The offending paragraph allows the chairmen of the House or Senate Appropriation committees or subcommittees, or any of their appointed minions, to walk into any IRS facility and look at the tax returns of any American, anytime, no questions asked.

In any other place or time, the peasants would be reaching for the torches and pitchforks right about now. But in this new golden age of Republican supremacy, it could be only one thing: an innocent misunderstanding.

"It wasn't me! It wasn't me!"

WASHINGTON--Sen. Ted Stevens on Monday showed reporters a handwritten legislative proposal from an IRS employee that slipped into and nearly stopped the massive appropriations bill passed by Congress this weekend.

Stevens said the note proves that neither he nor any other Republican had crafted the potentially privacy-invading language.

The language, which could allow certain congressional employees to look at tax returns, created a furor on the Senate floor Saturday when discovered. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called it an "abuse of power."

Congress had been meeting all week as members of the Senate and House Appropriations committees merged eight spending bills into a single omnibus bill that runs more than 1,000 pages. Stevens is chairman of the Senate committee.

You may remember that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was calling the provision the "Istook amendment" up until yesterday. But Rep. Ernest Istook of Oklahoma is running around like Kevin McCarthy in his pajamas, shouting to anyone who will listen that it wasn't him, he didn't write the amendment, he didn't know how it got in there. So now Frist has backed off his previous statements. He now officially has no idea how the legislation got into the omnibus bill.

In fact, nobody does. Another profile in courage.