After the Chicago Tribune broke the story about Barack Obama's curious land deal with indicted political bagman Tony Rezko, Obama told the Tribune editorial board in a subsequent meeting it was a "boneheaded" move on his part but that he'd never done "done favors for [Rezko] of any sort."

Today, the Tribune runs what purports to be a "gotcha" story on Obama's claim, though the fare is pretty darn weak:

Obama intern had ties to Rezko
Senator's spokesman denies any favoritism
By David Jackson and Ray Gibson
Tribune staff reporters
Published December 24, 2006

Political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko made a modest pitch to Sen. Barack Obama last year.

Rezko recommended a 20-year-old student from Glenview for one of the coveted summer internships in Obama's Capitol Hill office.

The student got the job and spent five weeks in Washington, answering Obama's front office phone and logging constituent mail. The student was paid an $804 stipend--about $160 a week--for a position valued mostly for the experience it provides.

But now that otherwise unremarkable internship--one of nearly 100 Obama's office awarded in 2005--raises new questions for the senator, who says he has never done any favors for Rezko.

Please. If we went and made a federal case over every Congressional internship that's been doled out over the years to the child of a friend or political contributor we'd run out of trees and ink by next Thursday.

The full context of Obama's remark about doing "favors" for Rezko - which the Trib, to its credit, included later in the article - was this:

Most of the time, I've never been in a position to do favors for him. I don't control jobs. I don't control contracts. There were no bills that he was pushing when I was in the state legislature that I know of or that he talked to me about. And there were no bills in federal legislation that he was concerned about, so there was no sense of the betrayal of the public trust here."

Parsing that statement over one of 98 five-week internships given out by Obama's office borders on being a joke. On Wednesday, Conor Clarke wrote in The New Republic that Obama's real-estate deal with Rezko was a "non-scandal" and that the new Senator was being held to a different standard than the rest.

I had planned on slamming Clarke for the simple reason that Obama's association with a shady dealer like Rezko is a reflection of Obama's judgment and character and is totally fair game, in the same way that Rudy Giuliani's association with Bernie Kerik will undoubtedly be used against him - as it was the other day by Charlie Rangel .

I still believe that, and if more serious details about Obama's direct dealings with Rezko emerge, they should be given fair scrutiny. But the Trib's over the top treatment of this internship has me wondering if there isn't more to Clarke's argument than I originally thought.