Delay and Clinton

The death spiral of Tom Delay is a creation of the national media, a feeding frenzy that once again exposes the media's liberal bias. I am not saying that Delay may have not fudged campaign laws or accepted favors from donors -- perhaps he did. I am not shocked by this sort of thing; I think it happens all the time with many high-ranking politicians; and I think that the idiotic system of campaign financing we have put in place makes hypocrisy practically a necessity if a politician is going to succeed on the highest levels. But why is the media focused on Delay's problems rather than on someone else's? That is where the media bias comes through -- the decision to devote resources, time, energy to ferreting out details about Politician X rather than Politician Y. Consider the following story from the little-read New York Sun about an unnamed Democratic fundraiser who has agreed to plead guilty to felony bank fraud charges and give testimony against David Rosen, one of Hillary Clinton's top finance aides, who in turn is accused of giving false statements to federal authorities regarding fundraising for Ms. Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign. Which is the bigger story? Surely Tom Delay is an important man, the Republican leader in the House. But how many Americans even know that much about him? He's hardly a household name. But Hillary Clinton is a former First Lady, current Senator from one of the most powerful states in the country, and the frontrunner for her party's Presidential nomination in 2008! If some of her top aides are already pleading guilty to felonies related to her campaign finances, that's big news? Isn't it? Then why isn't it on the front page?

From Sandy Berger to David Rosen, stories of seemingly inexplicable criminal machinations by Clintonistas are reported, then forgotten -- we get the "who, what, where, when" of the lede, but nothing more. Where are the reporters who want to explain the "why" of the Clinton corruption stories? There all running in the pack, frothing at the mouth, chasing down Tom Delay.