David Brooks opines in the Times today about John McCain's record with lobbyists. It is more fact than opinion and Brooks lays out the case for McCain, while those on the other side of the table wish to languish in the minutuia of airplane rides, letters and brushes with bottle blondes. Michael Kinsley writes a Dr. Seussian send-up of the almost-scandal while trying to keep the questions about McCain's integrity going. They also run that picture with the woman in question wearing that horrible gown....I half expect her to come crawling out of a coffin and skulking around Carfax Abbey in search of little Christian infants to drain.

I am nonplussed by the whole thing. Vicki Iseman seems like a smart enough girl who did what she needed to get, ahem, a-head. And when she was able to actually ...stand before the chairman of the commerce committee, she realized she'd done alright for herself. Now if she had been able to keep her mouth shut and stop bragging, none of this would have happened. If you're truly cool, you never brag about knowing the guy at the door. He just lets you in, and your friends are none the wiser. And if, for some reason, he doesn't, then you don't look like a fool.

Mr. Weaver might have used that analogy when he told her to take a hike. And on that note, where is she?

On to more important things.