When is a Democrat a "conservative?" When he's featured in a scandal story about adultery and murder.

The Washington Post is downplaying the party affiliation of disgraced former Democratic Rep. Gary Condit (D-Calif.), identifying him as a generic "congressman" or as a "conservative." The coy treatment is in marked contrast to the paper's frequent references to the GOP affiliation of Sen. Larry Craig and other disgraced Republicans.

In the first four installments of a 12-part series on the unsolved 2001 murder of D.C. intern Chandra Levy, the Post mentions the party affiliation of her boyfriend Condit only once. In three of the four articles, Condit is merely a "congressman." In fact, in the third installment, "A Private Matter," which ran July 15, Condit is described only as "a conservative congressman from a right-leaning agricultural district." The series was written by Post staff writers Sara Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sylvia Moreno.