Let me get this straight.

by

by von

The Washington Post got the infamous Schiavo memo kinda wrong (and then corrected itself), but PowerLine got the Schiavo memo completely wrong (and hasn’t corrected itself).  So, obviously, the Washington Post is run by a bunch of partisan idiots.  And, just as obviously, PowerLine was the victim of the Nefarious Harkin, the mad Senator who runs Iowa from his secret underground lair.  Thankfully, Hindrocket is on the case.  He’ll get to the bottom of whatever speculative evildoing Harkin probably had to have done. 

Sigh.  This is the "blog of the year," folks.

And don’t forget:  Carter’s a traitor!  (Whoops, he’s not!  Hey, at least Hindrocket "mov[ed] this [nonexistent] story forward.")

Hilzoy already commented on this, but I can’t resist.  Let this also serve notice that you don’t have to be a Democrat to think that PowerLine (and Hindrocket in particular) is being phenomenally two-faced about this story. 

UPDATE:  Michelle Malkin, of all people, has a very evenhanded story on Schiavo-memo-maybe-gate. 

Hmm.  This is weird.  Normally, as a card carrying member of both the Vast-Call-Me-Crazy-But-Locking-People-Up-Based-On-Their-Ethnicity-Is-Kinda-Wrong-Conspiracy ("VCMCBLPUBOTEIKWC") and the Vast-But-Nonexistent-WSJ/Economist-Open-Borders-Conspiracy ("VBNWEOBC"), I tend to oppose Ms. Malkin on principle.  Maybe it’s something I ate.

38 thoughts on “Let me get this straight.”

  2. Good grief. Glenn Reynolds’ “sum-up”:
    This tells us two things we already knew: The press will publish stuff without much in the way of authentication, if it thinks it makes Republicans look bad. And Republicans really were interested in politicizing the Terry Schiavo matter. On both points: Duh.
    Oddly enough, back when it was all “Rathergate,” all the time, it was all about the memo, and precious little was said about the equally “duh” point that Bush’s National Guard service, whatever the details, was maybe a notch or two below wholly admirable. And he seems to have missed the point that the memo turns out to be pretty much exactly what the dreaded MSM said it was. What a shame to see a bright and once-readable guy reduced to such a God-awful hack.

  3. Michelle Malkin, of all people, has a very evenhanded story on Schiavo-memo-maybe-gate.
    Out of context this would look evenhanded. But given how she’s been boosting Powerline’s side of this up until some actual, you know, facts came out, it’s clear to me that she’s in CYA, “No, I swear, I’m a credible pundit!” mode. But then, I’m long past the point of cutting that woman any slack, given all the lies she’s told, insinuated, or uncritically passed along from other, similarly dishonest sources.

  4. “I’m long past the point of cutting that woman any slack”
    Reward good behavior! Even Darth Vader recanted in the end.

  5. Once again:
    Don’t care, don’t care, don’t care. Do you, or do you not, have our Okama Gamesphere.

  6. Reward good behavior! Even Darth Vader recanted in the end.
    Okay, but he saved Luke by tossing the Emperor down a power shaft, not by feebly criticizing the Empire in a belated fit of even-handedness.

  7. Gromit: Okay, but he saved Luke by tossing the Emperor down a power shaft, not by feebly criticizing the Empire in a belated fit of even-handedness.
    Yeah, I can just see the end of Return of the Jedi if Darth Vader had done a Michelle Malkin…

  8. Let’s not go too far into this analogy, or someone will be postulating the Death Star making a test run at Malkin’s house. And we don’t want to go there.

  10. She typically doesn’t do bald-face lying. She tells half-lies; she lies by omission. Which, as every Catholic knows (including Malkin), is just as bad as lying.

  11. She typically doesn’t do bald-face lying. She tells half-lies; she lies by omission. Which, as every Catholic knows (including Malkin), is just as bad as lying.

  12. The real funny in this story.
    Many of the Republican hacks dissed the memo as so obviously craven and disgusting that it could not have been written by Repubs — it had to be a crude Dem plant to make Repubs look bad.
    Except it wasn’t a plant.
    That means each of these Repubs hacks are now on record admitting that the Repubs were crude, craven, disgusting opportunists in the Schiavo matter — the memo now sourced to Repubs is, per their own descriptions, proof of this.

  13. von, a technical note:
    Your update’s very-hyphenated-acronym (VHA) gets cut off in my browser
    (Mozilla).
    So, by the magic of “view page source”, here is the full text:
    Vast-Call-Me-Crazy-But-Locking-People-Up-Based-
    -On-Their-Ethnicity-Is-Kinda-Wrong-Conspiracy

  14. “we’ll leave that test run to John Cornyn, in the library, with a box turtle.”
    Would that be the FDR library?
    Sorry.

  15. Billmon is, as usual, acerbic, funny, and informative on this topic:

    “Let’s dispose of these fallacies quickly:
    A Senator’s legal counsel is not a low-level staffer. He or she is usually the senior legislative aide in the office, and, if the Senator is the chairman of a committee or subcommitee, has a great deal of influence there as well.
    Yes, Martinez is a freshman dork Senator, but he’s not just any freshman dork Senator, he’s a former cabinet secretary with very close ties to the Bush family who was specifically recruited to run for Senate by the president’s brain. He was also the chief sponsor of the Schiavo special legislation and the leadership’s designated point man in the Schiavo debate.
    The original stories — both in the Post and on ABC News — simply reported that the talking points where being circulated among Senate Republicans, which, as we later found out, was confirmed by GOP sources. The stories made no specific claims about the origins of the memo. Now that we know exactly where it came from, the original reporting seems to have been confirmed in all particulars. It’s true that Mike Allen later wrote a story claiming the memo had been distributed by Senate GOP “leadership,” which gets us back to debating who is or is not in the leadership. To which, my considered and thoughtful response to the right is: “Boo f***ing hoo. You lost. Now get over it.””

    Except Billmon didn’t write ‘f***ing’.

  16. “You lost. Now get over it.”
    The problem with involuntary assisted suicide is still a problem, whether it is a political football or not. Maybe Michael Schaivo was within his rights. (I sort of agree that this is the case, with misgivings.) But it is a slippery slope

  17. The problem with involuntary assisted suicide is still a problem
    Or can be, in cases which can be accurately described as “involuntary assisted suicide”. Which, pace various people (mostly in the GOP) who don’t know what they’re talking about, was not the Schiavo case.

  19. Wow! Talk about avoiding reality. Most of these posts don’t even deal with the point that was originally made at Powerline, but the trash talking keeps on.
    Still the facts, in the case are the same… it was not a GOP talking points memo that was distributed to GOP sentators. The story was reported incorrectly. But, hey who cares about that…

  20. smlook,
    “Still the facts, in the case are the same… it was not a GOP talking points memo that was distributed to GOP sentators. The story was reported incorrectly. But, hey who cares about that…”
    When (and it is likely to be within the next day) this statement is proven to be incorrect, what will you do beyond merely retracting this statement (if you will even do that much)? Will it give you any pause that perhaps the party which you are willing to carry so much water for capable of publicly lying about this? Will it cause you to reconsider why you owe so much allegiance to them?

  22. Dan,
    “Will it cause you to reconsider why you owe so much allegiance to them?”
    This only shows your own bias. I feel no allegiance to the GOP.

  23. smlook,
    The only “reporting” shown to be inaccurate to date, and which was not corrected by the parties promulgating the stories, has been the breathless charges by Hindrocket, as well as the Washington Times and Daily Standard stories cited by hilzoy, that the talking points memo was a Democratic forgery. Why do you think Powerline et al. have not retracted and recanted?
    Contrary to your statement and as noted in the post hilzoy quoted above, several Republican sources have confirmed that the memo was cirulated among Senate Republicans.

  24. “This only shows your own bias. I feel no allegiance to the GOP.”
    You feel no allegiance to them, but everything you say comes straight from their talking points? Please give me more credit for intelligence than that.

  25. Dantheman: You feel no allegiance to them, but everything you say comes straight from their talking points?
    Consider what it says about the current parlous state of the Republican Party and the Bush administration that even their most loyal admirers, such as smlook, feel the need to publicly deny any allegience. It really isn’t a party anyone seems to be proud of, anymore.

  26. Jes, that’s kind of encouraging, but things should have been at least as ugly for the Rs last year as they are now. I’m struggling with whether the difference is that people are finally catching on or just that the Rs don’t have the attack machine in full election-year mode. It doesn’t help much if people are convinced in 2005 that the Rs are horrible but can be reminded by November, 2006 that that Ds are even worse.

  27. “it was not a GOP talking points memo that was distributed to GOP sentators.”
    Let’s recap for the hard of hearing:
    The memo was written by the chief counsel to the Republican Senator who was leading the floor debate on a bill the memo is providing talking points for.
    GOP sources in the Senate say they’ve seen it.
    Martinez has already admitted he gave it to Harkin (who lined up with the prolifers on this issue) Are we supposed to believe he gave it to a Democrat but DIDN’T distribute it to any of his fellow Republicans? Please.
    In any case, smlook, what exactly would have to be done to this damn memo before you will admit it was a “GOP memo”? Blessed by the GOP pope?
    Oh wait, Rove’s probably with Shrub in Rome for the funeral.

  30. And another “what Jackmormon said” (“ditto” is a word I try to avoid, lest I draw the attention of the DEA).

  31. I’ll join in praising Billmon’s writings. A source of enlightenment and humor (often in the same post).

  32. Billmon! Welcome. Drop by any time. And for what it’s worth, since you probably haven’t memorized our posting rules, it was they, and not some innate prudishness, that led me to bowdlerize your post.

  33. And for what it’s worth, since you probably haven’t memorized our posting rules, it was they, and not some innate prudishness, that led me to bowdlerize your post.
    You… emasculated Billmon?? Words fail me…

  38. Bill,
    “In any case, smlook, what exactly would have to be done to this damn memo before you will admit it was a “GOP memo”? Blessed by the GOP pope?”
    Yourself or Allen or others could present some facts to support that contention. Are you actually trying to say that Martinez is a GOP pope?
    I have been talking about the accuracy of the reporting… “Allen has not presented any evidence that Martinez even shared the memo with other Republicans, much less that it reflected the thinking of any other, actual “party leaders.”
    So I guess Billman and others still won’t admit that Allen reported as facts facts that don’t seem to be facts at all.
    http://slate.msn.com/id/2116317/

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