How Many Distortions Can You Find?

Check out this exchange between WaPo columnist Richard Cohen and readers. Background here.

"They're Gonna Mock Us Out!"

Unbelievable. People are freaking out over the TUBES!

Then, alluding to the sometimes combative world of online media, they added there was “the real possibility that these letters, once released, would be published on the Internet and their authors discussed, even mocked, by bloggers.”

Why the worry about being published on "the internet"? They could be published in a newspaper, or a magazine, and be discussed, even mocked - but everything's different now, isn't it? People are discussing things, and we can see, watch, read them doing it in nearly real time. And a whole bunch of us can join in! And some people hate that.

It's fun to see.

A Too Kind Response to Joe Klein

Joe Klein, of TIME, at not his lowest, but very, very low.

My response, in which I was much to kind:

Mr. Klein, I'm really trying to understand this part:

"His "perjury"--not telling the truth about which reporters he talked to--would never be considered significant enough to reach trial, much less sentencing, much less time in stir if he weren't Dick Cheney's hatchet man."

He WAS Dick Cheney's hatchet man. Or, a better way to put it: he was the Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States. (Not to mention an assistant to the President.) And he was convicted of two counts of perjury and two counts of obstructing justice. Not enough to reach trial? A career federal prosecutor, a judge on the federal bench, a grand jury, and 12 jurors – well, they’d probably say your remarks don’t even merit a response, but I took the liberty of saying for them: “We disagree.”

And his perjury – and I know you know this, you're not an idiot by any stretch – was not “not telling the truth about which reporters he talked to.” It was lying to FBI investigators and to the grand jury about what he told and what he learned from reporters - and what he learned from the vice president. (Did you forget about Libby telling the FBI that Tim Russert told him Plame worked at the CIA? And that he forgot he learned it from Vice President Cheney? Ring any bells?)

This you turn into “not telling the truth about which reporters he talked to."

Mr. Klein, it is cringingly disappointing to know that someone capable of such a depth of obtuseness is seen as deserving of working at the top tier or our country's media.

A Soldier Responds to Fouad Ajami

Fouad Ajami wrote an op-ed in the WSJ making a case for the pardon of Scooter Libby.

He makes the case by calling Libby, in the title and in the piece, a "fallen soldier" in the war in Iraq.

An actual soldier in the war in Iraq responds.