Today we find ourselves not particularly trusting the Washington Post's reporting or editorializing, but loving its editorial cartoonist

We've already expressed doubt this morning about the independence of mind of the Washington Post's news judgment. Now it's the turn of the paper's editorial page, which wants to bully congressional Democrats into talking to His Imperial Majesty Tiny George Bush about Social Security:

THE BUSH administration has signaled that it wants to discuss Social Security reform with the incoming Democratic majority in Congress. This may sound quixotic: President Bush failed to secure reform when his own party controlled the legislature, so what hope does he have now? But the president's top economic advisers, including his Treasury secretary, his chief of staff and his budget director, appear ready to drop what Democrats call privatization--the diversion of payroll tax revenue into personal retirement accounts. Unless they want to define themselves as unbendingly partisan, the Democrats should accept the administration's invitation to discuss reform.

Let's pass over this business of "what Democrats call privatization." (This wasn't written by Karl Rove, was it? It is, after all, the Bush administration that always makes up names for its policies which distort or flatly contradict their actual intent. "Privatization," after all, is what most non-ideologues call the administration's scheme.) Now, I see no harm in Congress talking about anything--as long as it isn't being suckered into a propaganda ambush, which as far as I know is the only way this administration knows how to "negotiate."

But it's kind of astonishing that the Post editorial writer has the historically oblivious gall to assume, in defiance of the administration's entire record, that it is acting in good faith, while it's the Democrats who have something to prove. It makes you wonder if the editorialists ever look at their own brilliant editorial cartoonist. (See above.)