And you thought “The dog ate my homework” was a lame excuse? Try this one, from the lips of CBS’s Bob Schieffer, who was asked yesterday by CNN’s Howard Kurtz why Schieffer didn’t ask Attorney General Eric Holder about the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation scandal the previous Sunday on his own show “Face the Nation.”

Schieffer’s response—I kid you not—was “I was on vacation that week. This happened — apparently, it got very little publicity. And, you know, I just didn’t know about it.”

Fair enough. It’s not as though Schieffer works for a major news-gathering organization like CBS that has hundreds of staffers whose sole job is to make sure that the news doesn’t slip through the cracks. Oh, wait. He does work for CBS. As to his fatuous claim that the story “got very little publicity,” I assume that Schieffer’s staff missed the exchange of volleys between the NAACP and the Tea Party, which did get some notice in the mainstream media (you’ll never guess how it was played up) and always referenced the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case.

Lest you think this is a Monday prank, here is a link to the video exchange between Kurtz and Schieffer.