Newark Star-Ledger Spreads Wide For Bob Menendez

As More Monmouth Musings puts it:

After hiding out in the bowels of the Capitol and the hills of Afghanistan for most of February, Senator Bob Menendez came out to New Jersey’s press yesterday with school kids as prop.


But - in classic Obama-style - Menendez (D-La Raza) put the muzzle on his lapdogs:

Staff aides for Menendez urged reporters to stay on topic during the call, and to contact them later with any questions, like those about his relationship with the Florida eye doctor, Salomon Melgen — a friend and major campaign contributor whose offices were raided by the FBI in January.

With the ground rules in place, inquiries about round-trip flights to the Dominican Republic on Melgen’s private jet, and Menendez reimbursing the doctor $58,500 for two of them two years later, were not front and center.

Neither were disclosures that the senator came to the aid of Melgen before federal agencies, or accusations that the doctor provided Menendez with prostitutes, some underage, at his vacation home in the Dominican Republic


In which Menendez is right:

Asked whether the senator’s packed schedule was intended to rehabilitate his image at home after a month of harsh news coverage, Menendez bristled and said his appearance with the children was part of "Read Across America Day," which he has participated in for almost 20 years.

"And secondly," he said, "I don’t think I need any rehabilitating."


Not with a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil New Jersey media, who would rather lie to the people of New Jersey and obscure the horrific doings of Bob Menendez than risk the chance that New Jersey residents might replace him with a (gasp) Republican senator.

Thomas Jefferson:

There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves.
They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray.


So what can one accomplish with an uniformed citizenry? The New Jersey media knows...

And why do I pick on the Newark Star-Ledger in my post title? For the opening of their pre-censored article on Menendez's staged appearance:

Of all the adjectives used to describe Sen. Robert Menendez — wonkish, intense, diligent — the words soft and cuddly have rarely found their way into the discussion.


Actually, there are a lot of other words that find their way into discussions of Bob Menedez ("corrupt" being the most common). They just never seem to make it into Star-Ledger, though....