Everyone's favorite friend-of-Deval and everyone's least favorite P.O.W. have been in a nasty fight over the proposed ethics legislation. Obama apparently had promised McCain he would support JM's ethics bill, only to change his mind and accept Senate Democrats request that he run point on their competing ethics bill.

Their fight was waged--as all vicious fights are--by mail.

McCain lead off by accusing Obama of "self-interested partisan posturing" (Snap!) and then doled out some condescension with, "I have been around long enough to appreciate that in politics, the public interest isn't always a priority for every one of us." (Double Snap!!)

Obama wasn't having that though, "The fact that you have now questioned my sincerity and my desire to put aside politics for the public interest is regrettable but does not in any way diminish my deep respect for you, nor my willingness to find a bipartisan solution to this problem." (What Now J-Mc! What Now!!)

Of course, hours after the news broke, they now claim to have made up. If anyone is good at pretending to be made up for political gain, though, it is McCain. (Campaigned for Bush despite hating every inch of him, and his whole being nice to Democrats act.)

More important than all this, though, are two of the smaller details of the story:

First, speculation is that Barack was told to take a step back from the bipartisan route because the Democrats use ethics issues against the GOP. Sounds good to me, it's about time we delayed making America better for a second to look long term.

Second, it's nice to see Barack is taking the lead on an issue, for a while there it looked like the DNC might be the peak of his career.