The word “desperate” is in desperate overuse this month, but it might describe reporters who respond to the federal probe of Sen. Bob Menendez with bizarre gangster analogies for Tom Kean Jr. in New Jersey. Last month, Katie Couric, compared the Kean family to The Sopranos. Today, David Segal of the Washington Post – often covering Britney Spears as a music writer — says Kean ”looks like a Mountie and fights like a Crip.”

(For all of you who remember last year’s liberal-media pre-execution solicitude for Crips co-founder Tookie Williams, the Crips are apparently a political negative again now.)