Karmic balance? The Dow Jones hits a new high. The 'Dowd' Jones hits a new low. In her pay-to-read column this morning, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times analogizes the relationship of Vice-President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to that of preacher Ted Haggard and a male prostitute.

Setting the titillating tone with her headline, "A Wartime Love Story", Dowd writes:

• At the heart of every administration, there is one relationship above all others that shapes history . . . W. is the hood ornament, but Cheney & Rummy are the chitty chitty bang bang engine of this administration.
• It’s a beautiful love story, really, even more touching than Ted Haggard, the evangelical preacher and Bush White House adviser, asking a male prostitute for crystal meth, or Borat putting a bag over the head of a squealing Pamela Anderson and carrying her off.
• Some of the president’s own family may object to the star-crossed match of Cheney & Rummy, but the two men are secure in each other’s embrace.
• They’ve had tons of fun, from unmanning Colin Powell . . to unnerving the small Chesapeake Bay town of St. Michaels, Md., where they have bought weekend estates near each other.

The carefully-timed outing of Mark Foley. The Haggard story, in which the accuser answered "you bet" in reply to Lester Holt's question on this morning's 'Today' as to whether his disclosure was politically motivated. And now this from Dowd.

You would normally expect a Maureen Dowd to condemn in others the very kind of smirking school-boy suggestiveness in which she engages today. But hey, the MSM has a Pelosi to make Speaker.

—Mark Finkelstein is a NewsBusters contributing editor and host of Right Angle. Contact him at mark@gunhill.net.