After some allegedly distraught soul searching and drama about the relevance of newspapers endorsing presidential candidates, the Knoxville News Sentinel is fine with endorsing the Republican status quo for Congress.

Yesterday they called time out on all the painful introspection and emerged from the bunker to endorse Lamar Alexander for Senate.

(Curiously, the editorial isn't listed on their editorial index page, it doesn't turn up in a site search, nor does it show up in a Google web or news search. Thankfully they remembered to forward it to Lamar Alexander so he could put it on his campaign website.)

Today they endorsed the GOP trifecta of Phil Roe (TN-1) Jimmy Duncan (TN-2), and Zach Wamp (TN-3) for Congress.

They say they are pleased to endorse Duncan for a "fresh term." Seriously? Fresh? That guy is the poster boy for term limits. There's nothing fresh about his office, which must be getting quite moldy by now. They cite his status as the ranking Republican on the Transportation and Infrastructure highways subcommittee. Which is one reason Tennessee is first in roads and last in schools.

In the First District they endorse Roe, a guy who lost in the previous Republican primary to a troglodyte who turned out to be so bad that Roe was able to narrowly beat the sitting GOP Congressman in the primary this time. His opponent in the general, Rob Russell, is exactly the kind of Representative the framers of the Constitution had in mind, and East Tennessee should send this fresh face to Congress for some checks and balances against entrenched GOP special interest politics.

They also endorsed Zach Wamp in the Third District because, well, he's a Republican. What else do you need to know?

To show they are fair and balanced, they went out on a limb and endorsed Democrat Lincoln Davis in the Fourth District. They're really pushing the progressive envelope with their endorsement of a wildly popular alpha male Blue Dog from a huge, mostly rural district -- a Democratic candidate who wins every time running on the Republican "God, Guns, and Gays" platform and whose no-name opponent doesn't even live in the district. Edgy! If the KNS is going to throw Democrats a bone, it should at least have a little red meat on it.

(That said, we like Lincoln Davis because when the chips are down he has been known to vote progressive on issues that matter, and he helps Tennessee maintain a Democratic majority in our House delegation thus avoiding total Red State embarrassment, even if some of them are DINOs.)

So what does this tell us about the Sentinel's reluctance to endorse a presidential candidate? One might conclude that Jimmy Haslam and the KNOXGOB prayer meeting club have instructed them to endorse McCain/Palin, but it would be too embarrassing and they don't want to destroy what little "good government" credibility they have managed to cobble together over the past few months.

It's unusual business as usual at the KNS, where keeping your job is job one.