The AP's Nedra Pickler credulously reports the McCain campaign's claims to be outraged that Barack Obama used the expression “lipstick on a pig”:

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama told an audience Tuesday that GOP presidential nominee John McCain says he'll change Washington, but he's just like President Bush.

“You can put lipstick on a pig,” he said to an outbreak of laughter, shouts and raucous applause from his audience, clearly drawing a connection to Palin's joke. “It's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after eight years.”

McCain's campaign immediately organized a telephone conference call in response and called on Obama to apologize for calling Palin a pig.

But in her rush to type up the McCain campaign's attacks and bring them to her readers all but unfiltered, Pickler apparently didn't bother to check to see if John McCain himself has used the expression “lipstick on a pig.” It is, after all, a pretty common expression.

Sure enough, John McCain used the very same phrase just last year in talking about ... Hillary Clinton:

McCain criticized Democratic contenders for offering what he called costly universal health care proposals that require too much government regulation. While he said he had not studied Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's health-care plan, he said it was “eerily reminiscent” of the failed plan she offered as first lady in the early 1990s.

“I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig,” he said of her proposal.

Seems like something that ought to be in the AP article, doesn't it?