Yesterday, an RNC aide sent reporters an email listing a bunch of mundane DNC expenditures -- money spent on hotels and travel, mostly -- in an apparent attempt to draw some sort of equivalence between staying at the Hilton and visiting a sex club. As Time's Jay Newton-Small put it, the DC expenditures are “very milquetoast” and “none of them were particularly controversial.”

Naturally, Politico's Jonathan Martin posted the list -- the entire list -- under the over-heated headline “RNC drops oppo on DNC high-falutin' expenditures.” Because, as you may know by now, Politico really is just a GOP bulletin board. Martin breathlessly explained:

RNC spokesman Doug Heye just blasted out raw oppo detailing the fact that the other guys also drop some cash for fancy purposes (mostly to stroke donors).

Writes Heye above the research goodies: “I thought you might find the list below of DNC expenditures of interest.”

Wow, “Blasted out raw oppo” really makes it sound impressive, doesn't it? But it was just a list of payments to hotels. Not many “research goodies” there. And Heye's I-thought-you-might-be-interested line? Was that really quote-worthy? Basically, Heye sent around a whole big pile of nothing, and Politico's Jonathan Martin tried desperately to hype it into something.

It gets worse.

Politico then followed up with an article about the email, in which reporter Andy Barr listed several of the “research goodies” the RNC provided, just in case anyone missed Martin's blog post. For example: “During the past year and half, the DNC has paid $4,464 to the limousine service Carey International.” That should just about lock up a Pulitzer, don't you think?

Interestingly, Barr vouched for the accuracy of the RNC's email, writing “the data the RNC presents is accurate.” Why is that interesting? Because Time's Newton-Small wrote that “the RNC couldn't provide the Federal Election Commission links to each of the searches and the DNC disputed at least one item: the catering charge at the Elysian which wasn't at the Bahamian beach resort but, rather, the Elysian Hotel in Chicago.” Barr didn't address that discrepancy.

Gee, you don't think Politico's Andy Barr affirmatively vouched for the accuracy of the RNC email without first checking the information himself, do you? Because that would be dishonest and wrong.

Believe it or not, there was a time when reporters didn't simply re-print opposition research without checking into it first -- particularly when the research in question is as mundane as a list of car companies and hotels. And when affirmatively proclaiming the accuracy of partisan political attacks without actually looking into them would get a reporter in some hot water.