As may know, Congressman Rob Andrews (D-NJ), who just lost a long-shot primary bid for the Senate against incumbent Frank Lautenberg, has made a serious accusation against the Hillary Clinton campaign -- and he doesn't appear to want to elaborate on the subject beyond that.

Andrews, a centrist who had been supporting Hillary in the primaries, told the Newark Star-Ledger that a high-ranking member of the Clinton camp approached him in the run-up to the Pennsylvania primary about using a strategy to exploit divisions between Jews and blacks, as a way of increasing Hillary's share of the Jewish vote in that big primary.

"Frankly, I had a private conversation with a high-ranking person in the campaign ... that used a racial line of argument that I found very disconcerting," said Andrews. "It was extremely disconcerting given the rank of this person. It was very disturbing."

Naturally, my editors wanted to find out more, and put me on the assignment of trying to talk to to Andrews and/or someone in his camp who could tell us in greater detail what happened. What strategies were discussed, for example, and was Andrews himself asked to take part in any dirty campaign tactics? We were genuinely interested in finding out just how much of a story there was here.

So I called some reliable sources in the Andrews camp that I've spoken to previously, as well as his Congressional office. I was able to speak briefly to one person who promised to forward my request to Andrews. But after that I never heard back. My later calls weren't answered, and none of my messages were returned.

Now obviously, there are any number of reasons the Congressman might be too busy to talk to a reporter. On the other hand, the overall silence here does lead to a reasonable guess: That after he spoke up about this to the Ledger, Andrews immediately regretted doing so -- and then quickly resolved to keep quiet from here on.