“Media critic” at the Washington Post Howard Kurtz informs his readers today that Ken Mehlman’s gayitude was an open secret. Another media critic might actually, you know, criticize the media over such an open secret well-known to everyone who produces media but no one who consumes it, but not Kurtz. Speaking of Open Secrets, though, Ken has a few others of interest as well: donations to anti-gay politicians.

Thursday, August 19th, 2010. Eggs recalled across the country, Palin defends Dr. Laura, Roy Blunt’s Ground Zero and troops pull out of Iraq.

Missouri voters passed Proposition C, seeking to exempt Missourians from the individual mandate of the health insurance reform recently passed, and also the employer mandate. But if Missouri wants to nullify a federal law — what a quaint, pre-civil war notion — they’re going to have to defend it in court.

Fortunately, Missouri has plenty of money in the state coffers to waste it on a frivolous lawsuit.

Or, you know, not.

Today, Representative Ed Markey pushed this story back to the forefront with a Huffington Post piece. After setting the record straight on Romney’s falsehood and explaining the urgency of clean energy legislation, Markey finishes strong:

So the next time you hear Mitt Romney or other opponents of clean energy and climate legislation railing about the costs of action, you should multiply your suspicion by whatever number they are attempting to sell. Odds are, it is far from even-handed.

While this is a solid piece, and Representative Markey makes his case well, he barely mentions the other Republican politicians who have repeated this lie. I understand the value of pegging this on a potential 2012 Presidential candidate, but there are over a dozen current elected officials in the Republican party who have repeated this lie as well.

Since I last updated the count a few weeks ago, eight additional Republican politicians and party organizations have repeated the lie, bringing the total to 20.

Following up in a more journalistic manner to my “stone-cold racist” SLN post about Congressman Roy Blunt, Rachel Maddow asks at the end of his joke, “So, who’s the monkey in Washington in this story?”

I mentioned last week that both CBS and Politico were forced to issue corrections on pieces they published citing inflated cost-estimates of a version of climate legislation that was never considered by Congress.

Despite immediate and forceful pushback from the Treasury Department, the Congressional Budget Office and environmental groups, solid reporting by the Wonk Room and the Washington Post, and thorough debunkings by Media Matters and Politifact, several leading GOP elected officials have begun citing the highly misleading figure.