On Wednesday, federal authorities reported they did not know the whereabouts of Texas banker and scammer Allen Stanford. But what we do know for certain about the financier whose frauds may yet rival the $50 billion Madoff Ponzi scheme is that he donated generously to both political parties in Washington. Of course, that would be news to viewers of CBS Evening News. Because while Stanford gave early and often to Texas Republicans John Cornyn, Tom Delay and George W. Bush, CBS portrayed the fleeing financier as a bagman for Democrats alone.

During a segment on the February 17th broadcast of the CBS Evening News, correspondent Bob Orr suggested Stanford' was a Democrats-only influence peddler (video here):

Just three months before, he hob-knobbed with top Democrats in Denver as the lead sponsor of the National Democratic Institute conference.

[Clip of Bill Clinton] "I'd like to thank the Stanford Financial Group."

Since 2000, Stanford has funneled $1.7 million to politicians, $4,600 last year to President Obama's campaign.

But as Public Citizen, Huffington Post, ABC News and Talking Points Memo all reported, Stanford and his Stanford Financial Group PAC contributed to politicians and political action committees of both parties (including $448,000 in soft money contributions from 2000 to 2001 alone) to advance his agenda of banking and money-laundering deregulation. Many others journeyed on Stanford's junkets to Antigua and elsewhere, prompting TPM to brand his company "a travel agent for Congress." (TPM has a slide show of one of those of Stanford getaways.)

As it turns out, the list of Stanford beneficiaries is long - and bipartisan.

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