Today, the Billings Gazette editorial board weighed in about U.S. Senator Jon Tester’s campaign promise regarding an ethics audit by a judge. The Gazette called their editorial, “Tester tests ethics policy with audit.”

At least the Gazette, as far as I know, is the first Montana newspaper to give an opinion since the announcement that there would actually be an audit. Maybe the rest of the major state newspapers were all laughing so hard at Tester’s selection for “auditor” that they just haven’t been able to do an editorial yet.

This is just a hunch, but I have to believe if a Republican office holder had named a Republican judge to do their audit, we’d never hear the end of it from the Montana media.

But back to the Gazette Editorial: The Gazette told us that, “Tester sent a load of paperwork to former Montana Supreme Court Justice John Sheehy.”

One can only hope there’s no personal information on any of this paperwork, because we know Tester is all for privacy. I also wonder if the “load of paperwork” was sent at taxpayer expense. I did not see on the list of audit items anything about e-mails from Tester and his staff sent from government computers, which are for official business only.

The Gazette also stated, “We don’t expect that Sheehy will find unethical practices in his review. Presumably, Tester would have corrected any problems before asking the judge to do an audit.”

Most folks will agree with that statement, which is probably the bottom line on this dog and pony show. At least Tester will be able to tell us during his reelection time in a few years that he actually did an ethics audit. He’ll hope Montanans forget it was done by a member of this own party.