Photo: Paul Demko, MnIndy

TPM’s Josh Marshall, sparked by a photo of Sen. Al Franken at Obama’s health care speech this week, digs up an anecdote from early in his career when he was covering President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial. The year was 1999 and Marshall found himself, somehow, sitting beside Franken in a Senate press room in the Capitol. Franken attended the hearing as a guest of an unnamed senator, but when he found himself at a press briefing with Sen. Phil Gramm, he piped up as if he was there as a journalist — and was ultimately kicked out.

Marshall recalls what he calls “maybe the funniest impeachment moment”:

Sen. Phil Gramm had just bounded into the room to do a little damage control about Sen. Robert Byrd’s proposed motion to dismiss … Franken raised his hand and asked Gramm whether he would have voted for the articles of impeachment if he were in the House, knowing what he now knew. Gramm seemed to have no clue who Franken was and proceeded to ignore the question and pipe on about justice being a process, not a verdict.

Franken and I chuckled about Gramm’s refusal to answer the question, and suddenly two spindly arms reached across me and grabbed Franken and started to pull him out of his chair. It was a woman from the Senate press office, barking, “You have to leave. You’re not press.” Franken pointed to me and said, “But I’m with someone from the press” as he was being rushed out of the room. But he stayed in character through the whole thing, laughing as he got tossed out. That really drove the woman crazy. She mustered up her schoolmarm best and scolded him: “It’s not funny!”

I rushed out of the press room after Franken got the boot. But by the time I got out into the hall, he’d already slipped back into the Senate gallery — where celebrities, but not the press, are allowed to roam free.

UPDATED  Ana Marie Cox heard “Arab terrorist.” Josh Marshall is reserving judgment now hears only “Arab.” And The Uptake offers a post-game interview with the speaker herself. But one way to judge whether the woman at the Oct. 10 rally in Lakeville, Minn., told Sen. John McCain that Sen. Barack Obama is (merely) “an Arab” or (alternatively) “an Arab terrorist” is to watch video clips from the event for the reactions of people in the crowd who could see her speaking.

See for yourself in videos after the jump, including The Uptake’s subtitled interview with McCain’s interlocutor (campaign volunteer Gayle Quinnell of Shakopee, Minn.) in which she cites the source of her Obama information: an inflammatory flyer circulating at McCain’s local HQ.

Zapruder-like analysis of videos shot from a couple angles reveals a short span of time after the word “Arab” is uttered in which no more is audible but no one yet reacts — a moment long enough for the word “terrorist” to have been mouthed, even if it wasn’t picked up on-mic. The world seems to wait a beat … and then at least two women in the audience visibly react to what they just heard (or saw) being said — whatever it was. (Then McCain offers his “No, he’s a decent man” non-sequiter, but that’s another story.)

The Uptake’s video clip from event and later interview:

The Uptake video, with subtitles (transcript here):

TPM’s clip montage:

TPM’s new clip showing speaker’s face:

Ana Marie Cox has updated her original post to say that after seeing the video (that shows the speaker from behind), she has concluded it doesn’t bear out what she thought she heard the speaker say at the scene: “Arab terrorist.” She notes, however, that the interview video suggests that “terrorist” is indeed on the lips of this McCain backer.