Former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle (picture at right is part of a Getty Images pic at a related New York Times story) has just upped the ante in Washington's tax-avoiding/evading game of "Can you top this?"

Whereas recently confirmed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner "only" $40,000 in back taxes and interest, principally relating to unpaid Social Security and Medicare taxes (with a dash of retirement-plan penalty and illegally deducted overnight summer camp expenses included in the mix), the man who Rush Limbaugh used to call "Puff" Daschle during his Senate days has upped to ante to six figures.

Jake Tapper at ABC's Political Punch appears to be the one breaking the story (HT NRO's The Corner):

Bumps in the Road: Obama's HHS Secretary Nominee Faces Tax Questions Over Car and Driver

In response to the Sunday evening revelations concerning the socialist, wealth redistribution views expressed by Barack Obama in 2001, the Obama campaign issued a statement blaming "the all too common alliance of Fox News, the Drudge Report and John McCain."

This didn't sit very well with Fox News's Megyn Kelly who on Monday invited Obama's national press secretary Bill Burton on "America's Election Headquarters" to defend these allegations (h/t Johnny Dollar).

What followed was quite a barnburner (video embedded below the fold):

How over-the-top was Chris Matthews in his vituperation against Sarah Palin and McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer this evening? So much so that:

• Matthews twice berated an Obama representative for being insufficiently aggressive in going after Palin;
• Brian Williams, in the subsequent segment, chided Matthews on his emotionalism.

The Hardball host was infuriated by Palin's description, in answer to a question from a third-grader, of the role of the vice-president. He also harped on the RNC's spending on Palin's wardrobe.

View video here.

It was more like 10 AM than 3 AM. Somewhere, a phone was ringing, to announce the news that John McCain had selected Sarah Palin as his running mate. And the immediate response of Barack Obama's operation was intemperate and inappropriate. Obama found himself apologizing, calling the reaction "hair trigger." He and Biden subsequently made the more gracious kind of comment that should have been offered in the first place. Senators get to "revise and extend" their remarks when they've said something dumb on the floor. That's not always the case for presidents. A "hair trigger" reaction to a real crisis could have disastrous consequences.

Said Obama spokesman Bill Burton snidely when the news broke:

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies -- that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same

Compare and contrast with the gracious, statesmanlike ad McCain aired on the day of Obama's acceptance speech. Obama eventually realized that his campaign's intemperate reaction was out of line. According to the AP, Obama "blamed the mixed messages about McCain's choice, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, on campaign aides with a "hair trigger."