Tim: Yes, HRC went after Republicans on the “culture of corruption,” and you’re right that this seer of cattle-futures trading has no business complaining about such things. But the line about the plantation takes her rhetoric to a new level of outrageousness. This is race-baiting, pure and simple. Republicans should fully expect to have their partisan opponents call them corrupt, especially in the era of Abramoff and the bridges to nowhere. But there should be no place in our public rhetoric for metaphors that make Denny Haster the massa, Tom DeLay an overseer, and the GOP whip — er, let’s not even go there.