On Sunday, the Washington Post printed up a staggeringly complex graphic blaring out the corporate campaign contributions — per sector — to the House and Senate chairmanships, from the outgoing to the incoming people, etc. (Karen Yourish and Laura Stanton, “Congress Changes Hands — or Does It?” 7 January 2007, B2) The rhetorical question: “… is the 110th [Congress] really all that different from the 109th?” (No.)

According to my ’rithmetic, just taking the difference between the figures of the old and new in aggregate, out of the total contributions from each place (the Post uses data from the Center for Responsive Politics), you get: two percent less piggy-backing in the House and three-tenths of one percent less in the Senate (where you have the biggest offenders, notably Joe Lieberman and Joe Biden).

Oh, how politics is such a horrid game.