With the release of a new Rasmussen Reports survey showing the special Senate election in Massachusetts within 10 points, I am so glad I'm not Sen. Robert Menendez today.

Actually, come to think of it, I'm glad I'm not Robert Menendez every day -- but especially not today, or tomorrow, or for the next 14 days, because for the next 14 days, the New Jersey Democrat is the Most Important Democratic Senator for Those Who Want To See Obamacare Become Law, and that's just another way of saying he's The Guy Who'll Probably Get Blamed If Things Don't Break the Right Way.

And what would constitute things breaking the wrong way?

Losing the Jan. 19 special election for the Senate seat long held by the late Edward M. Kennedy, for starters.

While Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader John Boehner clearly haven't figured out yet how to work together, left-wing blogger Markos Moulitsas and NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions just as clearly have.

How else to explain Moulitsas' endorsement of Sessions' favored candidate for Congress in the special election in New York's 23rd Congressional District?

Yes, that's the district newly confirmed Secretary of the Army John McHugh just vacated, where the anointed Republican candidate -- New York Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava -- has been the subject of local and national conservative scorn.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney -- who was governor in 2004 when the Massachusetts Democrats who controlled the state legislature changed the law to remove the power to make an interim appointment to the U.S. Senate in the event of a vacancy -- has been conspicuously silent since the passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy.

I can understand why Romney would not want to do the right thing, the "right thing" being defined as announcing his own candidacy for the open seat.

It would be a risky move, more likely than not to end in defeat and embarrassment, and, therefore, a hindrance rather than a help to whatever plans he may have for himself and pursuit of the GOP presidential nomination in 2012.

Jack Bonner can't catch a break.

When last we left Bonner, he was getting ready to be roasted on a rotating spit before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, as the result of forged letters sent by a temporary employee of his firm to three Members of Congress.

Since then, three things have occurred, two of which conspire to make Bonner's future even rougher:

First, Bonner hired Steve Ross, a partner at Akin Gump who specializes in representing people who get hauled before Congressional committees doing investigations.

According to Ross's bio on the Akin Gump web site, prior to joining the firm he worked as General Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1983-93.