After former News International boss Rebekah Brooks was quizzed yesterday about her friendship with British prime minister David Cameron, the head of the Conservative Party addressed Parliament about his hiring of former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as communications director. (Coulson’s been arrested and implicated in the hacking scandal that eventually shuttered the paper.) While he maintained that he has “an old-fashioned view about innocence until proven guilty,” he did appear to distance himself from his former staffer. Regarding the hire, he said, “I regret and I am extremely sorry about the furor it has caused.” In hindsight, “I would not have offered him the job, and I expect that he wouldn’t have taken it,” he added. “But you don’t make decisions in hindsight, you make them in the present. You live and you learn and, believe you me, I have learned.”
