The New York Times has a Sunday piece ostensibly about Democratic plans to restore the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, but the piece serves as a good overall roadmap for Democratic oversight priorities. Oversight. Remember that?

Let me use this post to take care of a few bits of TPM housekeeping.

First, a couple months ago, I introduced TPM Reader DK and explained why, for the time being, he needed to remain anonymous. As I wrote then, DK was a lawyer at a law firm in the midwest. And frankly commenting on the politics of the day under his own name just wasn't compatible with the day job.

A few weeks ago, however, DK's professional situation has changed. And he and I are both glad he can start blogging here under his own name: David Kurtz. You'll see him now blogging with the new byline. And he'll probably say about more on this on his own.

Second, we kept our collective TPM nose to the grindstone pre-election. But we've got major expansion plans that, if all goes according to plan, we'll be rolling out over the next couple months. You've probably seen how TPM has evolved other the last year. So we'll be building on that. The proprietor in a case like this is supposed to say how he or she is really excited about all the new stuff coming. But, no, really, I'm really excited about the new stuff we have in store for you. So keep your eyes open for updates on that front.

Finally, I've got some family matters to attend to. You'll see my byline showing up on a fair number of posts here at TPM. But over the next two weeks there will likely be a few stretches of time when I'm just not available at all. So when I'm away the rest of the TPM team -- Paul, Justin, Greg, David et al. -- will fill the gap.

From the department of aggressive spin ...

Although some glitz has come off Mr Rove, Republicans have been more eager to blame botched campaigns and individual ethics scandals. “Bob Sherwood’s seat [in Pennsylvania] would have been overwhelmingly ours, if his mistress hadn’t whined about being throttled,” said Mr Norquist. Any lessons from the campaign? “Yes. The lesson should be, don’t throttle mistresses.”

I guess it would at least be a start.

What's next for Harold Ford?

The latest on the House races that still hang in the balance.

The Bush Bubble Bursts? Newsweek: W at 31%.

Kevin Drum has set about busting some of the exit poll myths that have already stuck themselves like barnacles to the midterm election results. Here's the CliffsNotes version:

Myth #1: It was the youth vote that pushed Democrats over the top.

Myth #2: Democrats won a third of the white evangelical vote.

Myth #3: Democrats won by running conservative candidates.

Myth #2 is the one that gets me. Kevin says he has no idea where that one came from, which at first struck me as odd because the one-third figure has been widely reported, including here at TPM, based on an AP story the evening of Election Day.

But look at the key paragraph in the AP piece:

Those early exit polls also showed that three in four voters said corruption was very important to their vote, and they tended to vote Democratic. In a sign of a dispirited GOP base, most white evangelicals said corruption was very important to their vote — and almost a third of them turned to the Democrats.

I, too, first read that as saying one-third of evangelicals voted Democratic. But what I think it's actually saying is that one-third of those evangelicals who said corruption was very important to their vote went for the Democrats.

Mystery solved? Kevin's entire post is here.

Back to business:

Federal investigators have resumed their inquiry into a rental deal between U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and a nonprofit agency, issuing new subpoenas in the days after he was elected to a full six-year term, according to a government source.

You get the sense from the GOP that in its analysis of the election results the congressional seats lost due to Republican ties to public corruption shouldn't really count. Sort of like losing the game not because you got beat but because the refs made a bad call.

I think most people would view bribery, influence peddling, and sexually predatory congressmen as substantive problems, not mere technicalities. Maybe that's just me.

For its part, the White House would like to portray the corruption issue as a congressional problem. In his press conference, the President said, "People want their Congress -- congressmen to be honest and ethical." (That comment came just after the point in the press conference where he acknowledged deliberately misleading reporters the week before when he said he intended to keep Don Rumsfeld on after the election.)

For his part, Karl Rove was surprised by the significance of corruption in the election outcome:

"The profile of corruption in the exit polls was bigger than I'd expected," Rove tells TIME. "Abramoff, lobbying, Foley and Haggard [the disgraced evangelical leader] added to the general distaste that people have for all things Washington, and it just reached critical mass."

One can forgive Rove his surprise. He was too close to the problem to see it for what it was. Funny how he describes it now like a detached observer of the passing scene, with the perspective of a political scientist. Let's take this apart, starting with Rove's old buddy Jack Abramoff.

By one account Rove arranged to meet Abramoff on DC street corners so as to avoid being detected by the White House visitors logs. Rove hired his former personal assistant, Susan Ralston, away from Abramoff, and just a month before the election she was forced to resign her White House position due to her contacts with Abramoff while at the White House. A congressional committee found evidence of 485 contacts between the White House and Abramoff and his lobbying team.

Foley, you may recall, was strong-armed by Rove into running for re-election, with Rove threatening to torpedo Foley's plans to start a lobbying practice after leaving Congress unless he ran again in 2006. (No evidence has emerged that Rove or the White House had any knowledge of Foley's page problem at that time.) Haggard, as is now widely known, was one of Rove's main contacts within the evangelical community, a regular participant in weekly conference calls with the White House political shop headed up by Rove.

And we've just begun to scratch the surface. There's Rove's involvement in the Plame scandal, and the RNC's involvement in the New Hampshire phone-jamming case. I could go on, but I think the point here is clear: Rove was and is the architect of a political machine that was probably corrupt from its inception and is certainly corrupt now.

The corruption manifests itself in everything from bribery (Duke Cunningham and Bob Ney) to influence-peddling (Abramoff) to the broader corruption of traditional conservative principles (budget earmarks and deficit spending).

That's not a lesson Republicans seem to be taking from this election.

For our older readers, from TPM Reader PS:

Was anyone besides me delighted to note that the last two Republican senators to concede were Burns and Allen?

Say goodnight, Gracie.

As an aside, when I was waiting tables in college, I once had the pleasure of serving George Burns a martini. Something I'll never forget.

Meanwhile, back in Pakistan:

Two months ago, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, triumphantly announced a peace pact with Islamic extremists in the North Waziristan tribal district near the Afghan border, saying he hoped it would become a model for curbing domestic Islamic militancy and cross-border insurgent attacks in Afghanistan.

Today that model lies in shreds. Northwestern Pakistan's fragile political peace has been shattered by two devastating attacks: a government missile strike that killed 82 people at an Islamic school in the Bajaur tribal district on Oct. 30, and a retaliatory suicide bombing Wednesday that killed 42 army recruits at a training camp in the Malakand tribal district.

. . .

"This is a disaster. We all recognize the gravity of the situation," said a senior military official in this northwestern provincial capital, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It's a nightmare to have an army being attacked on its own soil and by its own people." After the two incidents, he added, "the doors to peaceful negotiated settlements are closed. I am afraid we are on a war course in the tribal areas."

If you didn't see the Frontline documentary last month on the tribal areas and the internal tensions in Pakistan, you can watch it online.

A helpful reminder from TPM Reader MR:

Nice post . . . regarding Rove's . . . last minute PR maneuvering in Michigan, MD, & NJ (ie, your reminder about his near-disaster victory lap in the last days of election 2000). As it turned out you were right on the button, and one has to laugh out loud at the thought that the boy genius threw $$ down the toilet in those three states that could've been very helpful to repubs elsewhere.

Here's the post Josh did last week about Rove sending Bush to California instead of Florida on the last day of the 2000 campaign, a cocky move designed to project confidence that nearly cost Bush the presidency.

You do have to wonder whether Sens. Burns and Allen might have made up their narrow margins of defeat if some of the millions of dollars spent by the national GOP to "enlarge" the playing field for control of the Senate had instead been spent in Montana and Virginia, respectively.

Just goes to show that it's easy to be dubbed a genius so long as you win.

Yep.

For those readers who've written in asking us not to forget about the Republicans' vast robo calling operation in the lead up to the election -- don't worry, we haven't.

Take a look at this, for instance. On Election Day, there were seven very near misses for Democratic candidates in districts that had been bombarded by the harrassing calls. Were the calls the difference?

Our rundown on the GOP leadership races taking shape.

After the Democrats campaigned to end corruption in Washington, you'd think they would try to promote only squeaky-clean members to fill powerful posts, wouldn't you? Think again.

As Atrios points out here, Jon Tester is 'conservative' only if you a) judge political philosophy by indicators as profound as haircuts or b) if your mindset is ruled by cartoonish GOP strawmen. But both apply to most of the chatmeisters, so I guess he's a conservative.

I'm wondering how President Bush is digging all these 'Bush Turns to Pop's Advisors' headlines. We were just chatting here at TPM about what we think of the Gates' nomination. And there are definitely real questions about his record in the 1980s as well as whether his nomination represents a genuine policy change or a time-buying personnel reshuffle. Speaking for myself, it seems like an undeniable step forward simply to be dealing with someone whose past performance and current policy views suggests they are operating in the reality-based universe -- a clear departure from the last six years. It takes a moment of stepping back to take stock of just how clinical our foreign policy has been -- both in concept and execution -- for the first years of this young century.

Meet the new boss...

The Washington Times is reporting that Michael Steele has been asked to be the next Chair of the RNC. Yeah, this guy.

Update: Another reminder about Steele's fitness - the "scarlet letter" incident.