Mark Penn, psuedo-Svengali of the Clinton campaign, has stepped down because of the fallout over his hamfisted lobbying efforts on behalf of the Colombian government. The piece the Times has up right now is pretty small—no doubt a placeholder for a longer one to come later this evening or with tomorrow morning’s paper.

I’ve never heard anything good about Penn. The several people I know who’ve had encounters with him professionally found the experience to be extremely unpleasant, and it seems like most of the HRC campaign’s woes this cycle have come from his epic misreading of the national political landscape. But I doubt this flameout will keep him from feeding greedily at the DC slop trough for as long as he cares to—there’s no business like American politics for rewarding mediocrity and malfeasance with increased status and extra cash.

Josh Marshall is, as ever, the first big political blogger to pick this story up. He’s got a couple funny tidbits:

Note to self: Write separate post on the craziness of having Mark Penn both run message and polling when his polling is so legendary for cherry picking data to confirm his preferred political strategies and messages.

Note to self, two: Make effort to work in fact that Penn earlier tried to argue that he was never part of the Clinton campaign in the first place.

Not sure what he’s referring to with the second one, but it sounds like vintage Penn. I’m sure we’ll get to read more about this mess in the coming days.