Trial balloons from the tank

You knew the Las Vegas Sun would swing into full attack mode after Sen. Harry Reid's outrageous comment about wanting the state's largest newspaper out of business.

It started this afternoon, when the obedient and largely irrelevant Jon Ralston tried to characterize the whole deal as just a case of a little Reid joke mistaken for a threat by the big, bad Review-Journal. You can bet that this goofy theme will be followed up by a full barrage of pro-Reid "news" and "analysis" in the Sunday Sun.

Ralston works himself into a knot to make his case. At one point casting Reid's comment as a joke (our guy was there and Jon wasn't) and then pointing out that he has "long been the foremost proponent of the leitmotif of Reid as a modern-day Machiavelli."

I'd be tempted to ask "which is it, Jon?" but that might imply anyone cares. Ralston is way behind and way off on this story. Not unlike he was way behind and way off when he said there was nothing to see in the Jim Gibbons/Chrissy Mazzeo parking lot deal.

Which reminds me, is the same guy pulling Jon's trial balloon strings now ... as then?