamental change in policy from the administration remains highly debatable. Mr. Bush’s aggrieved comments as he accepted the ambassador’s resignation—the President blamed “a handful” of Senators for “stubborn obstructionism”—hardly indicated that a new course of moderation was imminent. And interviews with Democratic staffers on the Foreign Relations Committee also suggested that they saw Mr. Bush’s earlier declaration that he would try to get Mr. Bolton approved as ambassador by the lame-duck Senate as a calculated insult.

Among the rumored candidates to replace Mr. Bolton, in addition to Mr. Burns of the State Department, are Congressman Jim Leach and Senator Mike DeWine, both of whom are considered relative moderates. Both men are serving out their final days in office after being defeated in last month’s elections. (A letter advocating Mr. Leach’s appointment was circulated in the House of Representatives last month by Republican James Walsh of New York and Democrat Earl Blumenauer of Oregon.)

Candidates likely to engender more enthusiasm among neocons include U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad and Paula Dobriansky, currently under-secretary of state for democracy and global affairs. Both were signatories to the 1997 Statement of Principles drawn up by the Project for the New American Century.

No one is placing bets with any confidence, however.

“Nobody knows who the next ambassador will be,” the Security Council diplomat said wryly, “but everybody here is wide-eyed and expectant.”

Despite the jubilation in some quarters, not everyone is happy to see Mr. Bolton depart.

“John Bolton is the most talented and capable man to have ever served in that position,” Tom Kilgannon, president of the right-wing Freedom Alliance, said in a statement. “All Americans should be grateful that this good man took a year and a half out of his life to serve his country at the U.N., which required him to consort with anti-American crooks and bozos.”

Though, rest assured, the Times is careful to dismiss Walt and Mearsheimer's paper on "The Israel Lobby" as an antisemitic canard:

Wait—why stop at Truman? Pro-Israel forces in the U.S. have played a crucial role in the life of the settlement and state, going back to the Wilson administration. Saying so doesn't make you an Israel critic. It might even make you a dispassionate scholar:

1.Albert Lindemann (of UC Santa Barbara) in his book on antisemitism, Esau's Tears:

2. Melvin Urofsky and David W. Levy [of Virginia Commonwealth U. and Oklahoma U], in The Family Letters of Louis D. Brandeis:

The fascination here is the extent to which the Balfour declaration of 1917 in England, granting a homeland to Jews in Palestine, and Wilson's affirmation of it a year later, grew out of the only thing Jews had going for them then: access to power of highly-successful men of wealth or learning. In England it was the great chemist Chaim Weizmann. Here it was men like Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter (later to be appointed the third Jewish Supreme Court Justice) and Jacob Schiff, the N.Y. banker.

As for Truman, in 1948, C.L. Sulzberger of the Times met with David Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv, and the P.M. stated the need for an Israel lobby: The purpose of Israel is to "bring here all those Jews in the world who wish to come. That calls for a partnership between Israel and outside organizations, and all the Jews of the world must help."

Call it a good thing or a bad thing, call it influence, help, a back-channel, requests, or a lobby. Call it anything you like; just don't pretend that it is a fantasy.

Let's call this what it is: sick. We're told to reduce our reliance on oil, we're told that the polar ice caps are melting; and here are some of the supposedly most-knowledgeable and empowered people in the world making jokes about too much air conditioning. Times like this I wish Al Gore was president.

Related entry: Warm Up the White House...

McConnell found Damascus just as pleasurable as I found it a few months back. He met President Assad and judged him to be "wonkish" and sincere, looking to some day reap the rewards of peace with Israel, trying to modernize his country in the face of Islamicism. Then at the U.S. Embassy, McConnell relates the following encounter, very layered:

Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, Condi's number two at the State Department, is leaving the Bush Administration to join the Wall Street giant as a managing director and as vice chairman of its international division. His announcement comes less than a month after Bush tapped the firm's chairman and CEO, Henry Paulson, to be the new Secretary of the Treasury.

Mr. Zoellick hasn't said why he decided to step down from his State Department post, but word on the street (or at least in the newspapers) is that he had been jockeying for the Treasury Secretary job before Bush gave it to Paulson. Now he is heading to Paulson's old firm.

It's like Trading Places for the insider set.

-- Lizzy Ratner

Are these the accomplishments George Bush trumpeted last week? He would do far more for the Iraqis by conceding the American effort has failed, and seeking international cooperation to preserve a broken state.

Right after September 11th, I booked a ticket to Bali and flew out the next day. For years the lush rice patties called to me but I had no serious boyfriend to travel with. My father, trying to dissuade me, would cut out articles about Bali being a destination for honeymooners. "Deah," he would say, "I would go to Bali, but with your husband."

"Dad," I would answer impatiently, "I don't even have a boyfriend." I wasn't really angry at him, so much as I was mad that I didn't have someone to love.

My mother would optimistically chime in, "They eat people there. Like that boy, what's his name... who was eaten by that tribe..."

Ignoring the State Department's warning banning Americans from travel to Indonesia, off to Bali I went, the only American on a plane peppered with turbans, crying babies and non-deodorized arm pits.

In Bali I indulged in red silk sarongs, corn-rowed my hair and bought a silver and coral ring for a dollar from a street vendor. I was staying at an exquisitely languid hotel surrounded by abundant greenery and cascading waterfalls, sleeping in a white canopy bed strewn with rose petals. One evening, as I watched an orange sun being swallowed by mountains, I took my coral ring from its pouch, placed it on my left hand and married myself.

Now it's two months until my 'real' wedding day. As I lie in bed, I calculate the cost of the deposits on the vineyard, the caterer and the band, and I wonder if it's not too late to elope.