A more obvious and lengthy process of getting the story straight I have never seen.

"Voter Fraud" my sweet Aunt Fanny. After Florida 2000, too. Chutzpah!

Finally, "somebody" said it. Kudos to Greg Gordon and David Goldstein:

In recent weeks, McClatchy Newspapers has recounted this broad effort to use the power of the Justice Department to affect the outcome of the 2006 election. McClatchy found that, as U.S. attorney, Schlozman brought voter-fraud indictments days before the election against four people who were registering voters for a liberal group in Kansas City. The hotly contested election resulted in Missouri Republican Sen. Jim Talent's defeat, handing control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats.

That's the story. Not that we expect the cocktail wienie-munching courtiers at Pravda on the Potomac and Izvestia on the Hudson to cover it, of course.

By damn, ya write the old gal off time after time, and then she rares up her head, casts off her gray whore's costume and strides forth in a blaze of glory. New York Times lead editorial this morning:

In its fumbling attempts to explain the purge of United States attorneys, the Bush administration has argued that the fired prosecutors were not aggressive enough about addressing voter fraud. It is a phony argument; there is no evidence that any of them ignored real instances of voter fraud. But more than that, it is a window on what may be a major reason for some of the firings.

In partisan Republican circles, the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people. By resisting pressure to crack down on “fraud,” the fired United States attorneys actually appear to have been standing up for the integrity of the election system.

If I didn't know better I'd think they'd been reading here.