If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, piousness is virtue paying tribute to itself.
A gaffe is a politician inadvertently telling an inconvenient truth.
Of course, conservatives always claim to be against judicial activism.
In any event, the proper question isn't what a journalist thinks is relevant but what his or her audience thinks is relevant. Denying people information they would find useful because you think they shouldn't find it useful is censorship, not journalism.
Americans don't want leadership. They want alchemy.
One answer is that the towns elected officials thought that the project served a public purpose and that the various subsidies and favors were worth the price. But they may or may not have thought this.