The case of the emails that didn't bite in the night

Seventeen news organizations sent their political reporters flying to Juneau to fetch (and I trust pay for) 275 pounds of printouts of Sarah Palin's emails from the few years she was governor of Alaska. That's bad enough, but the New York Times and the Washington Post went a step deeper into the sewers by enlisting their readers to read the emails and play Gotcha! with the results. "Notice the patterns," said the WaPo to its panting volunteers. "Identify recipients and senders. Connect specific emails to larger themes."

Guess what? It was tedious stuff such as any harried bureaucrat-politician might send out. "For her admirers and her detractors alike," concludes Gordon Crovitz in the Wall Street Journal "it turns out that with Mrs. Palin, what you see is what you get."

In a week when we've been deluged with dreck about Anthony Weiner's crotch, that comes as a great relief. I hope the nosy reporters had to pay a surcharge on their baggage, coming home from Juneau. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford