NY Times Editorial Blisters Congressional Dems For FISA Cave-In
(October 20, 2007 -- 2:02 PM EDT // link // )

The other day I noted that the New York Times editorial page doesn't get the Web credit it deserves for being a voice of sanity at key moments when much of the opinion-making elite is either opting for the comfort of self-delusion or is simply AWOL.

Well, today's Times brings an important new editorial that tidily makes this point. It absolutely blisters the Senate intelligence committee for its FISA cave-in. More important, it supplies the necessary larger context for understanding what's happening -- specifically, that all too many Dem Congressional leaders are still nursing hangovers from their minority days and are acting as if the 2006 decision by voters to put them in control of Congress just never happened:

With Democrats Like These...

Every now and then, we are tempted to double-check that the Democrats actually won control of Congress last year. It was particularly hard to tell this week. Democratic leaders were cowed, once again, by propaganda from the White House and failed, once again, to modernize the law on electronic spying in a way that permits robust intelligence gathering on terrorists without undermining the Constitution.

We were left wondering who is really in charge, when in a bipartisan press release announcing the agreement, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kit Bond, described the bill as “a delicate arrangement of compromises” that could not be changed in any way. The committee’s chairman, Jay Rockefeller, didn’t object.

As the debate proceeds, Americans will be told that the delicate compromises were about how the government may spy on phone calls and electronic messages in the age of instant communications. Republicans have already started blowing hot air about any naysayers trying to stop spies from tracking terrorists.

No one is doing that. The question really is whether Congress should toss out chunks of the Constitution because Mr. Bush finds them inconvenient and some Democrats are afraid to look soft on terrorism...

...it was a very frustrating week in Washington. It was bad enough having a one-party government when Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But the Democrats took over, and still the one-party system continues.

This is right. To put this as simply as possible, there are virtually no other powerful institutional opinion-makers making these points. Yet they couldn't be more central to understanding what's actually happening right now in politics.

It's hardly every day that an opinion-maker as powerful as that of The Times editorial board raises its voice in support of crucial points such as these, which are largely confined to the blogosphere. And it's obviously something we should hope for more of. Yet we all spend so much time sticking pins into the Fred Hiatt and David Broder voodoo dolls that we often overlook it when it actually happens.

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Senator Jay Rockefeller's "Bipartisan Compromise" On FISA Legislation
(October 20, 2007 -- 10:31 AM EDT // link // )

The New York Times has piece today offering a long overview of the months-long process by which the Senate intelligence committee reached its just-announced compromise on the Senate FISA cave-in legislation containing immunity for the telecoms.

It's a pretty useful overview, because it gives us new info revealing conclusively just what a cruel, sick joke it is to describe this as "bipartisan" or as a "compromise."

The piece sets the table for the tale of the cave-in by opening with Senator Jay Rockefeller, the ranking Dem on the committee, who supposedly got really, really tough with Veep Cheney in a private conversation many months ago:

Last June, in a phone conversation with Vice President Dick Cheney, John D. Rockefeller IV, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, set down his conditions for revising the law governing the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping. Only when the committee got access to secret administration documents authorizing surveillance without court warrants, Mr. Rockefeller told the vice president, would it consider such legislation.

Rockefeller ended up getting access to some of the docs he wanted, but as we already know, they were chosen by the White House, and thanks to this piece, we learn that it actually gets more ludicrous than this. The Times says that administration officials claim that Rockefeller got the access to the docs because he agreed to leave telecom immunity in the bill before seeing them. And no one -- not Rockefeller, not The Times -- appears to object here to this version of events.

It gets still worse. The paper reveals that Rockefeller largely ceded the role of negotiating this with the White House to his Republican counterpart on the intel committee -- that would be the ranking minority member:

The White House negotiated the bill primarily through Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the leading Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a staunch ally in efforts to broaden the N.S.A.’s wiretapping authority. Officials said that while Mr. Rockefeller had had some direct dealings with the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, and other administration officials, it was Mr. Bond who had acted as the main liaison to the White House on the issue.

The resulting bill, as The Times put it in an editorial today, is "a Potemkin compromise that endorsed far too much of the bad summer law" -- a law that Rockefeller himself was previously "dissatisfied" with. Nonetheless, in the final insult:

In the end...Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Bond interrupted each other to praise the committee’s bipartisan effort.

So let's review. According to The Times, The White House chose what docs Rockefeller got to see -- after Rockefeller agreed to let telecom immunity stay in the bill. The ranking Republican on the committee did the lion's share of the negotiating with the White House to produce the final bill. And the final product has many of the same cave-in features that last August's version had.

And then, after all that, Rockefeller threw his arm around Kit Bond's shoulders and the two did a little Rockettes act together, kicking up their feet in unison as they cheerfully sang precisely the song about "bipartisan compromise" that the White House and the GOP wants everyone to hear.

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CNN: Republicans Admitted To Us That Their Latest Hit On Hillary Is Bogus -- But We'll Air It Anyway!
(October 19, 2007 -- 3:40 PM EDT // link // )

I'm not sure I've ever seen this before. In a CNN report about the Republicans' latest criticism of Hillary, the reporter came right out and said that Republicans had privately told her that their attack on her is purely political. But the reporter nonetheless cheerfully aired those very same attacks, anyway.

The segment, by CNN's Dana Bash, concerns one of the silliest GOP hits on Hillary yet. The GOP is faulting Hillary over an earmark she inserted into a health spending bill that would grant $1,000,000 to a museum in upstate New York devoted to preserving memories of Woodstock.

Republicans -- I'm really not making this up -- are using this to link Hillary to the dope-smoking hippies of the counter-cultural 1960s, accusing her of a "taxpayer funded Woodstock flashback." CNN packaged this story with the headline "Clinton & `Woodstock Flashback'" on the screen, along with pics of Hillary's face superimposed over footage of shirtless, bearded far-out types grooving to Jimi Hendrix.

But look what else Bash says in her report:

You heard right:

"Republicans privately admit they're making an issue of the Woodstock earmark to go after Presidential contender Hillary Clinton, to hit her for misplaced priorities and link her to a liberal mecca."

Hey maaan, dig it -- the Republicans admitted to CNN that they're only making an issue out of this to link Hillary to the flower children and their "liberal mecca." But the network aired this story with precisely the same framing that the GOP is giving it, anyway! Groovy, maaan. Far out!

Look, reporting on the earmark issue is legit. And so is reporting on the Senate vote. But really, as we all know, this isn't why the GOP is making an issue out of this at all. It's really about furthering the narrative that the GOP has been hitting on since the 1992 campaign -- namely, that the Clintons have never truly moved beyond the draft-dodging, soldier-disrepecting, not-inhaling personas they allegedly harbored in that Godawful, turbulent decade that we're still fighting about.

We know the GOP is doing this because Republicans privately said so. If they had told me this, I probably wouldn't have held the "Woodstock flashback" GOP talking point on the screen for so long or superimposed Hillary's face right on the images of the crowds of freaks. But that's just me.

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Behold The Major Networks' Leading Assignment Editor
(October 19, 2007 -- 10:19 AM EDT // link // )

It never ceases to astonish this blog that so many self-described journalists at the major networks take their cues from this guy:

Maybe Drudge will package the next LA Times piece with pictures of buck-toothed Chinese villains and audio of gongs and other exotic-sounding musical instruments from the Far East.

Natch, the headline links to this article in the Los Angeles Times, which takes the Hillary campaign to task for getting contributions from Chinese people without home addresses. The article does raise some legit issues, but as Kevin Drum says, there's just no smoking gun here yet.

One thing that did leap out about the article was its description of Chung Seto, who's a liason to the Chinese community for Hillary. She's described merely as someone "who came to this country as a child from Canton province." The LA Times doesn't tell you that Seto is also a prominent New York Democrat who served as a top official at the state Democratic committee, so there's nothing surprising at all about her raising money for Hillary. This omission, of course, makes this sound all the more ethnic and mysterious.

Whatever, as rank as this headline is, no doubt the good people at the TV networks will dutifully follow their leading assignment editor's command for coverage and be all over this.

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Valerie Plame Blasts WaPo Editorial Page As "State Propaganda Entity"
(October 18, 2007 -- 4:54 PM EDT // link // )

For obvious reasons, this blog always enjoys it when public figures aggressively criticize Fred Hiatt's Washington Post editorial page. And here comes another figure who may be able to make some real noise doing so: Valerie Plame.

Plame, the husband of Joe Wilson who was of course outed as a CIA agent and found her career at an end as a result, is settling a bunch of scores with journalists and others in a new forthcoming book. The Associated Press got its hands on an advance copy of her effort:

She has kind words for Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who led the leak investigation and forced several journalists to testify about their sources. She said she didn't understand why "well-meaning but self-righteous talking heads" decried that effort.

"It was the Pentagon Papers or Watergate turned on its head," she writes, adding, "These reporters were allowing themselves to be exploited by the administration and were obstructing the investigation."

After reading a Washington Post editorial criticizing her husband, Plame writes that she "suddenly understood what it must have felt like to live in the Soviet Union and have only the state propaganda entity, Pravda, as the source of news about the world."

Clearly, Plame is gearing up to hit back at Judith Miller, Fred Hiatt and the rest of the gang here.

Look, whatever you think of the Wilsons, the Plame case didn't exactly put the press in its best light -- whether it was the endless misreporting on the story or the mindless deification of Miller as a First Amendment martyr, as a kind of cross between Clarence Darrow and Gandhi. So it'll be particularly interesting to see how media figures react now that Plame is trying to have her say about them. Of course, they can always just ignore it, and probably will.

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A French Reader Sounds Off On Roger Cohen's Anti-French Column
(October 18, 2007 -- 1:54 PM EDT // link // )

Below I noted that Times columnist Roger Cohen's effort today blamed French people's resistance to doing away with their 35-hour work week on the fact that they are inclined towards "idleness" -- i.e., that the French are lazy.

Now TPM Reader ES, who is French himself, sounds off on Cohen:

Thanks for singling out Cohen's latest abomination.

As a Frenchman, I have always been deeply offended by Roger Cohen's articles (back when he was stationed in Paris) and by his puff pieces. Regarding his agonizing job, I suspect that Cohen is kind of jealous of his French counterparts: journos in Paris make much less than he does, and yet they seem to be enjoying life so much more, can send their kids to good schools without having to pay incredible tuition, and on a general basis don't seem to harbor the same upwardly-mobile obsessions as Cohen does...

And by the way, productivity in France is higher than in the U.S., probably because of better education and national health care. The French work less because they work better.

Vive la France. Yep, French people are lazy -- the things you learn from The Times Op ed page, ladies and gents.

NY Times' Roger Cohen: French People Are Lazy
(October 18, 2007 -- 9:44 AM EDT // link // )

The New York Times's Roger Cohen has a column this morning extolling a number of "reforms" being cooked up by the French government, including possible legislation doing away with the 35-hour work week. Cohen notes that French workers are likely to resist this, and offers this explanation:

Deep in the Gallic soul resides the notion that work is exploitation, a ruse concocted by American robber barons, best regulated and minimized and offset by hours of idleness.

The...mantra in the French bureaucracy might be: the fewer hours you work, the more vacation you take, the more time you have to grumble about the state of the universe and the smarter you feel, especially compared to workaholic dingbats across the Atlantic with no time for boules.

Idleness? My trusty thesaurus tells me that this is synonymous with "laziness." Also note the suggestion that the French people hate work and that the pleasure French people take in their vacations is indicative of a character flaw on their part.

Look, Cohen can throw around the word "soul" all he wants in order to feign profundity, but strip away the phony high-flown language and this really is nothing but rank jingoism and bigotry. Yet there it is, right there on the Times's Op ed page.

I spent some time in France and I think the French rather have the right idea about this. Shockingly, in addition to work they like making sure they have time to spend with their kids, time to eat good food, and time to pursue activities they enjoy.

Cohen, of course, is fortunate enough to have a very enjoyable job that earns him lots and lots of money. Yes, it's true that Cohen has told us that he spends a great deal of time "agonizing" about great questions, so maybe his job isn't perfect. But his lot is much better than that of millions of French people who don't have interesting jobs and don't make lots and lots of money, the way he does. Naturally, such people are going to try to do their best to make their lives as good as possible under the circumstances life has dealt them, and will embrace government regulation that does this.

I don't know what's in the "Gallic soul," but in Cohen's soul there clearly resides the idea that his own character is made of much sterner stuff than that of all these hapless folks. You can debate whether such regulation is a good idea and what impact it has on the country, but you'd think that suggesting that the millions of people who embrace it are lazy and slothful is beneath a dashing man-of-the-world like Cohen. Obviously it isn't, but it's certainly beneath The Times.

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Imagine If A Democrat Had Done This, Part 9,487
(October 17, 2007 -- 6:06 PM EDT // link // )

Here's a question: When are the cable nets and the Capitol Hill press and the pundits going to dig into the role that GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell played in pushing the smear of the Frost family?

It needs to be said that reporters like Time's Karen Tumulty and The New York Times's David Herszenhorn did a decent job knocking down the original winger smear of the Frosts. But since then, the story's moved forward considerably, and it's gotten really good. And neither these media worthies nor any others have followed suit.

As I noted below, the Courier-Journal of Kentucky revealed yesterday that McConnell's chief press aide had tried to get reporters to follow the "reporting" done on this by Michelle Malkin and company before realizing the story was bogus and calling the reporters off.

And today there's still more on McConnell's role. As both Atrios and John Aravosis note, the tireless Courier-Journal has revisited its interview with the McConnell aide and weighed in with another story on this pretty much proving that McConnell lied about his own role:

WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell knew last week -- at a time when he was denying it -- that his staff had sent e-mails encouraging reporters to look into the background of a 12-year-old boy used by Democrats to support expansion of a health-care program.

In an interview Friday with WHAS-TV reporter Mark Hebert, the Kentucky Republican said his staff had not been involved in trying to push reporters to look into the financial situation of the boy's family.

But McConnell's communications director, Don Stewart, said in an interview Monday with The Courier-Journal that he had told McConnell about the Oct. 8 e-mails sometime around Thursday, the day before the interview with Hebert.

It's key to keep in mind that this isn't just some GOP City Councilman from Nowheresville. It's the GOP leader in the Senate. His office tried to get reporters to join Michelle Malkin and the rest of the wingnut hounds to join in the chase of a 12-year-old boy who'd been severely injured. McConnell knew about this, and then lied about knowing about it.

I know, the "let's imagine if a Dem had done this" game is a cliche. But let's play it anyway. Imagine if a top communications staffer for Harry Reid tried to get mainstream reporters to follow the lead of lefty bloggers who were digging into the background of, and harassing, a young boy who had appeared in a GOP ad for some policy initiative or another -- and then imagine if Reid were caught lying about it.

Lefty bloggers wouldn't have taken this route, of course, but if this had happened and Reid had done this, I think the cable networks would be all over it. CNN's internet reporter would do a segment on it, Wolf Blitzer would grunt with disapproval, Chris Matthews would drench the Hardball camera with spittle flecks, Richard Cohen would question Reid's character, David Broder would shake his head and mutter darkly about "incivility" and Reid's incompetence, Howie Kurtz would write a story about the coverage of the story, and the rest would be history. That Reid staffer would end up resigning.

Dems are now out there attacking McConnell. Yet we're hearing nothing about this key twist in the story. At the very least you'd think this would be fodder for the cable nets. Bizarre.

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GOP Rep. Mouthes Falsehoods About Dead And Missing American Soldiers On House Floor
(October 17, 2007 -- 1:00 PM EDT // link // )

One of the things that never ceases to astonish this blog is the sheer tenacity of winger mendaciousness. Once the right-wingers have injected a narrative or set of "facts" into the discourse, it doesn't matter how devastatingly the tale's been debunked. The sewage just keep on overflowing the sewers.

Case in point: Hapless GOP Rep. Todd Akin. A few moments ago, he went on the House floor and argued for the defeat of the House Dems' FISA legislation. His rationale? That tale the wingers have been flogging for days about the wiretaps of Iraqi insurgents that were supposedly delayed by surveillance laws, thus slowing an effort to find three U.S. troops who'd been kidnapped outside of Baghdad, all of whom are now dead or missing.

This story has been thoroughly debunked -- but that didn't stop Akin from going right up there on the House floor and reciting it with perfect sincerity, not to mention a healthy dollop of regard for his own imagined oratorical powers.

You knew this was coming, of course. A couple of days ago, Roll Call reported that GOPers were planning on using this tale to "put a human face" on the FISA debate. Winger media outlets dutifully pushed the story, and winger bloggers cued up the canned outrage.

But as was quickly discovered, it just isn't true. As TPM's own Spencer Ackerman and The Washington Post both demonstrated, the delay was actually caused largely by legal wrangling between agencies and the inability of Justice Department officials to find Alberto Gonzales to authorize the wiretap, along with multiple other reasons which don't relate to the FISA debate.

No matter, however. Watch Akin recite this tale:

He said:

I rise to call attention to a tragedy of our own making.

In May of this year, a U.S. soldier, Alex Jimenez, along with several of his friends, were captured by al Qaeda. As our intelligence officers wanted to tap into wires to try to find his whereabouts, they were hobbled and had to wait ten hours for lawyers to get through the FISA court, to allow them to get the critical information they needed. That information lost, this soldier and his compatriots have never been found, although the bodies of one or two have been found.

The bodies of "one or two" have been found -- such attention to detail for someone who cares so much about the troops!

Also priceless is that opening line: "I rise to call attention to a tragedy of our own making." Really, not even Charles Dickens could do justice to this sort of pomposity and windbaggery, never mind the sheer mendacity of this whole act.

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NY Times Editorial Board Announces New Group Blog
(October 17, 2007 -- 9:45 AM EDT // link // )

I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more attention, because it could prove to be a very interesting experiment. The editorial board of The New York Times has just unveiled a new group blog called, appropriately enough, "The Board."

In its inaugural post, The Board says that posts will be written by the edit board's 19 members and that most will be unsigned, but it also promises some bylined pieces in the future. It also promises to talk a bit about how the board reaches its opinions. All this could offer a welcome glimpse into what often seems like a mysterious, almost Talmudic process.

The Board also appears to be planning on taking a more politically active role than one might expect from the normally cautious Times. One blog post, for instance, calls on readers to call their Representatives to urge a Yes vote on the coming effort to override President Bush's veto of the SCHIP bill. It lists out all the Reps who voted No last time and asks readers to "take a look at the list of nay-sayers and see if your representative is one who needs to be pressured to switch sides." One can only hope for more of this.

It's a good thing that the Times edit board is trying to get a bit closer to its readers, because in my view it has gotten too little credit for being a voice of sanity at key moments when mental equilibrium has deserted our opinion leaders en masse. People forget, for instance, that the paper courageously opposed the Iraq invasion on the eve of its launch at a moment when much of the nation's opinion elite was so terrified by all the war-whooping that it cravenly gave its blessing, and cover, to Bush's adventure.

This lack of credit is partly because of the proliferation of opinion on the Web and partly because so much Internet energy and attention is expended on targeting the Times edit board's naughty and adolescent brethren at the Washington Post edit board, which has long since dropped any pretense of intellectual honesty when it comes to matters of war or national security. The Board could give The Times edit board more of the Web presence it deserves.

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Video: McConnell Misleads Public About His Office's Role In Pushing Smear Of Graeme Frost
(October 16, 2007 -- 6:32 PM EDT // link // )

Yet another wrinkle in the McConnell-SCHIP smear.

A couple hours ago Atrios linked to this report by local Kentucky station WHAS11 news. In it the station accused GOP Senator Mitch McConnell of misleading the network's reporter when McConnell told him on camera a few days ago that his office played no role whatsoever in pushing the smear of SCHIP posterkid Graeme Frost and his family.

As you all know, the news broke today that McConnell's communications director admitted in an interview with Kentucky's Courier-Journal that he'd initially alerted reporters to the smear campaign being waged by the winger bloggers against the Frosts. For all the background on this, go here.

Now a Kentucky blogger has just posted some video of WHAS11's report alleging that McConnell had misled them. In it you can watch WHAS11's footage of an interview they did with McConnell on Friday, in which he adamantly denied any involvement from his office:

In it, the reporter directly asks McConnell whether his office was involved in any way:

MCCONNELL: Is there an indication that your office was trying to push reporters to go dig into this background?

REPORTER: Then what was the deal with the email?

MCCONNELL: What?

REPORTER: What was the deal with the email from your staffer?

MCCONNELL: There was no involvement whatsoever.

REPORTER: From your staff?

MCCONNELL: None.

As we now know, however, this is false.

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NY Times: Good News For Edwards Not Fit To Print
(October 16, 2007 -- 2:57 PM EDT // link // )

Bad news for Edwards? Fit to print. Good news for Edwards? Not so much.

In recent months The New York Times has repeatedly reported that major unions were going to take a pass on the Presidential race, repeatedly suggesting that this was a blow to John Edwards, who's courted labor most aggressively.

On July 31, for instance, the paper reported that unions were contemplating taking a pass on the primary, adding that this "would be particularly frustrating" to Edwards. On Sept. 26, the paper reported that the national Service Employees International Union would also not be making an endorsement, even though "Edwards has lobbied the union hard." On October 9, the paper did another story on SEIU's non-endorsement, adding that "Edwards had lobbied hardest for its endorsement." The paper did a fourth story on labor non-endorsements, too.

Well, yesterday ten of the SEIU's state councils -- a total of almost a million working men and women -- threw their support to Edwards. You'd think The Times -- after talking up all that bad news for Edwards -- would do a story on this, right?

Nope.

Today's Times didn't print a mention of this at all -- unlike The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Reuters, CNN and CNBC, all of whom did their own stories on it.

Incidentally, this probably isn't because the paper's reporters didn't view this as newsworthy. After all, the paper's Caucus blog carried a long item on it by labor reporter Steven Greenhouse, and judging by his item, he clearly viewed it as an important score on Edwards' part. But the paper's editors, apparently, didn't deem this good news for Edwards fit to print.

There may be a perfectly valid explanation for why the paper didn't view this as newsworthy. I just can't imagine, given its previous reporting on this, what it might be.

Update: I should have been clearer about the larger context here. It's no secret that Edwards supporters are unhappy with the Times' coverage and its failure to cover Edwards' policy speeches. This will be viewed as just more of the same.

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McConnell Aide Keeps Dissembling About Role In Smear Of Graeme Frost
(October 16, 2007 -- 11:55 AM EDT // link // )

Here's a bit more on the hapless Don Stewart, the aide to GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell who has now admitted that he tried to get mainstream reporters to pick up on the bogus smear of 12-year-old Graeme Frost and his family.

In addition to the article in Kentucky's Courier-Journal I referenced below, Stewart has also published a letter to the editor in the same edition of the paper. In it, he purports to "clarify" his office's role in the pushing of the smear:

McConnell aide clarifies

At the end of last week, left-wing bloggers thought they had a great story. Citing anonymous sources, some claimed our office played a role in encouraging conservative bloggers to criticize the Frost family, whose son recently gave the Democrats' radio address on the issue of health care. While we regularly read and comment on blog posts -- even raising doubts last week about blog posts claiming the Frost family was ineligible for SCHIP -- bloggers had been commenting on this issue long before we raised any questions about those posts. In other words, blogs neither needed nor received any assistance or encouragement from this office.

Then a liberal talk-show host and a liberal opinion columnist at The New York Times, parroting the same anonymous sources, also credited our office with playing a role in starting the investigation.

While that is not the case, our office did play a significant role in making sure the mainstream media knew there was nothing to the complaints against the Frost family. As I pointed out to reporters -- more than a week ago -- the family is "legit," and there is "no story" there. Most reporters agree with my assessment, which is why only left-wing columnists and bloggers and others who seek political advantage seem to still be interested.

DON STEWART

Communications Director

U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell

This is pretty stunning. Stewart, McConnell's aide, is now trying to pretend that the only role he played in this was to call reporters off the story. But this is plainly false. Stewart himself admitted to the paper in an interview that he sent an initial email alerting reporters about the "information" contained in the wingnut assault on the Frost family. As Matt Corley notes over at Think Progress, the email contained this line: "Could the Dems really have done that bad of a job vetting this family?" In other words, Stewart initially was ratifying the winger storyline about the Frosts.

What's more, Stewart's attack on New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is similarly bogus. Stewart's letter says that Krugman claimed that McConnell's office had "started" the investigation. But that isn't what Krugman said at all. Rather, Krugman wrote that Stewart sent an email to reporters repeating the wingnut smears -- which is exactly what Stewart did.

Let's not lose sight of the key point here: Mitch McConnell is the GOP Senate leader -- a very powerful and high-profile post. Yet his office followed the lead of a whackjob like Michelle Malkin, suggesting to mainstream reporters that they go after the Frost family without bothering to check the facts first. His office only called reporters off the story after it became obvious that Malkin and company had laid a real stinker on McConnell's desk -- in other words, only after the potential for embarrassment loomed. Sorry, but that's what happened. End of story.

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McConnell Aide Acknowledges That He Tried To Spread Bogus Smear Of Graeme Frost
(October 16, 2007 -- 9:34 AM EDT // link // )

Check this out: An aide to GOP leader Mitch McConnell has acknowledged in an interview with Kentucky's Courier-Journal that he actively sought to alert reporters to the wingnut smearing of 12-year-old SCHIP posterkid Graeme Frost:

WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's spokesman acknowledged yesterday that he alerted reporters last week to questions bloggers raised about the financial circumstances of a 12-year-old boy Democrats had used to urge passage of an expanded children's health insurance program.

It has been reported already that an email from a McConnell aide went out to reporters telling them of the winger attack. But this appears to be the first time that McConnell's people are publicly acknowledging their role in trying to push mainstream reporters into joining the attack on young Graeme. Stewart acknowledged to the paper that he'd done this as "part of regular conversation with reporters."

What makes this story even better is that after McConnell's aide tried to get reporters to push the story, he quickly realized a few hours later that the whole thing was a big sham and tried to call reporters off.

This is significant, because it shows that McConnell's operation cheerfully urged mainstream reporters to pick up the winger attacks without even bothering to fact-check them first. When Michelle Malkin pointed her finger at the Frosts and started howling, McConnell's staff immediately joined in the fun -- that is, until they realized that they had a big dud on their hands. More from the Courier-Journal:

Hours later, he said, he sent two follow-up e-mails waving reporters off.

"Forgive me if I already told you this, but a blogger that I trust (and who hadn't written anything on this issue yet) tells me that after spending a lot of time on this, they now believe there's no story there, that the family is legit," Stewart wrote in one e-mail, according to the text he provided to The Courier-Journal. "So I'm passing that along to the folks I wrote to this morning. Fair is fair."

In the other follow-up e-mail, Stewart wrote, according to the text he provided: "I just heard from a blogger I know who did some research. Says it's not a story, they're the real deal."

So, just to recap: This story was too bogus even for McConnell and the gang to push. You'd think this would be chastening to Malkin and her pitchfork mob. But it won't be, because nothing ever is.

At any rate, the office of the top Republican in the U.S. Senate has now publicly admitted that it actively tried to get mainstream reporters to participate in the smearing of a 12-year-old and his family -- before it was even known whether there was any truth to what the wingers were writing. Lovely.

Update: Steve Benen has a terrific takedown of yet another wingnut smear of another SCHIP kid.

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General Advocating Victory Declaration Over Al Qaeda Pushed Bogus Storyline About Pat Tillman
(October 15, 2007 -- 2:58 PM EDT // link // )

As noted below, today's Washington Post reports that some generals believe that Al Qaeda in Iraq has been vanquished and want the U.S. to publicly declare that we have defeated the terror group. The leading general urging such a declaration of victory over AQI is Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal:

Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, head of the Joint Special Operations Command's operations in Iraq, is the chief promoter of a victory declaration and believes that AQI has been all but eliminated, the military intelligence official said. But Adm. William J. Fallon, the chief of U.S. Central Command, which oversees Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, is urging restraint, the official said.

But some interesting facts are dribbling out about General McChrystal. As Think Progress notes, he declared "major combat over" -- way back in 2003.

Now I've got some more. It turns out that General McChrystal also got into trouble for pushing the bogus storyline that now-legendary former NFL player Pat Tillman had been killed by enemy fire in Afghanistan. Tillman's death became a national story, and an investigation concluded that his death had in fact been caused by friendly fire.

McChrystal, it appears, played a key role in ratifying this "enemy fire" storyline -- and he was even later reprimanded by the Pentagon for doing so. According to an Associated Press report from early August, McChrystal personally approved a medal declaring that Tillman had been cut down by "devastating enemy fire" -- despite the fact that he personally harbored doubts as to whether that were true.

McChrystal was grilled behind closed doors by Pentagon investigators over the contradiction:

In a sometimes contentious November interview under oath and via videoconference, Pentagon investigators sharply questioned McChrystal about the conflicting accounts, according to the testimony obtained by the AP under the Freedom of Information Act.

McChrystal acknowledged he had suspected several days prior to approving the Silver Star citation on April 28, 2004, that Tillman may have died by fratricide.

He said that suspicion led him to send a memo to top generals imploring "our nation's leaders," specifically "POTUS" -- the acronym for the president -- to avoid cribbing the "devastating enemy fire" explanation from the award citation for their speeches.

"Why did you recommend the Silver Star one day and then the next day send a secret back-channel message warning the country's leaders about using information from the Silver Star in public speeches because they might be embarrassed if they do?" an investigator asked McChrystal.

The AP story also says that McChrystal didn't even tell the Tillman family about his suspicions of the real cause of Tillman's death -- even as he warned the President and other leaders of his doubts about whether they should use the potentially embarrassing "devastating friendly fire" story. The whole affair led the Pentagon's acting inspector general to find that McChrystal should be held "accountable for the inaccurate and misleading assertions" in the Silver Star award recommendation. (This finding was overturned by the Army, and McChrystal defended his own conduct.)

Anyway, that tale seemed worth recalling now that McChrystal apparently is arguing privately that AQI has been vanquished and that it's time for Bush to do another victory dance.

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Okay, We've Defeated Al Qaeda In Iraq. Now Who Will Hawks Say Is Main Enemy In Iraq?
(October 15, 2007 -- 10:50 AM EDT // link // )

Today's Washington Post reports that the U.S. military believes it may have defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq. As Atrios says, this is good news but for the fact that no matter who gets defeated we're never leaving.

There's another layer of amusement in the article that's worth noting, however. It turns out that our defeat of Al Qaeda has actually created a dilemma for the War Powers that Be and their most fervent supporters:

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved.

In other words, officials admit that it's inadvisable to say outright that we've defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq, even if we have, because then when there are more attacks and deaths, George Bush and John Boehner and Joe Lieberman's campaign to convince us that Al Qaeda is our main enemy in Iraq will be revealed as the pristine bamboozlement it's always been. And everyone will have to admit that there's a civil war going on there.

Remember, these good people have been telling us that they believe the main reason we're in Iraq is because we must defeat Al Qaeda, lest global catastrophe ensue. Here's John Boehner last month, equating the defeat of Al Qaeda with the achievement of Middle East stability:

We need to continue our effort here because, Wolf, long term, the investment that we’re making today will be a small price if we’re able to stop al Qaeda here, if we’re able to stabilize the Middle East, it’s not only going to be a small price for the near future, but think about the future for our kids and their kids.

And here's Joe Lieberman a few months back, saying that Al Qaeda is Enemy Number One: "But honestly, who are we fighting there? We're fighting al Qaeda and Iran." There are other multiple examples of this, of course.

Okay, so if the belief of some generals that we've defeated Al Qaeda becomes publicly accepted reality, then what will these worthies say? When the next attacks and deaths happen, what new rhetorical scheme will they concoct to pretend that American troops aren't caught in the middle of a civil war?

It'll be amusing to see how they handle this one.

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Even Right-Wing Wall Street Journal Edit Page Says Wingnut Assault On SCHIP Family Is Bogus
(October 14, 2007 -- 11:23 AM EDT // link // )

You'd think this would be chastening to the wingnuts who are tormenting the family of SCHIP poster kid Graeme Frost. But of course it isn't, because nothing ever is.

As you all know, the winger bloggers have been mounting a smear campaign against the Frost family that is extraordinarily base even by their nonexistent standards. They did this after Congressional Dems chose young Graeme as a spokesboy on the SCHIP expansion issue. Frost, who was injured in a car crash, delivered an address on the program several weeks ago saying that the program was funding his medical care, prompting the wingers to launch an all-out effort to paint the Frosts as insufficiently needy.

But again and again their assaults on the family have proven to be bogus by that inconvenient and nettlesome intruder known as "reality."

Now their campaign has sunk to such a comically low level that even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page, which opposes the SCHIP expansion, has come out with a new opinion piece denouncing the wingers as an "Internet mob" that is hopelessly wrong on the facts.

WSJ says the false winger attacks are actually helping the Dems, adding:

Despite their howls about "the children," Democrats and their media partners are happy to milk them for political gain.

Unfortunately, that narrative was bolstered this week by some conservative bloggers. After the Schip veto, Democrats chose a 12-year-old boy named Graeme Frost to deliver a two-minute rebuttal. While that was a political stunt, the Washington habit of employing "poster children" is hardly new. But the Internet mob leapt to some dubious conclusions and claimed the Frost kids shouldn't have been on Schip in the first place.

As it turns out, they belonged to just the sort of family that a modest Schip is supposed to help.

Yep. When even the chronically dishonest WSJ editorial page denounces you for dishonesty on an issue it more or less agrees with you about, you're pretty far around the bend. The wingnuts, needless to say, remain unrepentant, howling away as always at illusions and mirages of their own making.

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Still No Word On Gore's Nobel From Serial Gore Mocker Maureen Dowd
(October 14, 2007 -- 8:58 AM EDT // link // )

Yesterday this blog asked what Maureen Dowd -- who's repeatedly mocked Al Gore over the years as a pompous bore and has even on occasion stooped to employing that "Ozone Man" slur -- woulld have to say in today's column about Gore's Nobel Prize.

Now we have our answer: Nothing. But as compensation we do get a little stunt involving Stephen Colbert. Oh, well.

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