National Journal's Ron Fournier has smuggled a new dispatch through the censors posted around the Capital Beltway, describing the latest gross abuse of power by Maximum Leader Barack Obama: freezing out the photographic representatives of the free press in favor of "flooding the public with state-run media."

John McCain, who had never been a Maverick until he returned to being a Maverick just a few weeks ago, has won Washington's juiciest prize: America's Most Conservative Senator. At least according to whatever algorithm National Journal uses to crap out such scores.

In your tripping Thursday media column: Bill Keller hollers back at the WSJ, Sharon Waxman's upset at every little thing, National Journal keeps hiring, and the Deseret News welcomes its future as a Mormon PR operation.

Newsweek senior editor and National Economics Correspondent Michael Hirsh is leaving to join National Journal.

The AP's opinionated Washington editor Ron Fournier will become editor-in-chief of the National Journal Group.

In your worrisome Wednesday media column: more details on the sudden (hot!) offering of Newsweek for sale, the guys at Atlantic Media hate the Politico, CNN and CBS huddle together for warmth, and cow journalism remains legal—for now.

National Journal has announced the development of 3121, a social network "exclusively for congressional members and staff." Because Congress is just too in touch with its constituents, and Capitol Hill workers rarely socialize together! Of course, this will fail.

Tom DeLay thinks he's a Marxist (if only mewls my subscription to New Left Review), McCain isn't sure he's not a socialist, and everyone else in America agrees Obama's a partisan liberal Democrat despite his sentimental post-partisan effluvium. The evidence for this assessment rests heavily on an elaborate ranking system devised by the magazine National Journal — sort of the Zagat for congressional voting (Barbara Boxer's "romantic" yea for this "controversial" resolution to "carve up" Iraq makes her a "fire-breathing elitist gorgon.") It named Obama the "Most Liberal Senator" in 2007. Except that its methodology is cracked, according to Josh Patashnik at the New Republic. For one thing, a decisive factor in the magazine's evaluation is how many votes a lawmaker has missed, and Obama's actually not been truant enough:

In our item yesterday about the New Republic's sad number of ads in its latest issue, we overlooked the fact that last month the magazine hired former National Journal Corporate Advertising Director Sarah Kuhn, and a couple weeks ago hired former National Journal Advertising Director Holly Maine to beef up ad pages. Neither has started yet, but they've got their work cut out for them when they do. We'll be watching!