A day after the bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, Sen. Patty Murray joined other Senate Democrats to accuse the Bush administration of failing to maintain the country's bridges. And she had a dynamite anecdote:

"I have learned of a bridge where school buses have to stop and let all of the children out and pick them up on the other side because of weight restrictions."

The Hill reports that the anecdote was quickly repeated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

"The children have to walk across the bridge!" he declared in outrage.

The Hill's Under the Dome blog — third item — tried to get some specifics on the bridge.

So where's this limited-purpose bridge? Reid's office said to ask Murray. Murray said to call her office. Spokesman Mike Spahn looked into it. A couple of weeks later, where is that bridge?

Well, Spahn doesn't know. He said an unnamed member told Murray the story minutes before she addressed reporters, but she didn't hear where it was.

Ah, well, everybody loves a good story.

UPDATE: In the comments, Toby Nixon shows Murray's staff and lazy reporters like me how it's done.

Somebody needs to teach Sen. Murray's staff how to search the web. It took me about 30 seconds to find a reference to this school bus story in U.S. Senate testimony from the president-elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers in September 2002 (he says it was in Washington County, Alabama, but doesn't cite a source):

I also found this reference to a similar situation in Guam: