It's Time Dirt Digging Got It's Due

The National Enquirer is up for a Pulitzer Prize. Yes, that is not a misprint. You know what, it absolutely deserves it for one of the best bits of investigative journalism to hit in this decade!

Back during the Democratic Primary for President. I was spending a lot of time vetting campaign staff and volunteers for the Richardson campaign. It was a smart thing to do by the campaign since things can blow up fast. By the way, I did not do any op-research in that race.

I was flying out to California with my son to visit my mom when I got a call while at the airport in Phoenix from a reporter from the Journal wanting my comment on the Atlantic Monthly Editor's blog labeling me "Governor Richardson's PI", which then got a second run on Huffington Post, because of my being on the campaign's expenditure reports. Since I think the world of the Governor, I think being his "PI" is cool, but beyond that, this meant that someone had to search through all of the expenditure reports and then investigate what those people did. Seems awful labor intensive for a primary race. To me it seemed panicky.

Well, the campaign handled it easily and the blog readers' responses were supportive of professional investigators being involved in campaigns. So it was no big deal and faded away as quickly as it surfaced. However, we began to suspect that the leak to the Atlantic Monthly editor came from John Edwards' campaign. He was neck and neck with the Governor at that point and it seemed the most logical to us.

Soon after, the National Enquire began to really work on the mistress and her pregnancy story. Suddenly, it made sense. The Edwards' campaign was worried that we were looking into his personal life and they launched a pre-emptive strike apparently in the hopes of keeping us away. However, while going after us directly, the Edwards' campaign dismissed the actual investigative work that was done by the Enquirer, as you know, "the Enquirer" and it was as factual as aliens landing in NYC.

Well, we now know, that Edwards did all the things that the Enquirer wrote and may well have paid hush money from his campaign to his mistress--err, "fiance" and that baby is his. What a sleaze. Thank God for the Enquirer and its "dirt digging" because that man wanted to run our country. Now, he's done as he should be.