Do you ever wonder if Democrats might want to ask Harry Reid to stop defending federal spending, at least where cameras can catch his arguments? Last week, Reid tried salvaging money for the National Endowment for the Humanities by pointing out the danger from “mean-spirited” Republican spending reductions to, er, cowboy poetry. Yesterday, Reid teams up with Republican Lisa Murkowski to defend federal spending on NPR.  Why, without that, Reid might never have known the true origins of dog-sled races in Alaska!  Greg Hengler brings us the video:

That’s no more ridiculous than Murkowski’s insistence that federal money go to NPR to keep up the “mukluk telegraph.”  Even if we take Murkowski’s word that NPR allows hunters to communicate that they returned to camp safely and other nonsense in 2011 (I must be missing those NPR broadcasts), do we need to transfer wealth from Minnesota, Florida, and California to fund those efforts?  If Alaska has communications issues — which I doubt, given the prevalence of those newfangled telephone thingies and such — let Alaskans take care of the issue themselves.

NPR’s had a bad enough month as it is.  I’m sure they won’t appreciate the dog of an argument Reid offers here for continuing their federal subsidies.