Each morning, Rick Klein, Chuck Todd, and Mike Allen summarize the headlines of the Times and the Post, kinda like we do, but with less swearing. This makes them very important media figures with a great deal of power, because they apparently make something called "conventional wisdom," which is another phrase for "what you read in Slate." "Conventional Wisdom" used to mean "the midpoint between a a David Broder and a David Ignatius column" but then The Note showed up and confused everyone with in jokes and satirical memos.

Rick Klein writes The Note now, and though we haven't really read it since he took over, we're sure he's much less annoying than Mark Halperin. Chuck Todd writes MSNBC's "First Read," which used to be the serious version of The Note, before The Note got serious too. Mike Allen writes The Politico Playbook, because he really feels like he needs to get his name out there a little more. Which one should you read?

"Allen, Klein, Todd -- it is like choosing between Harvard, Yale and Princeton. You really can't go wrong, but there nonetheless is an intense competition," said Chris Lehane, a political consultant who was Al Gore's campaign press secretary.

Or, as Wonkette Operative Holly Martins put it, "it actually seems more like choosing between Guantanamo, the Gulag and a converted Argentinian soccer stadium outfitted with hoses and electrodes...."

Halperin is at Time now and keeps threatening to do another Note thing there, because Time hates America. Pretty soon you might get four link-wraps and boring essays delivered to your Blackberry every morning, in case you desperately need to know whether Bill Richardson is second- or third-tier before you've even had any coffee.

Cream of the Crop Take Note [Politico]