Marcy already took the meat cleaver to Allen and VandeHei, but I’m left pondering the corpse. It’s not just that they transcribed Cheney’s laughable-if-it-wasn’t-risable pronouncement that the Bush administration bears no responsibility for the deterioration of the Afghanistan war that Obama is staking his presidency on fixing. It’s that they throw in “… he replied without elaborating.” I can’t ever recall seeing journalists brag like that about being professionally negligent. How in the world could you allow Cheney to not elaborate? This is too-big-to-fail-ism.

Politico employs many fine journalists. Ben Smith. Laura Rozen. My old friend Michael Calderone. And yet it’s really hard to avoid sympathizing with whatever White House staffer wrote this memo.