Jefferson (D-Icebox) is rather embarrassing (particularly in that he did survive re-election), but to be fair he hasn't been convicted yet. Pelosi and the Dems should expel him as soon as he inevitably is.
Well, this wasn't a recount, it was a count of absentee and early votes. Given the amount Republican candidates overperformed on Election Day in Alaska (probably Democrats stayed home with the election decided and Begich with a strong polling lead) and the better Democratic Early Voting turnout this year, the switch isn't too surprising.
The Franken/Coleman race hasn't been recounted, and corrections of the vote have gone both ways (it went slightly back towards Coleman recently).
And recounts usually go slightly Democratic because they:
1) Are hand counts, and therefore run into fewer undervotes and overvotes than scan machines; undervotes and overvotes are more common among less affluent, Democratic voters.
2) Later counts (recounts or otherwise) are the first to deal with provisional ballots, which are more common among less affluent voters, and also first time voters (which are also heavily democratic this year).
One thing you're missing is that the news media is largely event-driven. "Joe the Plumber" (and yes, the media "investigation" was idiotic) has been doing things - appearing at rallies, chasing the media, negotiating a recording contract, etc. Ayers are Wright aren't doing anything - Ayers is continuing at his job, and Wright hasn't talked to the press since I think late April. In that sort of situation, of course Wurzelbacher will get more coverage.
What, exactly, is new to say about Ayers and Wright? News media can report "Joe the Plumber attends campaign rally for McCain". They can't report "William Ayers goes to work again today" or "Jeremiah Wright walked around his house".
(And wasn't it ABC - that evil "mainstream media" - that turned up the "God Damn America" tape?)
As for the news media in general - Obama got a higher percentage of negative coverage than McCain over the summer IIRC, although he did get more coverage. McCain's certainly got more negatives recently, although given that his campaign is leaking like a sieve, he went 100% negative (at least for a while), and his running mate managed to beat Joe Biden in the say-something-dumb contest, completely even coverage was never going to happen.
Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable, and three parts which are still under development.
