L.A. Weekly's Dennis Romero reported on Monday that Mickey Kaus, the man behind the blog "Kausfiles" at Slate, will be challenging Senator Barbara Boxer in the Democratic Senate primary. While Kaus chided the L.A. Weekly for reporting his run prematurely, he did confirm that he went "down to the local registrar's office Monday and [took] out nomination papers to run in the primary for U.S. Senator against Barbara Boxer. If I return them in timely fashion with enough signatures, I should be able to get on the June ballot. We'll see what happens."

With a Kaus Senate run still uncertain, fellow bloggers are rushing to endorse or oppose the embryonic campaign. Kaus has elicited a hodgepodge of right-wing endorsements, and attracted some vitriol. Highlights:

• Hey Mickey, You're So Fine Jonah Goldberg at the National Review gives Kaus a surprise endorsement: "Obviously, I'd prefer a strong conservative Republican over a moderate liberal Democrat as the next senator from California. But Mickey Kaus would provide the sort of iconoclasm the Democratic party desperately needs, particularly in California. If more Democrats were as empirical and tough-minded as Mickey, the country and the state would be in a lot better shape."

• Just Do It Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit highlights the virtue of brevity with a simple "HE'S GOT MY VOTE," met with a concurring link to Jonah Goldberg.

• Don't Get Too Excited writes Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress in reaction to Goldberg and Reynolds' excitement:" I'm going to go counter-counterintuitive here and say that if some weird process put Mickey Kaus in the United States Senate, he'd wind up being someone who neither Reynolds nor Goldberg like very much. It's not really clear to me what votes Kaus would have cast differently from Boxer or what difference it would have made. And of course like all politicians if he were actually in office he would face strong incentives to act like a conventional politician rather than like a contrarian blogger."

• No Thanks Moe Lane at Red State, despite Reynolds' and Goldberg's enthusiaism, isn't impressed: "I'm not endorsing him - a hypothetical Senator Kaus would caucus with the Democrats, which breaks the first rule of my endorsement criteria - but if you're a Democrat who is tired of a liberal idiot* or idiots representing you, well, do something useful about it. Nobody cares if you're just going to be mortified."

• No Freaking Way Spencer Ackerman takes the low road at FireDogLake: Politics is a dirty job. Can we really trust a germophobe to do it? And can Kaus conclusively prove that he has never performed an act of sodomy upon a goat, or any other woodland creature? Is California really ready for a senator in his middle ages who obsesses over a man in his mid-20s? One thing's for sure. It would be irresponsible not to ask.

• Say What? Adrian Chen at Gawker isn''t taking the announcement seriously at all: "Look for the 14-part Slate series "Running Scared: My life as a Gag Senate Candidate." But, seriously, Mickey? Don't give Nikki Finke any ideas."

• Awesome Jeff Fecke at Blog of the Moderate Left anticipates a campaign made for daytime TV: "Oh. My. GOD. This is going to be AWESOME. I wonder how the voters will respond to a candidate who I am told has been caught in flagrante delicto with several members of the species Capra aegagrus hircus. But I'm sure the voting public will show Mickey understanding."

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