This one by Chip Bok is priceless: https://www.bokbluster.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/091224boklores.jpg

What does that say about the followers, pundits, and other political animals....are you all johns or pimps?

I think the two whores should have called the older two whores, "Nelsons".

The Senate Democrats' pandering to Nelson is certainly egregious for being so blatant and so publicized, and maybe also in its scale (I'd have to check the numbers the Medicare money projected to go to Nebraska). But otherwise isn't this local advantage-grabbing par for the course in Congress? I mean, how long have people in the rest of the country had their federal tax dollars siphoned away to West Virginia by Bobby Byrd? Or to Alaska by Ted Stevens? What about the legal plunder of the federal treasury by Ted Kennedy and the Massachusetts delegation for the bloated Big Dig?

It seems that in its publicity and relative simplicity, Harry Reid's shameless pandering (and Ben Nelson's shameless procuring) is, in its a teachable moment about an inherent problem (or hope) in American politics, one that the framers of the Constitution set up: how to arrive at the national good through a national government composed of local-based officials -- or how to combine in the same persons the duty of legislating (the broad view) and representing a constituency (the local or petty view).

Or maybe I'm not seeing this situation clearly. Maybe Nelson, Byrd, et al. are the expression of federalism and state-spiritedness (albeit in the age of big government). What political principle untangles this mess?