Leaving town

That's Sen. Max Baucus, who played a key role in the battle for health-care reform, headed out barely an hour after the Senate's passage of the legislation. That vote came at 7 a.m. on Christmas eve, after Republicans and Democrats had pretty much worn each other out in round-the-clock maneuvering.

Unless you're trapped in a house fire, you'll probably never see a group of people so happy to get out of a building as they were leaving the Capitol that morning. Still, the senator, who'd spent two years in what often appeared to be a losing battle for this legislation, had time to stop and wish me a Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays!

How many photos?

"How many photos do you take?" people ask me when I'm working.

"A lot," I usually say. "It's the secret of professional photography: Take a lot of pictures, and something is bound to turn out."

Well, maybe not. But I do shoot a lot of photos, perhaps a couple hundred at an assignment that only lasts an hour or two. And judging by the sounds of their cameras, some of my colleagues shoot even more.

Usually all the unused images languish in my archive, with me occasionally finding the need to go back and pull one. But, with the magic of laptop movie-making, they can also now be made into a movie. And it can be a darn good movie -- at least when the subject is our highly expressive Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner (see "Yes, he can"), appearing before the House Financial Services Committee.

Geithner, the Movie from Jay Mallin on Vimeo.

That's a lot of Congressmen

Well, how would you react if you were called to testify before the combined membership of the House Financial Services and Agriculture Committees - more than 100 members of Congress in all, or about one-quarter of the full House of Representatives.

Yes, he can

Back in January I noted how well-suited former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was to a time of economic crisis — at least in terms of his facial expressions (See "Farewell to the Bald Guy"). And, since I regularly put in time photographing Treasury secretaries, I wondered how well his successor, Tim Geithner, would do on that front. What if we got a secretary incapable of anything but bland expressions and limited gestures?

Following a pair of hearings with Mr. Geithner, I can report my situation was like that of many comics at the end of the Bush administration. They were concerned that the last president's departure would leave them without material. And they, like me, need not have worried.