Round Two for Reid

The AP's John Solomon is just dying to take down Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. This is actually the second story making shady, vague allegations against him in the last few months. The first one alleged that Reid had multiple contacts with associates of Jack Abramoff, who were lobbying him to stop government regulation of sweatshop practices in the Northern Marianas Islands. That would have been real trouble for Reid, except he voted against the legislation Abramoff's goons wanted him to support, a fact the entire Solomon article left out.

This time he's trying to nab Reid on the basis of boxing tickets:

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid accepted free ringside tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission to three professional boxing matches while that state agency was trying to influence him on federal regulation of boxing.

Again, it'd sound bad if Reid hadn't, again, VOTED AGAINST the Nevada Athletic Commission and supported the legislation creating a federal boxing commission, which would tread on the state commission's authority. This is something that subsequent follow-up stories that recap Solomon's piece totally leave out.

TPM Muckraker's Paul Kiel says this:

Now, Solomon puts all these facts in his piece. So he's not covering up a key piece of information like he did last time. He seems to realize that he doesn't have any real story. So Solomon argues that Reid, out of an abundance of caution, should have paid for the tickets to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

I think Republicans are offered a far more charitable way out of their ethical problems. The burden of proof appears to be on the politicians in one case (to avoid the appearance of impropriety), and on the lobbyists in the other (to prove they bribed their legislators).

This John Solomon guy has a history of this kind of bad journalism. I don't think it's so much him as his editors, who have clearly assigned him to the "find the Democratic corruption to match the Republican corruption" beat.