In an even sleazier replay of last year's revelation that taxpayer money was going to pay for TV ads touting the Bush Medicare Horror, USA Today reports that "the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the [No Child Left Behind Act] on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same." When I heard this on the radio this morning, I assumed I was hearing that the Republican Party had sleazily done this and that we were talking about a scandal in journalistic ethics, but now that I've had my coffee it's clear that the United States government has done this with your tax dollars -- a bizarre bit of corruption. Andrew Rotherham has more more. This seems like a good time to mention my frustration at liberals' continued inability to articulate clearly to the American people just what an ethical void the contemporary Republican Party has become.

--Matthew Yglesias