If the Pentagon Post's David Broder fancies himself as the academic "Dean" of the Washington Press Corpse, Dana Milbank fancies himself as the class clown.

But Milbank is a bitter, angry clown who is obsessed with his hatred of the progressive base of the Democratic Party, and he especially likes to take it out on Dennis Kucinich.

Why? Because up-from-the-streets Kucinich has the extraordinary guts to speak the truth about U.S. imperialism from the heart of its capital city, while Yale-educated Milbank is a paycheck whore for the Pentagon and the neocons who run it, and he is terrified by Kucinich's threat to his paycheck.

But Milbank reached a new low on Keith Olbermann's show on Thursday when he was asked about Republicans once again defrauding America by pretending to turn against the war while giving it yet another "Friedman Unit."

Olbermann: Our friend Craig Crawford wrote today the same Republicans who said in January there had to be success by summer or else are now saying there has to be success by September or else. Obviously Craig wrote that before we learned about the gang of 11, but is he to some degree right when he suggests Republicans are using the equivalent of Muhammad Ali's old rope-a-dope?

Milbank: He's absolutely correct that things have slipped back but you have sort of an equal and opposite reaction going on on the Democratic side where they're very deeply split, and you have the anti-war caucus, sort of the Dennis Kuciniches, are getting very much alienated from the mainstream of the party there as well. So you have the schedule being pushed back to September on one side but you have anti-war Democrats being neutralized a bit as well.

If you look at the screen while Milbank is talking, it says "live" - so it was after 8 pm. But over two hours earlier, at 5:39 pm, the House voted on the McGovern Amendment, by far the strongest bill to end the Iraq War to be given an "upper-down" vote.

And what was the result? The "Dennis Kuciniches" numbered 169 - including Speaker Pelosi, Majority Whip Jim Clyburn and every committee chair - while the "mainstream of the [Democratic] party" numbered 59.

So either Milbank can't count past his fingers and toes, or he's a bald-faced liar.

Either way, Milbank owes "the Dennis Kuciniches" - and Dennis Kucinich himself - a correction, an apology, and a firm promise to stop lying (and smirking) about all of us. Email milbankd@washpost.com