Post’s self-enforced ignorance

Back in early September, just after Sarah Palin was chosen as McCain’s running mate, I wrote about the Washington Post making a big deal over Palin’s charges to the State for per diem expenses. The front page headline appeared of the fold and insinuted that the Governor had done something but further down the page they admitted that she’d done nothing wrong or illegal, buried in the story. In fact, the story was a popcorn fart. Later that week, the Post’s ombudman, answering tons of complaints wrote that the Post had done nothing wrong. Big surprise.

Well, in today’s Post, they have a story about something really nefarious, but since it’s about the Obama campaign, they put on page 2. The link on the front page is almost invisible. See if you can find some nefarious dealings in this screen shot;

Well, it’s this story;

The candidate that’s setting record for donations is taking untraceable donations. The guy who wants to take the money out of politics is taking in money that may exceed contribution limits from unknown donors. And the Post doesn’t care…much;

In recent weeks, questionable contributions have created headaches for Obama’s accounting team as it has tried to explain why campaign finance filings have included itemized donations from individuals using fake names, such as Es Esh or Doodad Pro. Those revelations prompted conservative bloggers to further test Obama’s finance vetting by giving money using the kind of prepaid cards that can be bought at a drugstore and cannot be traced to a donor.

The problem with such cards, campaign finance lawyers said, is that they make it impossible to tell whether foreign nationals, donors who have exceeded the limits, government contractors or others who are barred from giving to a federal campaign are making contributions.

“They have opened the floodgates to all this money coming in,” said Sean Cairncross, chief counsel to the Republican National Committee. “I think they’ve made the determination that whatever money they have to refund on the back end doesn’t outweigh the benefit of taking all this money upfront.”

Oh, well, it’s only Republicans complaining. The blogs have been on this for more than a week when one intrepid reader made donationsusing a fake name anda fake address and discovered the campaign had intentionally dismantled the Adress Verification System – a default setting for using the credit cards on line. The Post is just getting around to the story.

Who knows how many millions of dollars Obama has taken in over the past months. But we all know how long it would have taken the Post to start on this had it been the McCain campaign.

Category: Liberals suck, Media, Politics