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You want to look away, but you just can't. Tim Graham, over at The Kiddie Corner:

Friday’s CBS Evening News didn’t utter a syllable about Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry opting out of the federal campaign finance matching fund system for the primaries, but devoted a full story to how Republicans Tom DeLay and Bill Frist, as Dan Rather put it, were “looking for loopholes to rake in donations” by subverting “the new campaign finance law designed to limit the power of special interests.” (It didn't matter much to Rather if these lobbyists ended up helping DeLay's work with abused and neglected kids or Frist's fight on global AIDS.) Reporter Bob Orr concluded by lecturing the conservatives even as the network ignored Kerry: “Even if the charity fund-raising activities don't violate the letter of the law, there's no doubt about what's being offered. For big contributions, high rollers can still buy access to the powerful. It's the same old political game with a slightly new wrinkle.”

Righto, Tim. Nice job of describing DeLay and Frist's new scams as though they weren't new organizations that have just been set up (or in Frist's case, haven't even been set up yet). And the comparing them to Kerry's entirely legal campaign decision! A stroke of brilliance!

I continue to be amazed that Bill Buckley lets this crap be published in a magazine he founded. There's a lot I don't agree with about Buckley, but he at least had some moral scruples. At this point, National Review is a house organ for the Republican Party, nothing more.