Item the First: Laziness, like water, always seeks the lowest level. So it is with modern political journalism. As we behold another scenario that allows the stenographers who pass for reporters in our mainstream "news" media to staple the words "Clinton" and "scandal" together, one could almost hear their gleeful "Squee!" of delight.

Make no mistake: I am not a defender, or even a vague fan, of Hillary Clinton. This State Department e-mail thing notwithstanding - I will never cease to be amazed by the Clinton Clan's unswerving instinct for "Hey, is that my foot?" BLAM "Ow, my foot!" behavior - the fact of the matter is that she has been on the wrong side of every signal issue over the course of this century.

She voted for the PATRIOT Act, she voted for the Iraq War resolution, she got the Keystone XL pipeline ball rolling while at State, and she is cozied up tight with the Wall Street brigands who tore the economy apart and then offshored the profits to avoid paying taxes. Personal freedom, unjust war, climate change, economic justice ... and she got it wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong. This is not exactly a resume that inspires confidence, or even mild interest.

All that being said, it has been both astonishing and entirely predictable to watch the "news" media's reaction to the e-mail issue. In the course of a week, they have gone from "Look, Another Clinton Scandal!" to "Remember the Other Clinton Scandals?" to "The Media Is Back In Clinton-Scandal Mode!" They have, in essence, downshifted so as to report on their own behavior: "Wow, Look How We Do What We Do!" It's the easiest gig in the world, and now they get to do it until a year from November.