In case the Pulitzer panel overlooks your efforts ...

The Jeff Gerth Award for 2007 goes to Mike McIntire and Christopher Drew of the New York Times for "Obama, in Brief Investing Foray in '05, Takes Same Path as Donors." Gerth, you may recall, is the Times reporter who in 1993 produced the countless paragraphs of dense prose about Whitewater that implied a major scandal involving Bill and Hillary Clinton. Neither his story nor an exhaustive investigation by Kenneth Starr and his legion of gumshoes, plus the right-wing scandal machine financed by Richard Mellon Scaife and other Clinton haters, found proof of involvement by the Clintons in anything crooked connected with Whitewater.

The purported scandalous revelation in the new Times article by McIntire and Drew leads with the implication that Obama benefited from stock tips from two of his donors, one of whom is "now at the center of an FBI inquiry." But what is the evidence of Obama's benefit from his investment? "In one transaction, he made $2,000: in the other, he lost $15,000." Is there any showing that he used his public office to benefit either company? Not a shred. The Jeff Gerth Award, as you can see, is richly deserved.

Charles Peters is the founding editor of the Washington Monthly and the president of Understanding Government, a nonprofit dedicated to better government through better reporting.