Last night, the New York Times got the scoop that Caroline Kennedy, daughter of JFK and Jackie O, had thrown her hat in the ring to fill Hillary Clinton's Senate seat once she becomes Secretary of State. How'd that happen? Well, we couldn't help but wonder if it has something to do with the close friendship between the married Kennedy and the recently single Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

This summer, as Kennedy was advising Barack Obama's campaign, we noted that Kennedy's name kept coming up in the Manhattan dinner-party guessing game about who Sulzberger is dating after he left his wife earlier this year.

As the Times notes, one of the complicating factors for anyone who takes the Clinton seat is that she or he will have to face two elections in the next four years, in 2010 to for the final two years of Clinton's term and again in 2012 for a full term. Elections, especially in media-saturated New York, especially involving a dynastic heir, have a way of forcing gossip out into the open.