Today's New York Times features an odd little piece in the "Washington" section of the paper entitled, "G.O.P. Leader Solicits Money for Charity Tied to Convention." The article, by one Michael Slackman, is a mildly infuriating examination of leading Congressional Republicans' tactics for working around the McCain-Feingold limitations on soft-money acquisition for campaign purposes, and has some informative anecdotes about the various methodologies that House majority leader Tom Delay and Senate majority leader (Dr.) Bill Frist have begun using to effectively channel campaign funds through the guise of charitable causes. For children, of course.

Not a "must-read" at all, save for the closing three paragraphs, in which the author goes off on a completely irrelevant (but laugh-out-loud funny) tangent about the outdatedness of the Republicans' fundraising terminology:

Whatever its ultimate virtues, the DeLay fund-raising brochure displays a certain out-of-date understanding of the New York scene.

The brochure, in which the size of donations are named for more — or less — exclusive neighborhoods, starts at the Upper East Side as the top $500,000 tier and it ends with Greenwich Village for $10,000, perhaps suggesting Mr. DeLay's people have not surveyed the recent asking prices of town houses in the downtown neighborhood. He also placed Midtown (at $50,000) above SoHo (at $25,000).

"Midtown would be a lot less expensive than SoHo or the Village," said Tory Masters, of Intrepid New Yorker, a relocation firm in Manhattan. "I don't know what they are talking about."

Looks like this Michael Slackman fellow undoubtedly has a pretty severe case of liberal bias.