Happy Birthday Mr. President

Helen Thomas to drink hemlock. Pictures at 11:00.

the press corps is scheduled to move from temporary facilities back into the spiffed-up, rewired briefing room in May or June. Thomas, who has been questioning presidents and press secretaries for 46 years, plans to be there. But her front-row seat won’t be. Plans call for her to be moved to the second row to make room for a cable news channel – a sign of Washington’s changing pecking order, and of the new ways that Americans get their news.

“I didn’t think I had a monopoly on that seat,” Thomas, 86, said in a telephone interview. “Since my peers have decided that I don’t belong there, I’ll bow to their – I’ll drink the – What did Socrates drink?”

Hemlock? “I’ll drink it,” she said. “You have to submit to the will of the people, and apparently this is the will of my peers. It’s OK with me. I’ve had a good run in the front seat.”