What happened to the media's love of sex scandals?

Glenn Greenwald has some good stuff up today. He starts by asking: "What happened to the media's love of sex scandals?" It was all sex, all the time when Clinton was in the White House.

Mysteriously, all of that has come to a startling halt under the Bush administration. Republicans under this administration have been caught up in all sorts of scurrilous and embarrassing scandals, as Digby partially chronicles here and here. Those scandals have received little attention, and the media still treats this administration as though they are beacons of moral rectitude.

Indeed, the media thinks this administration deserves such intense respect that criticisms of the President are deemed rude and cowardly, and any stories that are too dirty and humiliating should, out of a sense of basic decorum and decency, be ignored. Then again, 9/11 changed everything, we are a Nation at War, and anything that harms the Commander-in-Chief harms the United States of America and helps Our Enemies. So the drastic changes in journalistic practices all make perfect sense.

Glenn then tells us that the former NSA head may be the next Director of the CIA and that he brings baggage of his own.

Reports have surfaced that the leading candidate to replace Porter Goss as CIA Director is Gen. Michael Hayden, who was the Director of the National Security Agency when that agency was ordered in October, 2001 by President Bush to begin spying on Americans without the warrants required by law. When the administration could no longer avoid answering the self-evident question as to why it was necessary to eavesdrop outside of the extremely permissive FISA framework, it was Gen. Hayden whom the administration sent out to give an explanation -- and the explanation Gen. Hayden gave was both incredible on its face and squarely contradicted by the administration's prior statements.

The Bush administration's penchant for defending their own law-breaking until they must defend it in court, at which time, they abondon their efforts. As Glenn says:

Two of the Guantanamo detainees were determined long ago not to be enemy combatants, but the U.S. Government continued to hold them anyway, on the ground that they could not be returned to our good friend, China, because they would be tortured and killed there, but no other country would take them. As a result, the administration simply kept them in Guantanamo and fought their judicial efforts to be freed, even though they were guilty of nothing.

[...]

Of all the abuses and excesses engaged in by the administration, the one that I am endlessly amazed can prompt defenses -- even from the most zomibified Bush followers -- is the administration's claim to have the power to incarcerate - indefinitely - U.S. citizens without any charges. Even the administration knows that much of their conduct is indefensible, which is why they abandon their efforts when they are forced to defend the legality of their behavior.