I don't where you go the notion that I apparently agree that Reid lied on the floor of Congress or anywhere else. I don't know what you are referring to. Even if he did it's standard practise. The UK is the only place I know of that resignation was expected for lying to the House---although not so much lately. What you say in Congress or Parliament is usually privileged anyway.

For all my years in press galleries and press clubs, including Washington's, I never heard reporters and columnists arguing one side---party, if you like---was more moral and ethical or progressive than the other. Smarter in making policy stick or introduced, charismatic to bewilderment, but never that one or the other was more ethical or decorous at slurping in the trough.

A woman magazine writer and television news documentary maker explained it this way while we covering the India-Pakistan war in the early 70s: It's just like splitting a block of wood. One side is the same as the other. Notions of a brave new world being expressed here are as silly as those anticipations of a Camelot with Kennedy.