Time's annual list of the 100 “people who most affect our world” is out, and includes a few oddities in the “Leaders” category. Like Sarah Palin. Who, exactly, is Sarah Palin “leading”? Even a plurality of tea partiers doesn't think she'd be a good president.

Weirder still: Scott Brown.

What, exactly, makes Scott Brown influential? Quick, name something -- anything -- he's done since becoming a Senator. Or before, for that matter (No, a Cosmo spread decades ago doesn't count.) Brown is a freshman Senator who joined the Senate in the middle of a term, has less than six months of Senate experience under his belt, and is a member of one of the smallest Senate minorities in modern American history. It isn't a shot at Brown personally to recognize that he simply isn't -- can't be, really -- particularly influential.

So, apparently, we're supposed to believe Brown is influential simply because of the fact that he became a Senator, rather than because of anything he has done as Senator. And, indeed, that's what everybody said at the time, after all -- the media quickly announced that Brown's election marked the death of health care reform.

Then health care reform became the law of the land.

Still, Time pretends that Scott Brown is more influential than every elected Democratic politician other than Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. More influential than Mitch McConnell.

Please.