The Public Interest

That's Jeri Zimmerman, aka Jeri Lynn Ryan, aka Seven of Nine Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One a Borg character on Star Trek Voyager in the 90s. She divorced husband Jack Ryan, a 2004 Illinois Senate candidate, in 1999.

Here's the conservative Chicago paper that endorsed Obama discussing the matter:

Ryan is facing Democrat Barack Obama in the November general election to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Illinois). Obama said it would not be "appropriate" for him to comment on the revelations. "Obviously Mr. Ryan and his supporters will be discussing this and I don't think that's my role," Obama said.

The rest is history. The GOP ridiculously recruited Alan Keyes to become humiliated against the One and his campaign for presidency officially began, even if he wasn't ready yet.

Notice in that instance the Trib was all in favor of unsealing Ryan's divorce records for the public interest. Here's CNN:

Several Chicago media organizations had sued for release of documents relating to the Ryans' divorce, saying the public interest outweighed their concerns about privacy and the possible effect on their now 9-year-old son.

Gee, one might think releasing the the tape of Obama and Rashid Khalidi at a party would pale in comparison.

MORE 11/01/08

One might think the Chicago Trib, who as we see above pushed for the release of Ryan's divorce smut when it was in the public interest of Illinoisans (and Obama) would be consistent in regards to the Khalidi tape. One would be wrong:

Perhaps the source realized how easy it would be to cut the video to obscure or even hide altogether the end of that sentence, "Obama, in his comments, called for finding common ground."

Perhaps the source knew that the mendacious peddlers of smear and fear who've been attacking Obama care nothing for context and look to maximize the innuendo content in any incident or scrap of information they can find.

Perhaps the source didn't want to feed the anti-Arab bigotry so visible just beneath the surface of the GOP campaign.

Perhaps the source just wanted the Times to help write an accurate story and didn't want to abet the inevitable character assassination of Obama (and Khalidi) that would follow the release of his video.

But even if the source hadn't put any conditions on the use of his video, I'd like to think that...

the Los Angeles Times would have declined on principle to turn over its source material to ill-motivated political hacks.

Ethics, indeed.