It's ethanol-pander time!

David Roberts has an entertaining rant about Fred Thompson's particularly dubious argument in favor of corn ethanol subsidies.

Remember that episode of The West Wing where Santos lets Josh convince him to pander to the Iowa ethanol people and Vinick says what he really thinks and then the two campaigns happen to meet in a hotel restaurant or whatever and chat w/ each other and Santos is ashamed that he wasn't as bold and honest and full-of-integrity as Vinick and everyone watching says "Alan Alda's so great--remember M*A*S*H, the show not the movie?--and this show really treats conservatives with respect, even though it's fairly liberal" and the ratings briefly started to recover before continuing to plummet as they had been for two or three seasons?

That was a good one.