IN A TINY GREEN ROOM at Microsoft’s Redmond HQ, Arianna Huffington is doing what she does best: enticing important people into telling her stuff. The Greek-born conservative-turned-Democrat is in Seattle to promote her new book Right Is Wrong. But the chief blogger at the Huffington Post—her increasingly important liberal-leaning news site—ventured to Redmond to join a panel discussion about online political advertising for Microsoft’s Advance08 marketing convention.

In the car ride across the lake from Seattle she had poked fun at her fellow panelists, quoting from their bios: “Krohn served as an intern for vice president Dan Quayle,” she read, eliciting giggles from her fellow passengers, including a New Yorker reporter who’s trailing Huffington as she wraps up her book tour. Krohn is Cyrus Krohn, the Republican National Committee’s online marketing guru. “It’s like, ‘What do you want to do in life?’” laughed Huffington, tossing back her flame of hair. “I want to intern for Dan -Quayle!” She turned to the bio of another panelist, Mark Penn, the guy behind Hillary Clinton’s “3am” ad and former senior consultant to her campaign. (He quit in April amidst a labor scandal.) “Mark Penn is a master of the message,” read Huffington, with zeal. “On his wall are notes saying ‘You are brilliant,’ from Tony Blair, and ‘Thanks,’ from Bill Clinton.”
She went on, her voice growing louder. “_The Washington Post_ has said: ‘Penn has everything that Clinton would want in a senior consultant: undisputed brilliance and experience.’” The car erupted in laughter.

"It’s like ‘What do you want to do in life?’" laughed Huffington. "I want to intern for Dan Quayle!"

But now, in the green room at Microsoft, Huffington has Krohn and Penn eating out of her blogger hands. “We’ve surpassed the Democrats in number of [Facebook] friends!” Krohn proudly tells Huffington. “Reeeeeeally?” replies Huffington in her Zsa Zsa voice. She turns to Penn and asks what Clinton will do about Florida and Michigan. Will she insist the primary votes be counted? How? Penn mutters something about this being off the record, then answers her questions. The man knows Huffington is notorious for letting little asides leak and become headlines (she recently let slip that in 2000 her then-friend John McCain revealed to her at a private dinner party that he didn’t vote for Bush) and yet here Penn is, sloppily blabbing Clinton war-room secrets. Seeing the misguided trust written on his big face, you can’t help but be reminded of another thing that happened on the car ride over.

“You should link to that,” the New Yorker writer had said, referring to Krohn’s and Penn’s bios. Huffington smiled at the idea of linking to the bios on the HuffPo home page. “Yes, but later, after the panel,” Huffington said. “Today we have to behave.”