"Dead Man Legislating": The Mitch McConnell Story.

A hostage photo, a mystery illness, and a governor who wants video. Fifteen days until the Senate seat becomes a constitutional crisis.

Kentucky’s governor picked up the phone. Twice. And twice, a voice on the other end informed him that Mitch McConnell, the most surgically disciplined operator the Senate has produced in a generation, was dead.

Not gossip from the Hart Building elevator bank. Not some overheated Twitter account. Agencies. “Not state agencies,” Andy Beshear specified, with the practiced pause of a man who knows exactly how much a raised eyebrow can do. Which leaves, delightfully, only one branch of government to squint at.

He let this drop, with beautiful timing, in a Katie Couric sit-down published Wednesday, the interview format built for precisely this kind of controlled detonation. He’d spent early July publicly badgering McConnell’s people for a statement, any statement, and now we knew why. “It had been a month before anything had been put out,” he said, practically savoring it. “I’d gotten two calls from different agencies, not state agencies, suggesting he’s passed.”

Which agencies. Which day. He …