The guessing game continues as to who will replace Bill Kristol on the Times op-d page. NYMag.com thinks Stephen Colbert would be a great idea: “If the paper is smart, it’ll capitulate to its destiny and hire the ultimate nonconservative conservative, Stephen Colbert.” We’re not holding our breaths on that one, though Colbert is more appealing than, say, Bono.

Meanwhile it looks like National Review‘s Byron York, whose name had been bandied around as a possible replacement, is out of the running. FishbowlDC reports that York has accepted a position as chief political correspondent at the Washington Examiner where he will pen a twice-weekly column.

Yesterday at the Time Politics Summit 2008 we chatted with Frank Rich about the fact the New York Times now allows comments on its op-ed pieces. (A side note: even though Rich has long been ahead of the game in terms of adding in links to his columns, something he initiated on his own, opening up a comments section was apparently not his idea, nor is he responsible for moderating it.) Rich’s Sunday column often tops out at over 500 comments (this week’s piece ‘The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama’ currently has 842). So we wanted to know, was it strange to suddenly be on the receiving end of so many opinions? Rich told us it actually wasn’t that much different than the slew of emails he normally receives each week, except that the responses were now public. And does he manages to read all of them? He doesn’t. (Who has the time? He said.) Rich also noted a phenomenon that anyone who has written for a heavily trafficked and commented-on blog (for example, HuffPo) will probably already have experienced: the comments are rarely about the piece itself, instead commenters tend to use the space as their own platform.

Early during the panel he was moderating, Rich queried panelists Peggy Noonan, Byron York, Josh Marshall, and Jeff Greenfield as to who might be this election year’s Walter Cronkite.

Read more

Peggy Noonan greets her fans after her panel. See our twitter panel coverage here.

Read more