Livin' in a box

That's been me for most of the last two weeks. Three really; my last week in Phoenix was too hectic for keeping up with news of the world.

My days currently consist of job-hunting and home improvement, leaving me still precious little time to dab at the computer and blog. Today though my wife is busy with her mother on personal business, there is at present no more painting to be done and so here I find myself with a few hours on my hands. Let's crawl out of the box and see what we find...

Chuck Schumer is one of my least favorite members of Congress, in either house. For my money, he is one of the more belligerent lefties in the Senate; not quite in the same league with a Ted Kennedy but Teddy has many more years of practice. Given time, I imagine Chuck will become quite the blowhard himself one day.

His broad-brush anti "right-wing" rhetoric gets my blood-boiling hotter and quicker than just about anybody going. Having said that, I must here acknowledge quickly before proceeding that in the rest of this post you may encounter things that border on, if not pass directly into political hack-territory. I dislike this man and the way he conducts his politics that much.

So imagine my delight when I caught a wiff of this the other night: Federal prosecutors have opened an inquiry into allegations that two Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee employees illegally tapped into Lt. Gov. Michael Steele's credit history.

WBAL-TV 11 News reporter David Collins reported the workers obtained the report in July while executing opposition research on the lieutenant governor.

How perfectly wonderful that both work for the esteemed Senator from New York. Steele's reaction was of course understandable:

Paul D. Ellington, Steele's chief of staff, issued a statement late Wednesday afternoon in reaction to the allegations.

"Lt. Gov. Steele was extremely disturbed to learn about the alleged criminal identity theft of his personal finance records by (a staff member of U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.,) at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "He was notified by the FBI that a federal criminal investigation is under way and has been asked not to comment on the specifics of the case.

"He intends to honor this request and expects that those responsible for these actions will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

So at the end of day one, we have two staffers for a prominent Senator illegally obtaining and using personal credit information as part of an opposition research operation. Sounds almost Nixonian, don't it?

Moving forward to day two (9/22), we see new information surfacing as bloggers begin taking an interest in the story.

A day later, we also see a mainstream response in the form of a WaPo punt, er--editorial:

As political dirty tricks go, snooping for financial dirt on Mr. Steele by illegal means strikes us as roughly on a par with eavesdropping on a rival party's private telephone conversations, as Virginia Republican officials did several years ago. Both acts display a disregard for fair play and the spirit of the law; both are indicative of the current state of partisan enmity. Voters might like to punish all the scoundrels -- if only they could tell one party's scoundrels from the other's.

Hugh is right to call such a not-serious response to the situation: Don't be fooled into thinking that The Washington Post is being tough with the scandal by running this editorial. The editorial treats the data theft as a stand alone, one-time event --and there is zero reason to believe that it is, or that a senior Schumer staffer acted on her own in deciding to break the law. It is way too soon to start writing "end of the case" editorials.

All the Post did was bury the issue beneath a veneer of bi-partisan disgust and indignation. Meanwhile, the story begs numerous questions, and as Hugh points out, somebody interested in asking them.

Why the usual-and-hardly-unexpected slow response from big media? Well, ask yourself the same question that Michelle's reader asks:

Why did the Times ignore the story about N.Y. Sen. Schumer's aid[e]s illegally obtaining Maryland Lt. Gov (and 2008 probable Senate candidate) Michael Steele's credit report?

Why is it that every other paper in town covered the story, while the Times ignored it completely?

What if a Republican senator's aid[e]s had illegally obtained Sen. Clinton's credit report? Do you honestly think that the Times would have been quiet?

I'm not generally one who sits around screaming about media bias; but some times some things just stand out. I can't help but think that were Chuck's (D) an 'R', there'd be no calling off the dogs here.

In the meantime, somebody connected to a powerful and influential Senator has apparently committed a crime. The details need and deserve finding out.