THIS gives the gun issue in the Maryland elections a new twist:

Hundreds of people with criminal records in Maryland may have been allowed to purchase guns illegally this year because the state temporarily stopped conducting background checks for the FBI, state and federal officials disclosed yesterday. . . .

Maryland’s state archivists notified the FBI in March that they would no longer perform criminal background checks of people who had applied to buy firearms because budget cuts had left the agency shorthanded, documents show.

“We just didn’t have the staff to do it,” said Edward C. Papenfuse, the head state archivist. “We had been doing it quietly for free but we got to the point where everyone’s budgets were being cut, and we couldn’t do it anymore.”

Papenfuse said his agency did not received any of the $6.7 million in federal funds allocated to Maryland since 1995 to modernize its criminal record-keeping and comply with federal gun control laws.

He said he wrote to Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) in March to ask for money to pay a staff member to perform the background checks for the FBI, but was told that no funds were available until July 1.

How do you think this story would be being played if the Governor of Maryland were a Republican? “NRA-backed Governor skipped background checks?”

I wonder what the money was spent on?