I'm a few days late to the party, so Steve Benen and John Cole and Adam Serwer have already given a solid thrashing to the complaints by RedState's Erick Erickson about the Washington Post hiring TPM's Greg Sargent.

One thing worth adding: in addition to his excellent work at TPM, and on his Horse's Mouth blog for the American Prospect before that, Sargent has written for the New York Observer, New York magazine, Newsday, the Washington Monthly, Mother Jones, and probably a few other news outlets I'm missing. He has demonstrated both an understanding of many of the ways political reporting has failed its consumers, and a willingness to write about it -- a rare combination among professional journalists, as Bob Somerby frequently points out.

Point being: Erickson's whining aside, Sargent is more likely to raise standards at the Washington Post than lower them. And that would be true even if the Post weren't the home of Dana Milbank and Howard Kurtz.