Any progressives who have felt bile rise in their throats during previous public struggles of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will likely get a kick out of this post on the conservative blog Red State, in which Eric Erickson proves quasi-eloquently that the right has as many problems with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as the left has with Reid.

But No. 4 on Erickson's list of complaints about McConnell is the most interesting: is the Republican leader really "not fighting Reid on throwing [Sen. Tom] Coburn off the Judicial [sic] Committee"?

There would be ample cause for Reid to try to punish Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who makes a habit of gumming up the Senate works to slow down what he deems excessive government spending. Coburn's quests to delay routine bills -- last year the number topped 100 -- tend to be lonely, but his efforts on the Judiciary Committee have made him a conservative darling.

So it would be a major story if, as The Hill reported last week, Reid tried to cut the number of seats on the judiciary panel in an effort to knock off Coburn. But that's not the case.

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Spoof or goof?

Sen. Jim DeMint, a very right-wing South Carolina Republican up for re-election in 2010, might want to hire some new people to do his campaign Web site -- the current one links to a YouTube of a homemade comedy sketch stereotyping gays.

The Palmetto Scoop discovered that DeMint's site has a link at the bottom to their Webmaster, a company called Under The Power Lines:

Clicking through on the company's link then takes the reader to a YouTube channel featuring three guys who do dirty comedy, with the current top entry about an effeminate gay man literally coming out of the closet:

Late Update: Well, that was quick. DeMint's campaign has hastily changed the link to the right one, another organization called Under The Power Lines that actually built their site.

Now this is interesting. Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) has attracted a primary challenge from former RNC member Buddy Witherspoon, who is running to Graham's right on illegal immigration. As it turns out — and despite Witherspoon's recent denials — he has been a proud member of a white supremacist organization, the Palmetto Scoop has uncovered.

Witherspoon recently said claims that he had been a member of the segregationist Council of Conservative Citizens were "totally absurd" and that he had only ever been to one meeting. But in 1999, he told the Washington Post that he was a member, and that "Everything to me is fine from what I see and hear." Furthermore, this was at the same time as he was a Republican National Committeeman in good standing.