On Journalism and Bureaucratic Imperatives

Carpetbagger and TPM (and perhaps others) are in high dudgeon this morning about a Washington Post story by John Solomon, "revealing" that John Edwards sold his house to, um, some guy and his wife. As the CB and TPM asserrt, there doesn't seem to be anything remotely improper here . Neither CB nor TPM has spent a lot of time searching for motives for this bit of journalistic malpractice, but I can suggest one: my guess is that it's mostly bureaucratic. By which I mean that somebody at the Post paid a bunch of bucks to hire Solomon and now has to support Solomon's copy to validate his own prodigality.

TPM also surfaces a Post reporter--that would be Jonathan Weisman--willing to go public with his own skepticism about his paper's story. Says Weisman, as quoted by TPM:

Frankly, I bought a house from some people named Buckmaster DeWolf and Rosemary Ratcliffe. I love their names but I met them for about 15 minutes as we signed our papers. So what?

Well now hold on there, Jonny baby. A quick Google of Buckmaster DeWolf (there can't be that many of them) suggests that he is a lawyer--apparently one who sometimes defends against the clients against the government. Ooh, Jon, maybe we need to take a second look here...

[

Afterthought: Or maybe he is just a deer hunter. Oh--well why didn't you just tell us that in the first place?]