The Bernard Madoff story would have gotten more coverage if not for the even more shocking Blagojevich criminal complaint. Madoff apparently ran a Ponzi investment scheme and wound up losing $50B dollars of investors’ money. That’s right —$50 billion. (Before bailoutmania that was a lot of money.) But you won’t find much mention of his other favorite activity: giving money to Democrats who had oversight responsibility for the securities industry.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, for example, who headed the Democratic Senatorial Committee and sat on the Senate Banking Committee, got gobs of cash over the years from Madoff, who gave batches of cash not just to Schumer, but to the DSSC and many other lawmakers. And yes, Barney Frank also got his share. Madoff also donated tidy sums to a group entitled the ” Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association,” which in turn gave money to lawmakers, including Frank, who were supposed to be keeping an eye on the financial industry.

Unlike Republican donors who usually get headlines something like “GOP Donor Snared In Criminality,” Madoff, as Democratic donor, barely earned a media mention. The MSM might want to look at what, if anything, he ever asked for or got — or what a Congressional investigation, if ever undertaken, might have turned up about his problematic business structure. Why was it that a spate of media stories never caught the eagle eye of lawmakers? And likewise, we will have to see why the SEC — with nine years of running complaints — could’t put the pieces together.

The Watergate adage remains valuable: follow the money. Here there is a lot of it, and the search is just beginning. (By the way, the Democrats might think of giving some of the ill-gotten funds back.)