Thank you for the write-up.  I guess it seemed strange to me, too, since /r/politics seemed to favor a few fringier news site (DailyKos, Ars Technica, and TheHill) and most of those links seemed to be posted by only a couple power users.  I just looked up the /r/Politics scandal from November of 2013, though, and it seems like widening their ban list was what brought more attention on them. I remember sending a message to the Admins when their status as a default was called into question, but my overall memory of the situation seems kind of foggy now.