Laura's got a searing takedown of Time magazine's 10 Best Senators list:
Kyl's qualifications are that he's a wily hardass out to exploit a national tragedy in order to manipulate public opinion on the estate tax, thumb his nose at Bush from the right, and hide his agenda behind his "centrist" colleagues. What kind of value system admires both that and Levin's work embarrassing corporate villains and agitating against the dangers of war in Iraq, or Ted Kennedy's "serial battles on behalf of the working class"?
Right-o. There's no discernible metric at work, not number of bills passed or dollars of pork obtained or devotion to workers demonstrated. You got, instead, a stew of random senators, all media-friendly, most wildly opposed to each other ideologically. Time appears to believe you can separate out the "worth" of a senator from his/her beliefs, efficacy, and orientation. That's nonsensical, at least unless you're a glossy newsweekly that covers politics the way Soap Opera Weekly reports on Days of our Lives.
