Friday Nights:
In the political world, Friday night is a great time to release a story that you want buried – to do minimal damage – to slide by without much notice.  That did not happen to Max Baucus Friday night or Saturday morning.

Friday night around 8:32 p.m. (Montana time) I received an alert with the Roll Call story about Max Baucus. Max Baucus has been in the news a lot lately because of the healthcare bill, so his name pops up a lot.  Instead of just deleting the latest of many alerts I read it.  Here is what it said:

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus’ office confirmed late Friday night that the Montana Democrat was carrying on an extramarital affair with his state office director, Melodee Hanes, when he nominated her to be U.S. Attorney in Montana.

I subscribe to Roll Call, so I read the entire story and made a couple of calls and then posted the alert on this blog.  Soon it was all over the web.

It was a tactical release from the Baucus camp.  The DC media sensed something was brewing and were probably calling his office often to confirm.  In other words, the sharks were circling and Baucus’ spokesman probably held them off for a few days and, with all hands on deck, the spokesman issued a carefully worded e-mail release late Friday night confirming their suspicions.   Continue reading →