Photo credit: Andy Roth

Sen. Ted Stevens (R.-Ala.) has admitted to holding back S.2590, legislation co-sponsored by his least-favorite senatorial colleague, Sen. Tom Coburn (R.-Okla.), which would connect the dots between congressmen and their spending projects back at home.

Here's the latest on the story, which is still developing...

It turns out the news has been out for a while (Coburn's people knew from day 1), it just took a while to hit the mainstream and wasn't confirmed until today.

Bloggers hopped on the story a few weeks ago, determined to dig up the secret holder. Yesterday, my colleague Amanda suggested Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R.-Tenn.) spill the secret before the rising disdain for secret holds got out of hand.

UPDATE -- 3:37 p.m.: The word on the street is that there may be a Democrat holding the bill as well...

Also, Cox news service has a report on Stevens' reason for holding the bill. Here's an excerpt:

Aaron Saunders, spokesperson for Stevens, said Coburn was informed two weeks ago that his boss had concerns about the bill. Namely, Stevens is concerned that the bill would create more bureaucracy. He wants to see a cost-benefit analysis.

Saunders said there was nothing secret about what Stevens did.

"Senator Stevens has always preferred to handle this at the staff level or member to member," Saunders said. "He doesn't like running to the blogosphere or the media."

"Our reticence in getting out there is that Stevens doesn’t want to be in the media attacking Coburn," Saunders said. "He has never addressed legislative concerns in the media. It is just not the way the senator has ever operated."

UPDATE -- 9:18 a.m. on 8/31/06: PorkBusters has released another version of the Ted Steven's image above:




UPDATE -- 11:49 a.m. on 8/31/06: The Sunlight Foundation responds to Stevens' concerns about the cost of producing and maintaining a database like the once proposed by the Coburn-Obama bill in "How Much To Build a Grants and Contracts Database?"