We have two stories from the home page of the Examiner under Maryland News that deal with corruption / ethics violations with elected representatives. Let ‘s see if we can tell what party the individuals belong.
Exhibit 1:
Ethics committee recommends censure for GOP lawmaker
The House Ethics Committee voted Wednesday to recommend censure for a Republican lawmaker who pleaded guilty in a domestic violence incident that followed a traffic stop involving suspected drunken driving.
Exhibit 2:
Public corruption case against ex-senator concerns lawmakers
Lawmakers have known for more than a year that their former colleague – the once-powerful Thomas Bromwell who headed the Senate Finance Committee – was in trouble after being indicted in a federal public corruption probe alleging influence-peddling.
Well, the first case is pretty easy. Obviously, the first one deals with a Republican. It’s in the headline and the again in the first paragraph. The second? Hmmm. Not in the headline, not in the first paragraph. Well, let’s start counting paragraphs 1, 2, 3… Damn, now I have to take off my shoes … 11, 12,.. 25. Yep at the 25th paragraph (out of 29 paragraphs in the story) we see:
Bromwell, a Democrat who represented Baltimore County in the Senate from 1983 until 2002, and his wife Mary Pat are charged in an alleged racketeering scheme involving minority contracting fraud while he was in office. They have pleaded not guilty.
Rather than make some snarky comment about media bias, I’m just going to assume that there really is an underlying rationale for this. How about:
When a Republican has an ethical problem it is such a rare occurrence that it needs to be stated right up front that the offending individual is not a Democrat. When it happens to be a Democrat? Well, that’s just to be expected, the natural way they do business and should be assumed unless told otherwise.
Works for me.
