Las Vegas Review-Journal - Steve Sebelius Slash Politics

Remember when U.S. Sen. Harry Reid refused to let Roland Burris take his seat in the Senate? Well, those days are forgotten now that Reid is helping Burris with a fundraiser to retire debts incurred in a legal probe of his appointment by former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Politico sources slammed Sharron Angle's Senate campaign staff ("severely incompetent") and warned that if she doesn't hire new people, her nascent congressional bid may suffer the same fate as her U.S. Senate hopes.

Rep. Dina Titus gave out nearly $155,000 in bonuses to her congressional staff in the final quarter of 2010, after losing a tight re-election to Joe Heck, the Las Vegas Sun reports. Other departing members -- Republican and Democrat -- have handed out bonuses on the way out of

Plenty of Republicans want to replace Rep. Dean Heller, who is giving up his congressional seat in order to run for U.S. Senate. On the list: Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, former state Sen. Mark Amodei and -- maybe -- Sharron Angle.

Mike Huckabee is the most popular Republican, according to a Washington Post poll, with favorable ratings at 61 percent and unfavorables at 18 percent. He's followed by Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, although Palin has the highest unfavorables of any GOP candidate.

The Wall Street Journal says they're tension between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and one of his top deputies, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York.

Reno Gazette-Journal columnist Ray Hagar says John Ensign's announcement that he won't run again is a loss for Nevada. Left unsaid is precisely how this is so, inasmuch as Ensign was never known as a senatorial workhorse.

That's the question Politico's Ben Smith is raising after a conversation with a former adviser to would-be Senate candidate Sharron Angle. (That sound you hear in the background is Shelley Berkley writing Angle's first check...)

Michelle Rhee, the controversial education activist whom Gov. Brian Sandoval tapped to be one of his outside advisers on school reform, makes Newsweek's list of 150 women who shake the world.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid says a bill to cut $61 billion in spending is "probably one of the worst pieces of legislation that we've drafted in the history of this Congress," in a speech on the Senate floor.