It's always nice to start out the week on a bipartisan note, so I was intrigued by the e-mail press release sent out this morning by Pat Toomey, the staunch conservative who currently has the 2010 Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary field to himself.

The subject line reads, "Toomey Commends Reps. Altmire, Carney, Holden, and Dahlkemper on Cap-and-Trade Vote." Those named are Democrats! Specifically, the four Pennsylvania House Democrats who joined 40 other members of their party Friday in voting against a sweeping bill that would cap industrial emissions link to global warming and mandate increased use of alternative energy sources, among other provisions.

The measure -- described by most Democrats as necessary to prevent environmental catastrophe and put the nation on the road to energy independence, and portrayed by most Republicans as a massive "energy tax" -- squeaked through by a 219-212 vote.

After more than 230 years of nationhood, you would think that our politics would have run out of new wrinkles. But listening to Republicans and other critics outraged over Arlen Specter's jump to the Democratic Party, you might conclude that the Pennsylvania senator just invented the idea of party-switching in the service of self-advancement.

Of course, that's not true. Not by a long shot.

One of the most unintentionally funny reactions to Specter's political bombshell came in a fundraising e-mail sent out last week by the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP's campaign arm. The pitch was aimed at raising money to elect more House Republicans to counteract a Democratic-dominated Senate (a missive that also underscored the fact that there is hardly any event, whether good or bad for a party, that cannot be parlayed into a fundraising opportunity).