Will the national news media provide balanced coverage of the Democrats and Obama and the Republicans and McCain this year? To answer we start with two premises, then toss in the wild card.

Premise One: Pennsylvania’s 21 Electoral votes are no longer solid Red. It is one of the states the Democrats must win, but which the GOP, if push came to shove, could do without. Traditionally, Pennsylvania’s politics as memorialized by James Carville, is the two islands of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh surrounded by Alabama. A recent shift of Philadelphia’s bedroom suburban counties from Republican to Democratic now tilts Pennsylvania from Purple to Blue.

Premise Two: The media is routinely accused of being infatuated with Barak Obama. Recall Saturday Night Live’s now much acclaimed skit. Hillary Clinton continuously carped about Obama’s media-induced Teflon protection. No matter what she threw, nothing stuck. Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s pushing the proverbial envelope slowed the Obama Express ever so slightly, but the train kept on schedule.

Now let’s throw in the wild card. Setting aside Democrat Eliot Spitzer’s resignation as New York governor, or the scandals besieging Ohio’s Democratic Attorney General Marc Dann, the major Democratic scandal appears to be brewing in Pennsylvania. Labeled "Bonusgate," the controversy swirls around publicly appropriated "slush funds" that each House and Senate caucus controls. The House Democratic Caucus allegedly paid over $1.85 million in bonuses to legislative employees for political work resulting in the Democrats regaining the majority in 2006.

Rumors are flying about the State Capitol on how far Attorney General Tom Corbett, (who in the interest of full disclosure is the only statewide Republican, seeking re-election) will hit with indictments. The scuttlebutt is there will be obstruction of justice and similar charges striking at a Democratic coverup. At least three Democratic legislators are reportedly in the bulls-eye. The rumor mill was stoked by one of the stae’s top columnists, Pittsburgh’s Tribune-Review Brad Bumstead, quoting the Democrats’ counsel, William Chadwick, justifying the high legal bills. "This is an investigation that is looking at large numbers of people in very diverse activities — political-campaign activities, bonus activities, cover-up, obstruction," according to the Democratic attorney.

I checked with sources in both the House Democratic and Republican caucuses to see how far up the latter these charges will go, testing my hypothesis as to House Democrat most probable to go down. The Democratic response was stolid. The Republican response leads me to believe that first, they really don’t have any clue to which shoe will drop, and secondly, there’s not much they can do until it actually happens. If anything there was, per Yogi Berri, deja vu all over again.

The Pennsylvania General Assembly, the second-highest paid, and the largest staff-supported state legislature, is no stranger to scandal. 2006 was a high-water mark due to the GOP self-inflicted Pay Raise scandal, approving a massive pay raise at 2 AM without notice or even floor debate right before recess, being yet more gist for Lincoln Steffen’s mill.

So what? may be your response. But the reality is (and has been since Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville) Pennsylvania is the vest-pocket edition of America. What happens in Pennsylvania is, in reality, a political test-tube for what happens across the nation.

Which leads us back to Square One. Will Obama’s coronation by the national news media continue unabated?

To understand the press, you must properly characterize it. The press is not liberal, so much as it is deontologic, that is, idealistic. It expects people to behave the way they’re suppose to, not as they actually do. And who’s to disagree, this is what the press is suppose to do — hold us to a higher standard. Continued...