Little more needs to be said than this:

There's never exactly a convenient time to have one's house raided by federal agents. But for Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) the impolitic timing Tuesday was exquisite: One day after the feds rummaged through his property on a corruption probe, he threatened to try to kill an ethics reform package.

Oh, yeah, guess what? Trent Lott is planning on voting against cloture on this bill-- and the bill itself.

If Lott is opposing this, my guess is, it's a pretty good bill.

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In a blog that appears here, the WaPo's Ed O'Keefe reports in relation to the GOP YouTube debate:

Romney was particulary concerned that one of the user-submitted questions (on the environment) came from a snowman. But now Romney is in discussions with CNN about attending. Rudy Giuliani has expressed similar concerns, and has suggested he may also snub the debate.

O'Keefe is right in terms of his reporting on Romney. But, he seems to have completely screwed up in implying that Giuliani has a problem with taking questions from snowmen. In fact, as MSNBC reported on Friday-- via First Read, edited by Chuck Todd, who I consider to be a very in-the-know political insider--Giuliani said “scheduling issues” would likely keep him away; McCain called questions from a snowman “frankly inappropriate”; and Romney said “the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman.”

Got that? McCain didn't like the idea of taking questions from a snowman, and Romney thought it was demeaning to him as a candidate (oh dear, poor Mitt, being disgraced so horribly by an inanimate object). Giuliani just thought that the date of the debate was too close to the end of the fundraising quarter.

It's hard for me to imagine that the WaPo would have confused McCain and Giuliani. But maybe Mr. O'Keefe in writing his piece just assumed that the people objecting to the format of the debate would be the same two people who said they'd planned to skip it.

But, we all know what happens when you assume-- "u" make an "ass" out of "u" and "me."

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Something is up at the Washington Post this morning.

In addition to screwing up some reporting in relation to the YouTube debate, they're also running what I can only describe as one of the most asinine pieces in history, on the subject of Brown and Bush, which states this:

But it is Brown's association with Shrum that has provoked perhaps the most murmuring in British political circles. Shrum's background as a more traditional liberal, closely aligned with Ted Kennedy, has been taken as a sign that perhaps Brown is looking to depart from the "Third Way" politics that defined Clinton and Blair. And Shrum's notable lack of success at the presidential level has provoked grumbling among some Brits that Brown might have found just the strategist to help lead Labour back to the wilderness from which it came before Blair.

OK. Let me get this straight. The reason that people in Britain are worried that Gordon Brown might go back to Old Labour, genuinely leftist tradition, is because he's pals with Bob Shrum?

You mean that they might not have got the tip-off that Brown is going to veer hard left, quite quickly, now that Tony Blair is off the scene by virtue of:

- him having been ever so happy to adjust the thresholds applicable to different bands of taxation by reference to inflation, as opposed to increases in earnings (which has had the effect of increasing the amount of tax that people in the same relative financial position have had to pay, as earnings in the UK are increasing at a greater rate than inflation)?

- him having vastly expanded spending, following his initial two years as Chancellor, when he stuck to Tory fiscal plans?

- him having increased the quasi-equivalent of Social Security taxes to pay for vastly increased health spending?

- him having effectively increased taxes to a level of 4...

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