If I was a news editor and wanted to punish a reporter, I can hardly think of a better way than assigning him to do an "in-depth interview" with Joe Biden. Biden is well-known for his interminable rambling and musing speeches which go far afield and around and around and around to get . . . nowhere. If the man has ever said anything sensible, much less memorable, in three decades on Capitol Hill, I'd appreciate a link to it. The best thing which can be said about Biden speeches is they are a sure cure for insomnia.

The victim in this case is the New York Observer's Jason Horowitz. I don't know what he did to deserve this fate, but he listened to Biden for hours, so we don't have to:

To hear him tell it, Hillary Clinton's position is calibrated, confusing and "a very bad idea." John Edwards doesn't know what he's talking about and is pushing a recipe for Armageddon in the Middle East. Barack Obama is offering charming but insubstantial fluff. And all of them are playing politics.

"Let me put it this way," Mr. Biden said. "You didn't hear any one of them get in this debate at all until they announced for President."

Read it all at the link above. It's pretty hard-hitting stuff, for Biden. Of course, he is being taken to the woodshed over this remark:

Mr. Biden is equally skeptical--albeit in a slightly more backhanded way--about Mr. Obama. "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," he said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Naturally, if a Republican had said this, the media would have been so outraged we might have had to postpone the Super Bowl in order to deal with the National Emergency which would have ensued. But Biden probably just misspoke, as Jonah Goldberg noted, and meant to say "...African American Presidential candidate" instead.

Misspeaking, after all, is what Biden does. It's who he is. He is so very much in love with the sound of his own voice that he can't shut up. It matters little - to him, or to his dozing-off audience - precisely WHAT he is saying, so long as the drone keeps going. It becomes like "white noise" in the background after a while, so you - mercifully - stop noticing it at all. Filling the air with so many words, separated by so few breaths and punctuated by so few thoughts, means frequent "misspeaking" is inevitable. In Biden's case, it is difficult to separate the chaff from the chaff anyway.

Still, even giving the benefit of the doubt - a far better solution, IMO, than asking the Senator for an explanation - we must note he is "disrespecting" former black candidates like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who he must consider "INarticulate" and "dirty" if Obama is the first "articulate" and "clean" black candidate. Which may well be the most intelligent thing he's ever said.

As Hugh Hewitt noted, the really scary part is "... when you realize that Biden is ten times smarter than Leahy and a hundred times brighter than Boxer ..."

Hat tip to Power Line for pointing to this story.

Lorie adds: The longer Joe Biden stays in the race, the more fun it is going to be. I would love to see Biden address Edwards in a debate the way he addressed him in this interview.