CBS This Morning suddenly discontinued identifying San Diego Mayor Bob Filner as a Democrat on Tuesday, after including his political affiliation in two previous reports on the allegations of sexual harassment swirling around the politician. Bill Whitaker pointed out how Filner "dismissed [the] charges...as coming from anonymous sources" and how that was "in contrast to this contrite video apology from late last week", but omitted his party ID.

Just 24 hours earlier, Whitaker reported on the morning newscast that "the city's first Democratic mayor in twenty years is embroiled in controversy and fighting for his job." On Friday, anchor Gayle King noted during a news brief that "the Democrat spent ten terms in Congress before becoming mayor less than a year ago."

Bob Filner, the San Diego representative who got into an altercation with an airport security official really must have a great press staff. At least he'd have to if he were a Republican since almost no GOPer could ever get CNN to omit his party affiliation from a news report. Turns out, though, this isn't the first time that Filner has been getting pushy with security staff. That's not exactly a surprise. What is a surprise, and disgrace for that matter, is that the last time Filner had such an altercation, he did so in the presence of two reporters who declined to report on the event:

Rep. Bob Filner's alleged altercation with an airline employee in Virginia on Sunday, which led to an assault-and-battery charge against the San Diego Democrat, wasn't his first such run-in, according to a 2003 Justice Department incident report.