Odious hack Mark Halperin (and fine New York Magazine political reporter John Heilmann) wrote a book about the 2008 campaign! Did you read one of its many scoops, today? Probably, because the same information was cut-and-pasted everywhere.

Drudge published the press release first, probably verbatim, in a "news item" that misidentified Heilmann as a Time reporter. The juicy scoop: Hillary Clinton was concerned that her husband would be a distraction, should she accept the Secretary of State gig.

Politico followed, reprinting the exact same information. Then CBS highlighted the story in a piece promoting an upcoming 60 Minutes segment based, apparently, on material from the book. All three used almost identical language in describing the book.

The other big scoop, reported everywhere, is that Sarah Palin's debate prep was disastrous, and eveyone was worried that she would perform poorly.

That's right: those are two of the "scoops" in this book, that have been reported in order to entice you into buying it to see what other juicy stuff they uncovered: Hillary Clinton was wary of Bill embarrassing her, and preparing Sarah Palin for her debate was really hard. Siren.gif!!

The "Sarah Palin kept calling Joe Biden 'Senator O'Biden'" thing barely qualifies as interesting, leaving aside the fact that Sarah Palin's own book already "broke" the "news" of that important verbal tic. (And then she called him "O'Biden" during the debate, and no one noticed and this very blog promptly posted it.)

The news that Hillary Clinton was concerned that her husband would be an impediment to a nomination for Secretary of State is shocking only to those who don't remember that Hillary Clinton's husband is Bill. Here are Obama officials on the subject back in 2008. We guess the news is that Hillary said the word "circus"?

Halperin has a very special relationship with Matt Drudge. Halperin publicly blows Drudge whenever he's got a book to promote. Matt promotes. Others in the useless circle of hacks who make up the worst of the political journalism bubble take their cues from Matt, and promote the book too. Halperin has no shame about trying to sell his dumb books to the beltway political reporters he skulks around with. It is, of course, only natural that Politico would pick up an item from Drudge-worshiping Halperin in the hopes that Drudge would link.

But none of it is news. It barely resembles news. It's two hoary campaign 2008 anecdotes. This needs to stop.

Campaign 2008 is over. It is done. "News" from campaign 2008 is not news, anymore. Sorry if your book on the subject isn't out yet, guys, but you shoulda had it done before 2010 rolled around.