Birds of a Feather

Nice pick Barack:

• New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Sunday announced that he was withdrawing his nomination to be President-elect Barack Obama's commerce secretary amid a grand jury investigation into how some of his political donors won a lucrative state contract.

  Richardson's withdrawal was the first disruption of Obama's Cabinet process and the second "pay-to-play" investigation that has touched Obama's transition to the presidency. The president-elect has remained above the fray in both the case of arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the New Mexico case.

Obama remains "above the fray" as AP so blithely puts it, because the AP and the rest of the media refuse to do their jobs concerning "the chosen one." If the media had done even the barest followup of their own archives, they'd have found out Richardson is a habitual liar:

• Gov. Bill Richardson is coming clean on his draft record—the baseball draft, that is, admitting that his claim to have been a pick of the Kansas City A's in 1966 was untrue.

  For nearly four decades, Richardson, often mentioned as a possible Democratic presidential candidate, has maintained he was drafted by the Kansas City Athletics.

  [...] But an investigation by the Albuquerque Journal found no record of Richardson being drafted by the A's, who have since moved to Oakland, or any other team.

  Informed by the newspaper of its findings, the governor acknowledged the error in a story in Thursday's editions.

Error? It's a blatant lie Mr. Richardson. And you repeated it for 40 years!

Not to worry though. Here's the next big story for the media to ignore:

• A developer in New York state donated $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton's foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman's mall project.

  Hillary Clinton helped enact legislation allowing the developer, Robert Congel, to use tax-exempt bonds to help finance the construction of the Destiny USA entertainment and shopping complex, an expansion of the Carousel Center in Syracuse.

  She also helped secure a provision in a highway bill that set aside $5 million for Destiny USA roadway construction.

Gee whiz - pay-to-play strikes again! And still no one in the media has noted that Mrs. Chosen One herself sat on at least one board paying her a cool salary right after her husband was put in a position to earmark millions for their research projects.

But we guess people just like to surround themselves with the people they're used to dealing with. Water seeks its own level after all. So does sewage.