Wednesday, May 2, 2007

A1: "Election commission drops charges against Renzi"

This AP report, the main Renzi story across the mainstream media today, is a fascinating study in lipstick on a pig.

If you don't read too closely, it appears that Renzi has been exonerated of wrongdoing in his 'reporting errors' related to campaign finances. You might just skip over the $25,000 fine as some sort of incidental expense. That's a conviction, folks, but it's soft-pedaled in favor of another point of investigation that the FEC decided was properly sorted out.

There's a tipoff a few graphs in, where we read briefly about "another FEC matter' involving the DNC, clearly placed to help minimize the judgment against Renzi. Perhaps the reader won't notice the difference between a sitting Congressman, subject to House ethics rules, and a political organization.

There will be more on our Congresscritter.

2 comments:

leftturnclyde said...

heres a link I thought might prove usefull in the renzi case
http://www.ziff.net/404/404.htm

Steven Ayres said...

Can't use it, it has a verb-agreement problem.