Here's the latest buzz: Maryland AG Doug Gansler could be in line for a plumb job in Barack Obama's justice department. Gansler was one of three AGs to endorse the president-elect during the primary, he's the national chairman of the Democratic AGs association and, as a bonus, he's Jewish, a key Democratic constituency, parts of which were slow to warm to Obama. And the MoCo Democrat knows Washington (he was a federal prosecutor there before becoming the Montgomery County State's Attorney, and his father was an under-secretary of defense).

That said, it would probably take a pretty good job to pry him away from state-wide elected office; he's seen as a likely candidate for governor when Martin O'Malley is done, and he seems to have settled into his current job smoothly.

But if he did go to Washington, the dominoes could get interesting. The governor gets to appoint an attorney general to fill the vacancy, and there are a few intriguing options. O'Malley could go with Tom Perez, his labor secretary who ran for the office before a court decision found him ineligible at the time. (He hadn't been admitted to the bar in Maryland for long enough, but he should have met the qualifications by now.) But Perez, who worked for the Clinton administration in various capacities, could have a ticket to Washington of his own. There are other good possibilities out there -- PG State's Attorney Glenn Ivey comes to mind -- but the early bets seem to favor term-limited Baltimore County Exec. Jim Smith.