Ah, Katherine

In these somber times, it's hard to even find solace in the theater of the absurd that is the Katherine Harris senatorial campaign.

The Herald has an almost comical story about the wicked boob going into a premature fit when she learned that crazy Joe Scarborough was being courted to run against her. (But in a world where Joe Scarborough is the sensible candidate, the rapture can't be far behind.)

Katherine Harris' floundering U.S. Senate campaign lost its high-level staff again this week and is groping for a message -- which doesn't surprise Republican insiders who trace the seeds of her trouble to the story of ``Joe's dead intern.''

This wasn't any old Joe.

It was Joe Scarborough, host of the prime-time MSNBC show Scarborough Country and a former Pensacola Republican congressman who was courted last summer by national Republicans to run against Harris. But before he could announce he wouldn't, Harris called major donors and suggested Scarborough would have to answer questions about the strange death of a former staff member in 2001, according to two former high-level Harris staff members, a GOP donor and Scarborough.

''That was the first clue that something wasn't right with Katherine Harris,'' Scarborough told The Miami Herald in a recent interview, noting that a medical examiner found his staff member's death was natural and not the result of foul play.