I think Gavin should de-hitch his wagon from Mike Hearn after hearing how Mike proposed centralized checkpointing. The blacklisting thing was his one free pass at a really horrible idea. Now it just looks like he doesn't get what Bitcoin is really about.

I can see why Gavin would utilize XT as an end-run around the political gridlock in core, and I also see that Mike Hearn has a unique perspective and background that is useful, but he should not be a core committer in my opinion. Gavin is the only person qualified to (provisionally) lead the project as far as I can see now, but I think "palling around with Mike Hearn" will be viewed with suspicion, especially if it's unnecessary. Why not just just add in the patch to Core and fork off if necessary?