Please Muddy the Waters So We Can Dismiss It As Politics!

This Digby recap of the flap today between Leslie Blitzer and his take-no-B.S. partner Jack Cafferty was priceless. You can see it here.

Basically this newly minted House Majority Leader John Boehner is renting an apartment from a lobbyist.

House Majority Leader John Boehner rents a basement apartment from a lobbyist whose clients had an interest in legislation overseen or sponsored by Boehner, according to lobbying records.

Boehner, R-Ohio, pays $1,600 a month rent for the apartment owned by lobbyist John Milne and his wife, Debra Anderson, Boehner spokesman Don Seymour Jr. said.

"It is conceivable that John Milne may have lobbied Boehner on a few occasions over the years, but we are not aware of any specific instances of it, and we are certain no lobbying has taken place during the time in which John Boehner has been renting the property," Seymour said.

Lobbying records show that he represented Buca di Beppo and Parasole Restaurant Holdings Inc. - both restaurant companies - to lobby on the minimum wage, an issue handled by the Education and the Workforce Committee chaired by Boehner. The restaurant industry has opposed increases in the minimum wage, which has not risen since 1997.

So Cafferty asked a question for the viewers about whether or not this sort of thing is ethical, and the vast majority of the repsonses were "No." So Blitzer, after the segment, pleaded with Cafferty to give him just one "positive" email about Boehner, repeating that "he was renting at market value and it isn't luxurious." To which Cafferty snapped, "You must not listen to me," since Cafferty had indeed read one letter saying pretty much exactly that (it's like the emailer and Blitzer get their talking points from the same... never mind). Cafferty was clearly pissed at being pressed to maintain "balance," as if every issue has two equal and perfectly reasonable sides.

What Digby enlightened me to was a parallel incident reminiscent of this one, where Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post admitted to the "fair and balanced" game:

Since there were a bunch of questions I didn't get to in the chat, I thought I would use The Fix to answer a few more. Here goes:

New York, N.Y.: In your recent corruption roundup, you set up some ground rules that you'll only deal with current members of Congress or governors. Yet, you broke your own rules by including Rep Frank Ballance (D) who resigned in June, 2004. You omitted Connecticut Governor John Rowland (R) who also resigned in June, 2004. Why break your own rules for one but not the other?

The only thing I can think of is that you made a list and found that there are a lot more Republicans than Democrats on the list. So in an effort to appeared unbiased, you had to find another Democrat.

Cillizza: This was an editorial mixup. In my original post, Ballance was not included since, as you rightly point out, he is not a sitting member of Congress. After an edit, Ballance was unnecessarily included for, frankly, balance. I did not read the final edit and therefore was unaware that Ballance had been added to the list. I apologize for my editor's error (he's been flogged). And let no man (or woman) say The Fix opposes full disclosure.

Yeah, "editorial mixup." That's what they're calling fear of the wrath of the Republican Noise Machine these days.

You have a newspaper reporter admitting that his editor changed a story to include a Democrat who wasn't in Congress anymore to make it look like corruption is more "bipartisan." Welcome to the truthy world of mainstream news, everyone! Time to call for a blogger ethics panel.