They are still virtual no-shows. The activist old media is putting itself on the sidelines with a Democrat Congresswoman who was caught on tape squeezing a lobbyist for cash.

They will be pulled kicking and screaming into this story by the people Dan Rather called “pajama journalists.” I think we’ve seen this story before.

Andrew Breitbart broke the story on Big Government because it shows everything that is wrong with government. Politicians who use their power to shake down lobbyists for cash so they can keep their power– usually the media love these stories, especially when there’s audio! But so far, nothing in the New York Times, nothing in Holmes’ hometown newspaper, the Washington Post. Only the Wall Street Journal has done its job. Writes John Fund:

Ms. Norton’s office didn’t respond to several requests for comment yesterday, leaving open the question of whether she crossed ethical lines that prohibit members from linking contributions to the performance of their official duties. At least one House member I spoke with says Ms. Norton is in clear violation of House rules and should be hauled up before the Ethics Committee.

The sleazy scramble for cash initiated by Speaker Pelosi is a far cry from her pledge to run the “most ethical and honest Congress in history” when Democrats won control in 2006. Just last February, when asked at a news conference about that quote, she interrupted a reporter and said “And we are.”

Thankfully, voters will have the final say this November on whether or not they believe the accuracy of that statement.

I’ve had a little experience at knowing a good story when I see it, and I saw this as one of the major stories of the week and jumped on it with my own analysis on Liberty.com: (more…)

Remember when Florida Congressman Mark Foley was outed for sexual misconduct with male pages in the House of Representatives in 2006? You’ll recall that the Democrats and the Old Media and the left were in some high dudgeon over the claim that Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert knew all about it before the scandal erupted and played the story endlessly for months on end.

Well, with Congressman Eric Massa from New York we have a Democrat also accused of sexual misconduct with a male staffer and we similarly find out that the Democratic leadership knew all about it. Will the Old Media make as much about Dem. Majority Leader Stenny Hoyer’s knowledge of Massa’s sexual misconduct as it did about the Republican leadership’s supposed knowledge of Foley’s?

Here is a small sampling of the treatment of the story by the New York Times as an example: (more…)