Our friends at Media Matters point out an interesting omission by the Washington Post in a story that ran last Friday, Earmarks Put Candidates On the Spot.

The story concerns an earmark for the University of Chicago requested by Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). It quotes Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R), who complained that directing the funds in question to the University of Chicago would circumvent the normal process by which the National Institutes of Health hands out research funds. "For this to be earmarked here, now, means they [the University] no longer have to compete. The program [NIH has] for allocating money, I think, should not be obviated by an earmark here on the floor."

Stevens effectively canned Obama's earmark request.

The irony here is that a Post story of Aug. 1, FBI Probes Stevens's Earmark, cites FBI investigations into a considerably more egregeous set of self-serving earmarks requested by Stevens himself.

The FBI is investigating whether Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) used a $1.6 million congressional appropriation to help an Alaska marine center purchase property from a business partner of the senator's son... The FBI and the Interior Department's inspector general are also jointly examining a series of budgetary earmarks endorsed by Stevens in recent years for the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward. [H]is home outside Anchorage was searched for nine hours Monday by federal agents.

May he who is without senatorial sin speak censoriously about self-serving spending measures. And may the Post be on the Outlook for earmark ironies of its own reporting.

Be sure to read a great op-ed by our own Matt Lewis in TomPaine.com today on larger lessons to be learned from the privatization of security services in Iraq. Here's the key passage:

Citizens who believe in government as a tool to advance the public interest ought to be concerned about excessive privatization of public services. Contractors like Blackwater USA are alienating would-be friends abroad and the public back home. Instead of rushing to privatize public services at every turn, our government should carefully review the services it currently oursources—keeping in mind the role of government should be to serve the public interest.