In case you were wondering what the heck happened to the steady stream of disclosures about Bob Schaffer and his participation with jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff in suppressing reform of labor rights abuses in the Commonwealth of the Mariana Islands, the scoopmongers at Colorado Pols would like you to know:

A few of you may know that Michael Riley, the author of last week's hard-hitting series of articles detailing Colorado Senate candidate Bob Schaffer's relationship to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and labor policies in the Northern Marianas, left on a two-week vacation to South Asia over the weekend. Most of you probably didn't know that, but Riley had planned the trip for months before this story broke.

And that's worth knowing, because

Schaffer manager Dick Wadhams, however, was keenly aware of Riley's absence, and used the time when the reporter doing his homework was away to attack Riley's story with reporters who haven't. Result?

Well, we all saw the result. A news story today in the Post that seems completely ignorant of all the reporting done in the last week, to the preposterous extent that Wadhams is able to claim that "he knew of no Abramoff-connected campaign donations to Schaffer" and be left completely unchallenged. It's beyond bad reporting, it's a complete whitewash. You could only excuse it if you can prove this fill-in reporter doesn't read his own newspaper.

Now, of course, all of you have been paying very close attention to the flood of disastrous scrutiny for Schaffer following his praise for immigration policy in the Northern Marianas. Which means you know that when Dick Wadhams says he "knew of no Abramoff-connected campaign donations to Schaffer," it's not an oversight or a misstatement or an oversimplification, it's a straight-up in-your-face "we'll say whatever we want and your rookie ass will print it verbatim" lie.

For God's sake, Riley, come back from vacation.

See also:

TPM updates Schaffer/Abramoff
Brief summary: Schaffer/Abramoff so far
Schaffer / Abramoff strategies meshed
Bob Schaffer hides from Abramoff/Marianas questions
Damaging Schaffer/Abramoff disclosures continue
Schaffer/Marianas scandal explodes
Marianas questions dog Bob Schaffer