Timing of SEC Porn Story Is Suspicious

Yesterday's embarrassing news that SEC staffers surfed porn—a lot of porn—smells a little fishy to blogger Marian Wang of ProPublica. Not the facts of the story—they're unfortunately true—but the timing of it. This is actually old news, previously reported in the media. What's more, five years' worth of the SEC's own internal investigations on the subject "were routinely reported to Congress, and they’ve been publicly available all this time on the inspector general's website."

Odd, then, that the matter surfaces anew amid "scathing criticism" of the agency by Republicans. Among other things, they allege that the SEC went after Goldman Sachs in a political ploy to boost the financial reform bill. Is this payback? Wang parrots the GOP's Darrell Issa, when asked point blank if the SEC was playing politics: "I don’t have answers to these questions. But I must say, it is a very unusual event." (More SEC stories.)