Shot three: Baddest Blackberry

Barack Obama keeps his Blackberry, with new super-secret email address. The inevitable result in Washington:

It is now the ultimate status symbol in a town obsessed by status. Mr. Obama was spotted last week trying out his new BlackBerry — or actually a more sophisticated, encrypted variation — and aides say that he uses a computer in the study next to the Oval Office but that he has agreed to limit the number of people he would exchange e-mail with. In the process, he created a new measure for Washington to judge who really has the ear, or the thumb, of the president.

Clinton had a private fax line, which is actually kinda funny. I can just imagine him sitting, forlorn by the fax, waiting for something to print out.

In the meantime, Obama hasn't even redecorated the Oval Office. The "optimism" rug of Bush's remains, designed by Laura, beloved by Bill (I LOOOOVE THIS RUG). As do some decorative plates, though I don't imagine they'll last long:

When Mr. Bush moved in, he exercised his presidential decorating prerogatives and asked his wife, Laura, to supervise the design of a new rug. Mr. Bush loved to regale visitors with the story of the rug, whose sunburst design, he liked to say, was intended to evoke a feeling of optimism.

The rug is still there, as are the presidential portraits Mr. Bush selected — one of Washington, one of Lincoln — and a collection of decorative green and white plates. During a meeting last week with retired military officials, before he signed an executive order shutting down the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Mr. Obama surveyed his new environs with a critical eye.

“He looked around,” said one of his guests, retired Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, “and said, ‘I’ve got to do something about these plates. I’m not really a plates kind of guy.’ ”