I agreed to cover “Farce the Nation” this week solely because half the guests were Sen. Mitch McConnell, Bush fellator supremo and bandit of the Bluegrass, to see if there would be any mention of this story:

Fawn Lake is a golf-course community of 1,400 luxury condominiums, ranging from $700,000 to $1.4 million, whose website touts that “the land surrounding Fawn Lake is rich in Civil War history.” It is a project of NTS Development Company, headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, whose President and CEO is Brian Lavin, a campaign contributor to Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Majority Whip.

Two years earlier, in July 1999, NTS had destroyed 100 feet of Confederate earthworks. Despite the intervention of Sen. McConnell, NTS paid $60,000 in a settlement of a $96,000 assessment brought by the Park Service. For the more serious repeat violation in 2001, NPS asked for a considerably bigger fine.

This time around, however, Sen. McConnell had an inside ally, NPS Deputy Director Don Murphy, who lives in Fawn Lake and is a member of its homeowner’s association.

To my utter astonishment the story was not mentioned at all. As nothing else McConnell said can be of any interest until this besmirchment of his honor is resolved (I suggest pistols at dawn with Zell Miller) I decline to cover his babblings of this morning, except to gently suggest to him that continuing to screech “If Democrats win they’ll wave the white flag on terrorism” is so stupid even Republican voters are figuring out its horseshit. Retire the flag, Mitch.

Chuck Schumer, usually a wandering waffler, was unusually on track today. Mr. Talking Points tried to bang on the broken drum of “If the Democrats win they’ll start censuring and impeaching and wouldn’t that be awful.”

Schumer just waved it off, ignored it completely, and pounded on a six-point Democratic agenda on shit like fixing Medicare Part D, restoring tax deductability of college tuition (which I didn’t realize the Republicans had just raped out last week) and four other items I forget but which he got to list in their entirety, which wouldn’t have happened just a few weeks ago.

And as for the details of McConnell’s squeeze ’n’ sleaze play with NPS officials and the destruction of irreplaceable historic artifacts, the full story can be found athere. Disclosure: yes that is a magazine with which I am connected. However the copy itself is simply the press release from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a group to which we should pay more attention because they do damn good work and are in a unique position to report from the inside.

Nobody but Common Dreams picked this story up, and not even the “Civil War community” seems to want to touch it. You know, I just want you to think back about, oh, six years, and imagine what a horrid stink this would have made back then. What does it say about the degree to which we have been numbed by scandals so vastly more hideous that this one seems to shrink to insignificance?

Dammit. If you know anybody in Kentucky though, particularly one in McConnell’s home turf of Louisville, pass this one along as loudly and as often as you can. He was particularly smug about the fact that although Louisville is “Democrat leaning,” it has had a Republican House representative for the last 12 years.

Correct that oversight, wouldja?

McConnell trivia note: He has had relations, shall we say, with Cabinet-level officials before. Elaine Chou, Secretary of Labor, is his wife.