The news is a buzz with word that former Senator John Edwards could face indictment today for funneling campaign cash to his mistress:
Criminal charges are expected to be filed Friday against two-time Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, the result of an investigation into campaign cash allegedly funneled to the woman he had an out-of-wedlock child with.
According to The Associated Press, Edwards’s attorney, former White House counsel Gregory Craig, is headed to North Carolina on Friday and federal prosecutors are prepared to file charges. Plea deal discussions are ongoing.
This news has been brewing all week and if it wasn’t for “weinergate”, would have most likely been the top news story.
But what about the news of another political figure, having an affair and possibly violating federal campaign finance laws to cover it up? We’re talking about the case of former Senator John Ensign, who just so happens to be a Republican.
Last month the Senate ethics committee concluded their 18 month investigation and determined that the DOJ should have not closed the case on Ensign and have referred their findings to the DOJ for prosecution. They also concluded that Ensign’s activities should have lead to an expulsion from the Senate and called it one of the worst ethical violations in the history of the United States Senate.
However you would not know this by listening to the mainstream media. They hardly made mention of it, unlike that of the Edwards story, which took place long after Edwards was out of office.
Welcome to your “liberal” media in action. Extramarital affairs are a common place in the world of politics, yet the media spends far more time focusing on the news of Democrats caught with their pants down than when it happens to Republicans.
But it doesn’t stop with the media. Look at what happens to Democratic politicians who are embroiled in sexual scandals. More time than not they are removed from office and publicly sacrificed. Republicans generally keep holding their position and nothing ever happens to them. Even with the Democratically controlled DOJ, they jumped at a prosecution of John Edwards but totally fumbled on the case of John Ensign – again two cases with striking similarities.
It would be interesting to hear from the media and DOJ why these two similar cases have been handled so differently. Is it because Edwards was running for President, or was it because one is a Republican and one is a Democrat?
Maybe the DOJ is reluctant to prosecute Republicans, especially after the Ted Stevens debacle? If that’s the case, then they shouldn’t be. Despite the right trying to paint that as Obama’s fault, they seem to forget that the prosecution was in 2008, when Bush was President, and that it was the Obama administration that said “hey the DOJ screwed up”.
Whatever the answers to these questions, the problem is evident – there is a serious bias in the handling of these cases and that is a serious issue.