Well played, Missouri

You can argue back and forth about the legitimacy of their actual stances, but I just wanted to shed some light on what appeared to me to be votes that were slightly above-average in principle from Missouri's two senators.

Claire McCaskill has a much easier case to make. She was one of three Democratic senators who voted against Obama's spending bill, along with Evan Bayh and Russ Feingold. She stands out because she and Feingold were the only two Democratic senators not to insert any earmarks into the bill, and both Bayh and Feingold are up for re-election in 2010, while she is not.

Chris Bond - well, I'm doing my best for a Republican ... He's actually in favor of earmarks, but at least he still had the guts to vote for the bill.

This was all part of an article that's generally unrelated, about popular presidents who struggled with issues of unity in their own party.