Mark Tapscott over at the Washington Examiner did a bit of fact-checking on Harry Reid -- something that most of the media has failed to do since the Democrats took control of Congress in January.

Feigning pained amazement as only supercillious Washington politicians can, Reid told the assembled journalists a couple of days ago that he just couldn't understand why the GOP was being so difficult about the 60-vote requirement because "the vast majority of legislation that is passed here is by simple majority."

I doubt seriously that there is another individual in or around the Senate who is more familiar than Reid with how flat out wrong is his statement. Why? Because it was largely as a result of his leadership as Senate Minority Leader in the previous Congress that a 60-vote requirement became the defacto requirement to pass significant legislation.

Tapscott went and crunched the numbers for the 2004-2005 Senate session and found that when Reid was minority leader only one measure (out of 78 roll call votes) was allowed to pass with a simple majority.