I have to agree with Hot Air Headlines, here: the New York Times seems more upset that a bunch of Republican and right-leaning groups have gotten Senator Bob Menendez (D, NJ) in trouble over his various and sundry shenanigans than it is in the shenanigans themselves.

“We’ve never sent a Democrat to jail,” said Ken Boehm, the chairman of the group, the National Legal and Policy Center, as he looked up from a table filled with his Menendez files and engaged in what was to him a bit of wishful thinking.

To Mr. Menendez and his staff, the work going on at this suburban Washington office suite, paid for by donations from prominent Republicans nationwide, is proof that the news media frenzy focusing on his actions to help a Florida eye doctor is at least in part a political smear.

But the results have been troubling revelations. Those documented by The New York Times, The Washington Post and other newspapers involve serious accusations of favoritism by the senator.

Despite the fact that, oddly enough, those same accusations of favoritism were deemed serious enough to spawn calls that Sen. Menendez be removed from the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations committee.

Senator Robert Menendez was never a distinguished choice for chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the position he ascended to this month by virtue of seniority. Concerns about that quality gap have sharply escalated amid new disclosures about Mr. Menendez’s use of his position to advance the financial interests of a friend and big donor. Instead of trying to protect Mr. Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, needs to remove his gavel, at least pending credible resolution by the Senate Ethics Committee of the swirling accusations of misconduct.

Said call, of course, came from the New York Times. Not that you’d know that from this article, which unaccountably forgets to mention that particular detail; and, just to establish this for the record… the reports that Menendez might be dirty did not exactly come as a surprise to anybody familiar with NJ or DC. Which is one reason that the NYT jumped on the get-rid-of-him bandwagon so early…

Moe Lane