Consequences

The blogosphere, really, has the potential to be a great innovation in American journalism. As I've argued previously, it represents in many ways the democratization of journalism, the ability of voices of all kinds to participate in the sharing and distribution of information that might otherwise be choked out by the bottleneck that mainstream media have become over the past decade and longer.

But there's an important caveat to all that: If bloggers want to act as journalists, they need to conform to basic journalistic standards. Or they will, in the end, pay for it.

These standards, of course, have come in for severe erosion in recent years, especially as image- and sound-bite-oriented television broadcasters have come to dominate the scene. The product is often a lazy kind of journalism in all spheres of the industry that substitutes "he-said/she-said" reportage for substantive analysis of truthfulness, as well as a willingness to discard basic standards of balance and factuality in pursuit of of proving often partisan theses. This is as true of CBS' manifest failures in vetting the provenance of the Killian documents as it is of the New York Times' steadfast support of Jeff Gerth's clearly shoddy Whitewater reportage.

Nonetheless, the arrival of bloggers on the journalistic scene -- especially their heady self-contratulatory response to having successfully embarassed CBS News -- represents not just a new phase in journalism, but a new phase for bloggers as well.

While CBS' failures are one thing, still, much of the critique of CBS' documents, I believe, is based on utterly useless data that proves absolutely nothing. Indeed, if you want to see yet another example of how one of the bloggers' favorite "proofs" falls apart on close examination, check out Paul Lukasiak's latest contribution to the Document Wars.

The hard reality, for anyone serious about document verification, is that almost nothing can be proven one way or the other about the documents' authenticity without a copy of the original documents themselves in hand. No one has produced these yet, and until there are, everything remains almost purely a matter of speculation.

Unfortunately, this has simultaneously meant that almost any speculation can gain an audience. And right-wing bloggers, their arms still in traction from patting themselves on the back ad nauseam, have continued to attack apace -- including descending full force on anyone who dares question their basic tenets.

This brings us to the case of the folks at Wizbang, who have in recent days been devoting themselves to attacking the work of Utah State professor David Hailey, in particular his research in a study titled "Toward Identifying the Font Used in the Bush Memos", which argues that the CBS documents likely were in fact produced not with a word processor but with a typewriter.

You can get a sense of the tenor of the attacks at the original post with multiple updates, as well as at posts dubbing the matter "Haileygate". While commenters at the blog have been even more crude, the blog's authors have hardly been shy in flinging accusations. Their core mantra is that Hailey is "a liar, a fraud and charlatan." Even in its more toned-down recent posts, the blog's authors insist that Hailey has committed "academic fraud."

This is the same blog which, as I've described previously, fell for a clear hoax from an anonymous Internet poster claiming that Iowa farmer Martin Heldt -- whose FOIA requests uncovered much of what was originally known about Bush's National Guard records -- had tried to sell these documents to various campaigns. Based on the bogus testimony, the Wizbangers decided that Heldt was the "forger" of the documents -- a blatantly wrong and false accusation which it has neither corrected nor apologized for.

They've continued in the same vein with the Hailey report -- openly libeling their subject and accusing him of unethical and potentially criminal behavior, all without the benefit of getting a response from him as well as any consideration of the gravity of the charges. Even their most recent posts continue to assert the "academic fraud" charge.

This has not occurred, of course, without consequences in the real world. As the Deseret News reports, the result of Wizbang's campaign has been a flood of nasty and accusatory e-mails directed at Hailey, his department head, his dean, and even the president of Utah State, demanding Hailey's head for having ventured such a thesis:

Since posting his findings on the Web, Hailey has for the past week received hundreds of e-mails that he now simply forwards to a file he created called "hate mail." The subject line of one e-mail reads, "In more ways than one, you are a fascist hack."

Hailey's plans are to read through the mail more thoroughly for another research project but not until he is "emotionally stable." He said he couldn't sleep Thursday night because people are attacking his credibility and credentials.

"In a virtual reality situation, they're coming on campus and trying to lynch me," Hailey said over the phone.

... Without a request for an interview, USU President Kermit Hall called the Deseret Morning News with his own take on the situation.

"Whoever it is," Hall said of the e-mails, "is clearly trying to intimidate the university and trying to intimidate Professor Hailey."

Hall called Hailey's research "legitimate" and said the professor has every right to engage in and publicize the research.

"There's been an effort to suggest that the administration put him up to this -- the answer to that is, 'wrong,' " Hall added. "There's a suggestion that the purpose of his work is to join some kind of political action -- that's wrong."

Hall called the blogging and e-mails the "worst kind of smear" against academic research and the opportunity for academics to share their research within academe and with the "wider" public.

... An unidentified person claiming to represent the www.wizbangblog.com Web site called Smitten and accused Hailey of "academic misconduct." There were 50 pages of blog entries critical of Hailey on the Wizbang site as of Friday.

Hailey's heresy, of course, was arguing thus in the conclusion of his study:

Since current odds hold that the Bush memos are faked, the question of their authenticity turns to whether CBS should have known they were inauthentic – if, in fact, they are. In fact, there seems to be nothing in the memos that indicates they are faked. All evidence points toward a mechanical production process and away from a digital process.

Furthermore, the mechanical process seems to be consistent with typewriters used in the military at the time in question.

If I had been one of the experts advising CBS, I would have advised them that there is nothing physical in the memos implying they are not authentic. All indicators imply they are authentic. I would have told them that from my point of view, the memos are worthy of presenting to the public.

It's worth noting, of course, that Hailey brings a highly specialized set of credentials to the puzzle:

I served in the U.S. military (Army) from 1963 to 1972. For five of those seven years I was an Army illustrator responsible for short run publications including memos such as those in question. Ultimately, I have a total of almost 35 years experience examining document production, including analyzing and spec’ing type. I have an archive that includes military documents produced between 1963 and 1984 and have access to a repository of military documents here at the university. Finally, I have extensive experience using computers to manage and manipulate images, including type.

I interviewed Dr. Hailey today by phone from his office in Logan. He maintained that his research was sound, readily refuted his critics, and pointed toward further steps that he thinks will eventually exonerate him.

He told me that he had personally received hundreds of e-mails, nearly all of them nasty and accusatory, nearly all of them calling him a fraud. As the News reported, his department head had received a call accusing him of "academic misconduct." So far, he said, the confrontations had not invaded his home or his personal life.

The core accusation by Wizbang -- that he had cut and pasted an upper-case "th" into the document -- he said, represented a basic misunderstanding of what he was presenting. As the study itself warns:

Using the hypothesis established from examining the Bush memos, it becomes possible to create a virtually flawless replica. Please understand, however, the replica is not typed. It is produced by examining and replicating the original font used in the memo. It is not a demonstration that I can type a replica memo, it is a demonstration that the font in the memo is probably Typewriter.

Hailey said that the entire lines of reproduced type are simply sample letters of the type he hypothesizes is the actual type in the memos -- namely, a condensed Slab/Serif version of an IBM font similar to ITC American Typewriter, and not the oft-hypothesized Times New Roman -- essentially cut and pasted in the proper order.

"At no point do I claim that this reproduces the memo on a typewriter," Hailey told me. "Every letter in it, in fact, is cut and pasted. That's explicit in the exercise."

In fact, that's the whole point of Hailey's work: It is simply a hypothesis. He hasn't reached any final conclusion, because none is finally possible without the original documents. What he is doing is examining the available evidence and arguing within the limits imposed by them.

And all Hailey is claiming, if you read his study carefully, is that he believes the font in the memos is that particular version of the IBM font similar to Typewriter. The evidence to substantiate his hypothesis, he believes, could be found by examining other documents produced within the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at that same time period.

Here's what he told me today:

To be perfectly honest, my research up to this point was strictly to examine this font and determine if it was Times New Roman. And then it was to go a step further and say, OK, if it's not Times New Roman, what is it? Not specific font, just what font family it is. And that's what I've been doing up to this point.

Now, having done that, basically, I'm finished with this research project, and all I have to do is finish writing up this report. But the next project is going to be to track down duplicate documents -- documents done on the same machine.

I was prepared to go on and just do my other research -- because this was an academic process. I just said -- oh look, here's what I see, this is how I see it, this is why I see it this way.

Basically, I end by saying, I'm not saying that these documents are authentic. I'm saying that if somebody will go out and look at all the documents in the 111th, they will either find documents that match this -- in which case this is probably authentic -- or they will not find documents that match this, which means this is bogus. And that's what I said.

It's also worth noting, of course, that Hailey's critics have focused on line reproductions, which are secondary to his argument, and ignored the heart of his thesis: namely, that multiple examples of particularized wear on certain of the letters in the documents -- especially the "e"s and "t"s -- are typical of letters produced by mechanical typewriters and are not likely to appear in a word-processor document.

Moreover, even the celebrated superscript "th" provides evidence the document was produced by a typewriter:

Superscripts on a computer font tend to be low, permitting the printer to print a line in most cases in a single pass. For typewriters, height is not so important. This does not say that the superscript could not be digital. The quality of the superscript "th" in the Bush Memos is so bad that deriving much information other than its relative placement is impossible.

The overwhelming evidence that the documents were produced by a typewriter led Hailey to conclude that there was a high likelihood they were authentic. After all, if that was the case, then there was an extremely low likelihood that any forger could have pulled it off. As he explained to me:

If this was a forgery, then this person typed that thing on a machine that no one's going to believe. The person couldn't possibly have chosen a worse typewriter and a more difficult to find typewriter to do this forgery on. Which means that if they are typed, probably they are authentic.

If you apply Occam's Razor, then this guy is either extremely brilliant, because what he has is this very specialized typewriter that is so unique that there's only one like it just every thousand miles kind of thing. And it is actually the typewriter that was used at that center. So this person actually knows that this typewriter was there and that there will be paper there -- there will be memos there and other projects there that will match. And if it's a fraud, it's that good.

We'll leave it to Dr. Hailey's further investigations to determine whether or not his hypothesis holds up. In the meantime, it's clear that if nothing else, his critics at Wizbang, and their associated minions, have fallen far short of giving his work a fair hearing.

As David A at ISOU observed:

I feel that Wizbang and its writers have every right to question research and reporting that they disagree with, I do not feel they have the right to destroy someone's career because they disagree with them. If the professor is guilty of some sort of fraud, his University should be free to investigate under their standard academic processes, not be overwhelmed and pressured by a bunch of partisan hacks who likely don't even understand all the complexities of his research.

Conservatives get very upset when you use the Nazi metaphor to describe their tactics, and I am loath to do so under anything but the most extreme cases, but let the chips fall where they may in this case. Call it McCarthyism, Nazism, Digital Fascism, whatever, but limiting debate on an issue to all but those who agree fanatically with you, and attempting to squelch any opposing point of view, represents the very traits that many of my Right Wing friends protest as metaphors for their behavior. This case... clearly to me, is a scary one for its implications, and while I agree that the Rather documents were fakes, I don't agree that someone should have their life and credibility destroyed because they don't happen to share my beliefs...

David needn't worry, actually. Because the folks at Wizbang are about to discover that there are consequences for leveling these charges.

While it's true that, as the Deseret News reported, Hailey himself is not considering legal action against the authors of the Wizbang posts that have openly libeled him, the same cannot be said of the officials at Utah State University.

Hailey, in fact, assured me that the university's attorneys consider the Wizbang posts "fully actionable" and are in the process of preparing legal remedy for the defamation of character that the blog has leveled both against Hailey and the university. It's difficult to say at this point whether they will act on it, but there's at least some likelihood they will.

This is a matter of academic freedom to USU officials, Hailey said. "When you start attacking legitimate research just because you don't think it's something that should be explored, you're attacking the right of academics to work freely. That's an important battle for them."

Interestingly, in another post, one of the Wizbang authors boasted of the new status of bloggers:

It was my adventure debunking Professor Hailey that lead me to an epiphany. I no longer what to be called a blogger and neither should you.

We are not bloggers, We are independent, peer reviewed journalists.

Well, OK. Fair enough. Just about anyone who wants to can probably call himself a journalist, really. That's the whole point of blogging, isn't it? To disseminate information that should be circulating in the journalistic media but isn't.

But the newly proclaimed journalists of the blogosphere might want to pause for a moment and consider some advice from a journalist who has been through a few document wars and court threats: If you're going to level serious charges of unethical or scandalous or especially criminal behavior, then you had by God better be ready to back it up in court.

There remains in full force today a body of libel law that makes it posssible for aggrieved parties to file civil actions against persons who level such charges in public and in print, and the mere fig leaf of free-speech rights will not protect you if you have failed to meet basic standards of truthfulness, fairness and factuality. This is as true for bloggers as it is for the ink-stained wretches who man the front lines of actual print publications.

Now, it's true that for public figures -- thanks to New York Times v. Sullivan, libel laws are nearly unusable for anyone who rises to the level of "public figure." That's because public figures now must be able to establish "malicious intent" on the part of the libeler, and such proof is a real rarity. However, this limitation does not hold for private figures such as Dr. Hailey (though it may, in fact, for the university).

So here's what is probably about to happen: USU's attorneys will send legal letters to the Wizbang authors demanding a full retraction (and, if justice is served, a full apology to both Hailey and the university), upon pain of facing a civil action for libel. If the authors refuse, then they'll be served with more papers detailing the civil lawsuit filed against them.

It's ugly, but it's a hard, cold fact of the real world of journalism.

In any event, the Wizbang authors may soon find themselves wishing they had applied a little old-fashioned journalistic prudence before rushing to print with their manifestly reckless accusations.

But in the process, they may provide a useful object lesson for us all.

The death of America

We've already gotten, courtesy of the Republican Party, dire warnings about the evil Democratic conspiracy to destroy America through gay marriage and banning the Bible.

Now House Majority Leader Tom DeLay holds forth on the subject of gay marriage:

Insisting that "Peter and Paul cannot be mothers, and Mary and Jane cannot be fathers," DeLay argued in an emotional closing statement that such marriages would destroy the nation.

"This country will go down," DeLay warned, going so far as to say that without "ideal" unions of man and woman, "Gangs form, and gangs become the substitute for families. Everyone knows that."

Sure, Tom. We wouldn't want gangs of America-haters disrupting our way of life, would we?

In the meantime, I'll consider myself duly warned. Those vicious gangs of gays and lesbians who have been getting married in the Capitol Hill area must be really scary.

[Via Ayn Clouter at The American Street.]

Nasty days are here

Now that the dust has settled, it's more than abundantly clear that John Kerry kicked George W. Bush's squinting, smirking little kabootie in last night's debate. The polls are likely to reflect a shift in his favor. And that means it's about to get really nasty.

It's become clear (as long predicted) that the central theme of the Republicans in this year's campaign is going to be: A vote for Democrats is a vote for terrorists. (See, e.g., the ad that appeared on the RNC Website: "10 out of 10 terrorists agree: Anybody But Bush!") That was, as just noted, the context of one of Bush's more notable evasions last night.

This meme has already been in play for awhile, and we're going to start hearing it a lot more. Of course, if you want to get to the meat of the GOP meme du jour, go to the wellspring. Ann Coulter, as always, boils down the meme to its essential in this interview at Amazon:

Amazon.com: How important is this presidential election in the larger context of the Republic and its history?

Ann Coulter: Insofar as the survival of the Republic is threatened by the election of John Kerry, I'd say 2004 is as big as it gets.

Amazon.com: Is there one standout issue, and why does it make a difference? What are the most crucial issues?

Coulter: I repeat: The survival of the Republic is threatened by the election of John Kerry. I'd say that's the big one.

... Amazon.com: What would a Kerry administration mean?

Coulter: Quite possibly the destruction of the Republic.

Talk about staying "on message."

Now, it doesn't take a majority of the country to make widespread belief in this meme a serious problem. I mean, if you believed that the very survival of the nation itself rested on defeating John Kerry, wouldn't you be willing to resort to just about anything to prevent it?

The mainstream conservatives who propagate this belief -- from Bush to Cheney on down -- are effectively radicalizing their supporters, at least those who take their pronouncements as Gospel. Anymore, that's about 30 percent of the population -- a minority, but sizeable enough to be a serious problem.

And believe me, it is getting nasty out there.

We've already seen, of course, incidents of arson and vandalism directed at Democratic campaign offices; assaults on protesters at Bush/Cheney appearances; and generally ratcheted-up levels of political thuggery.

Look: There's always a certain amount of nastiness in any election, and it's usually an equal-opportunity situation. Certain conservatives haven't enjoyed any monopoly on nastiness, this year or any other.

But the increased levels of threats, intimidation, and dirty tricks like sign theft, as well as the sheer number of problems, are heavily on the Republican side this year, especially in rural and suburban districts.

It's being directly encouraged by such pseudo-fascist threads as the "Democrats=terrorists" theme, as well as incidents such as Dick Cheney telling Pat Leahy, "Go fuck yourself" on the Senate floor -- and then not only refusing to apologize for it, but clearly recommending it as a course of action.

Longtime readers are aware I've been cataloguing the rise of this eliminationist nastiness for some time, and will continue to do so here. The latest updates, in fact, are indicative of another ratchet-step forward in an increasingly violent and intimidating approach to the 2004 campaign, particularly on the ground level. It's a level that hasn't raised itself to being newsworthy on a broad scale; but like a low-grade fever, it can be a harbinger as well.

Take, for instance, the recent report from Pulling Out the Savoy Truffle on the following incident out of Rockingham County, North Carolina:

As reported in a full color above-the-fold front page article in The Messenger today, the local newspaper, several houses, including (some) on on the NC Register of Historic Places, were paint balled last week apparently because they had Kerry/Edwards signs in their yards. Houses in the same neighborhood that had no yard signs, or had Bush signs, were not hit by the gun propelled missiles.

On 9/16, the Eden Daily News carried a front page below-the-fold article datelined Madison which described how vandals were tearing down over 50 Kerry/Edwards signs almost as fast as they were put out. A local Democrat who had signs stolen said "Bush is the problem. He made this country divisive. We'll all have to pull together after the election is over. We've got to be bigger than tearing down signs."

In response to the article, Tommy Harrington, Chairman of the local Republican Party published a long "Second Opinion" article in the Eden News on Sept. 22nd, addressing the story. A bitter former Democrat who switched some years ago after serving as a State Highway Commissioner, Harrington launched into personal attacks on the reporter and the person quoted in her article. A practicing lawyer in Eden, Harrington made these comments about John Edwards and Congressional Democrats:

"They have divided this country, and the crime is they have done is deliberately. They are the ones who have turned other nations against us; they are the ones who have helped kill American military personnel by encouraging our enemies. It is undeniable that Mr. Kerry and his organization have given aid and comfort to enemies of this nation. Such actions as this can best be described as 'treasonous.'"

Before Harrington's article appeared, Dick Cartwright, Chairman of the local Democratic Party sent a letter to Harrington, notifying him of the sign vandalism and paint ball incident by his Republican supporters, and sent an abbreviated copy to local newspapers. Cartwright said, "I am asking you to enter into an informal agreement that you and I will do whatever we reasonably can to avoid this kind of vandalism and threat to private property for the duration of this election. I'm sure you are as embarrassed by the behavior of your supporters as we are upset by it. Hopefully, if you can speak forcefully to your people, we shall have no more of this".

Meanwhile, as the story of the paint balling incident spreads, questions begin to arise as to what can be done. Madison Police Chief Perry Webster was quoted as saying "It seem as though they were targets because of the Democratic signs in their yards. We're not going to tolerate it. We will find out who they are". He said a citizen has stepped up to offer a reward for information on the crime that leads to the arrest and conviction of whoever is responsible. "We've always had removal of signs, but I don't recall any damage being done."

Then there was this report out of Minnesota (via 42) involving the actual distribution of hate literature:

...[A]t least 17 families with lawn signs supporting John Kerry received hate-filled diatribes that were inserted in greeting cards.

The mailings were addressed to "Doltocrat." In the envelopes, recipients found greeting cards with perky messages ranging from "Happy Rosh Hashanah" to "Get Well Soon." When the cards were opened, three pages of typewritten hate oozed out.

"You have committed yourself to supporting Kerry as evidenced by your subversive and immorally-suggestive Kerry lawn sign display ... and it will be practically impossible for you to back out and retract it now. ..."

And on and on. The mailings included praise for Hitler. Attacks on gays and Jewish people and "not-so-Christian" churches. Attacks on Kerry. Praise for President Bush.

I've also received personal e-mails from readers in affected areas. Thomas Gordanier writes to me from Silverton, Oregon:

To get straight to the point, Republican yahoos have been swiping signs at a fairly impressive clip, with some signs getting less that 24 hours of lawn-life before some bozo in a pickup swipes it. This has been happening in Salem and Portland as well. People more or less have to bring their signs in at night or have them not be there in the morning. There are plenty of Bush/Cheney signs, but none of them have gone missing.

An Indymedia poster named Michelle reports that things are getting ugly in Nevada County, California, as well:

In my county, the threats are getting bigger and bolder. There are written threats and phone threats to all democratic candidates for all offices, including school board! Our last democrat was pressured to become republican.

...Most of our county democrats are senior citizens, and they are afraid to put bumper stickers on their cars, ride in cars with Kerry or local Dem stickers on it, etc.

These reports are less reliable, perhaps, but the sheer level of them this year strikes me as unusual.

And then there are cases in which Bush campaign staffers appear to be directly involved in intimidation attempts, such as the one recently reported in the Cincinatti Post:

Last weekend, minutes after obtaining two tickets to President Bush's huge rally Monday in West Chester, Caudell said she had the tickets ripped from her hand by two men who objected to the Kerry bumper sticker on her car.

The men, Caudell said, blocked her from getting into her car outside the West Chester office of Rep. John Boehner, one of the GOP's distribution points for the rally tickets, until one forcibly took the tickets from her. The two 40-ish men -- who Caudell believes were Bush campaign volunteers -- also were verbally abusive, calling her a "sinner" and "terrorist" for supporting Kerry and even going far as to suggest that she might intend to harm Bush at the rally.

... Although an ardent Kerry supporter whose interest in politics and the presidential race was aroused by a government class last spring, Caudell said she wanted to attend the Bush rally at Voice of America Park simply for the thrill of seeing a presidential visit virtually in her own backyard.

"I always wanted to hear the president speak," Caudell said. "How often is the president in West Chester?"

For Caudell, the ticket episode was not the only time that her preference for Kerry has drawn harsh reactions in heavily Republican West Chester. Her car, which until recently also had "Vote for Kerry" painted on its back window, has been spit on, and the 17-year-old, in her mother's words, frequently has had "single digits waved at her" while driving.

None of those past incidents, though, was as troubling as that which unfolded in the parking lot outside Boehner's office Saturday.

After picking up the tickets, Caudell said, she was confronted by a man who, seeing her getting into a car with a Kerry bumper sticker and the Kerry slogan painted on its rear window, asked whether she was a Kerry supporter. When she replied that she was, the man, by then joined by a second man, called her a terrorist for not supporting Bush, Caudell said.

"I said, 'If a Democrat was in the White House, would you support him?'" Caudell said. "He said, 'No.' And I said, 'Then by your own definition, you're a terrorist, too.'"

To that, Caudell said, the man told the 5-foot-3 cheerleader: "You're pretty snippy for someone so small."

The first man, who Caudell said did most of the talking -- with the second basically echoing his remarks -- grabbed her car door to prevent her from getting in and told her he would not allow her to leave until she surrendered the tickets. When she refused, he tore them from her hand, Caudell said.

This all took place before the debates, when their candidate was riding a steady lead in the polls and they were confident of victory.

As the tide turns, it's not going to get any nicer.

On message

I especially noted one little bit of evasion from Mr. Bush in tonight's debate:

LEHRER: New question, Mr. President, two minutes.

Do you believe the election of Senator Kerry on November the 2nd would increase the chances of the U.S. being hit by another 9/11-type terrorist attack?

BUSH: No, I don't believe it's going to happen. I believe I'm going to win, because the American people know I know how to lead. I've shown the American people I know how to lead.

Bush's answer actually conceded the thesis of the question: That Kerry's election would in fact increase the likelihood of terrorist attack. He just denied that there was any chance that outcome could happen.

Which has something of an ominous ring, doesn't it?

Lying with impunity

I know it's well past time to move on regarding George Bush's National Guard records, thanks to CBS' contamination of the story in the public's mind.

But it is well worth noting that Team Bush now is so confident that the public has been officially bamboozled they will openly and publicly lie on the record about Bush's service.

In fact, the White House officially uttered a naked falsehood today in response to continuing questions about those National Guard records:

The answers also addressed why Bush skipped a required physical in the summer of 1972, prompting the termination of his pilot status. "The president was transferring to Alabama to perform equivalent duty in a non-flying capacity, making a flight physical unnecessary," the White House said.

This is simply and transparently false. It is not merely misleading; it falsifies just what Bush's obligations were. It also falsifies the facts of the sequence of events.

Bush was in fact suspended for failure to take a physical on Aug. 1, 1972. This fact has never been in dispute. What no one has discussed, of course, is the very fact of a suspension is a serious black mark on any military pilot's record.

Bush did not even apply to transfer to the unit for which he was approved until Sept. 5. It specifically applies for only a three-month transfer to non-flying status.

Bush's transfer to Alabama was approved Sept. 15. Again, it was only for the three-month period requested, and specifically notes: "Lieutenant Bush will not be able to satisfy his flight requirements with our group."

You see, Bush was expected to return to flying duty in Texas once the Alabama duty was complete, because that was what he had signed up for. Even if Bush was transferring temporarily to non-flying status, he was required to maintain his flight status at all times. This is standard military-pilot regulation. Skipping a physical is not an option.

As Paul Lukasiak has pointed out:

The first explanation given by the Bush campaign back in 2000 was that he didn't get the physical because he was in Alabama and his family physician was in Texas. When it was pointed out that only Air Force flight surgeons could administer a flight physical, the Bush campaign came up with a new excuse -- Bush didn't take the physical because there were no planes for him to fly in Alabama.

This, of course, is pure balderdash, because maintaining one's flight status was a requirement of Bush's Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC), which is Air Force jargon for "his job." Even if Bush couldn't do his job temporarily for some reason, he was still required to maintain his flight status. Bush had only two choices, either accomplish the physical, or ask for a new job that did not require flight status.

The White House's contention that the Alabama transfer "made a physical unnecessary" is simply and nakedly false.

The only scenario under which the physical would have been unnecessary were if Bush had applied for a waiver of his commitment and transfer of duties. In fact, Bush did not apply for such a discharge or transfer of duties until Sept. 5, 1973 -- more than a full year after his suspension. At no time in that year did he ever seek to reinstate his flight status. Nor, evidently, did he ever show back up at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas.

It is worth noting that Bush had in fact applied for temporary transfer to an Alabama unit for which he was not eligible (and had been informed of this ineligibility by his superiors) on May 26, 1972. Headquarters officially disallowed the request on July 31. Dan Bartlett, Bush's spokesman, has argued that he was in contact with his superiors the whole time and was proceeding on their approval. But it is simply not conceivable that any officer would have recommended Bush skip his physical, particularly not under the circumstances of a temporary transfer. So it is almost certainly not a coincidence that a day after the HQ denial, Bush was suspended.

Now, we've also heard a great deal about claims that Bush, before he stopped flying in April 1972, logged heavy hours of pilot service. This is ulimately, however, irrelevant. What is relevant is this:

When Bush signed up with the Texas Air National Guard, he signed a commitment to fly jets for a total of 72 months.

He flew, in fact, for a total of 40 months, including his training.

In other words, Bush fulfilled only a little more than half of his sworn commitment.

That should speak for itself.

UPDATE: Remember how every right-wing blogger on the planet was certain that those CBS documents were produced on a word processor? Turns out that, according to at least one respected forensicist, they were made by a typewriter after all. Hmm. [Thanks to the Ox and Mary Schumacher at Table Talk.]

Killing Ay-rabs

You know, it sure is comforting to hear from certain sectors of the American right that their hatred of "Arab terrorists" is not racist -- oh, no, not at all! How dare we even suggest that? Right, Glenn? Right, Charles?

Of course, it's a little harder to explain away letters like the one that recently appeared approvingly in the right-wing blog Horsefeathers, clearly advocating genocide directed toward the whole of "Arab-Muslim culture" -- including those who live in America:

I've worked hard all my adult life to provide for my family, to be useful, and not go out of my way to injure anyone. Like most Americans, I knew little about arab-muslim culture and believed that the developed nations were partly responsible for the poverty and authoritarian regimes that infest the middle east.

Things changed on 9/11/01 when you ruined the lives of at least 10,000 Americans.

These people instantly became my countrymen and you became my mortal enemy.

Ordinary Americans are arming themselves for war with you. I and many of my friends have closets full of handguns, rifles, shotguns and thousands of cartridges.

If we had enough ammunition and time, we would kill every last one of you.

We completely support our President and our armed forces. We only wish they would destroy you faster, but we are certain that they will.

We no longer listen to the insane words of Kerry, Harkin, Kennedy, Clark, and others whom we now see as ideologues who would sacrifice our country and our lives on the alter of their vanity and desire for power.

We no longer listen to our secular mullahs, our media fools, preaching hatred of America and sapping our will with their lies and deceptions.

We watch your cowardly methods of killing by beheading. We are disgusted. But we are not afraid.

You turn your women and children into walking bombs. We are disgusted. But we are not afraid.

You shoot and rape children. You kill their mothers before their eyes. You burn, hang, and tear apart the bodies of your victims, and then play with body parts. We are disgusted. But we are not afraid.

Why should we fear you? What ARE you to be feared? You are cowards. Your bravado is a clown mask that hides the soul of a ghoul. You are not able even to manufacture the knives you use to butcher your bound victims.

One day soon, our planes and missiles will begin turning your mosques, your madrasses, your hotels, your government offices, your hideouts, and your
neighborhoods into rubble.

And then our soldiers will enter your cities and begin the work of killing you, roaches, as you crawl from the debris.

As cowards, you will have your hands in the air and you will get on your knees begging for mercy. And we will instead give you justice. Your actions and your
words long ago placed you far from any considerations of mercy. You are not men.

And if you come to this country and harm a child, shoot a mother, hijack a bus, or bomb a mall, we will do what we did in 1775. Millions of us will form militias.

We will burn your mosques.

We will invade the offices of pro-arab-muslim organizations, destroy them, and drag their officers outside.

We will tell the chancellors of universities either to muzzle or remove anti American professors, whose hatred for their own country we have tolerated only
because we place a higher value on freedom of speech. But we will no longer tolerate treason. We will muzzle and remove them.

We will transport arab-muslims to our deserts, where they can pray to scorpions under the blazing sun.

No doubt, that last item would be justified by people waving Michelle Malkin's In Defense of Internment.

Not that Michelle herself is "advocating" such steps, mind you. Heavens no.

Pseudo-fascism? How dare we even suggest such a thing?

UPDATE: The author of the letter -- a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington named Martin Kozloff -- has posted the following in the Horsefeathers comments:

I am so disheartened, but not surprised, by what is happening.

How long did democracy last in Greece? Not long.

Or Rome? Not long.

Why? They stopped DOING democracy and started doing class/group warfare. They tried to defend their own positions and not work for the good of the whole.

I can barely stand the amount of conflict among our own citizenry over this war. Instead of examining as much evidence as possible and then making reasoned decisions, each side--hawk and dove--merely advances its pre-estabished position and attacks the other side. This, I feel, is tearing our country apart. It also means that sheer power, rather than democratic processes, will decide our nation's future.

I wish to make it clear that...

The letter was NOT my opinion.

I was NOT advocating ANYTHING in that letter.

The letter was sociological in intent. It was a literary device to get readers to examine their own assumptions.

I have NO hatred of Arabs or Muslims in general--only killers, as clearly stated in the letter.

I do not advocate killing anyone or burning anything. I do not consider Arabs or Muslims to be roaches. I do not advocate killing people who beg for mercy. I do not advocate muzzling professors. Anyone who knows me, knows the truth of what I just said.

The letter was expressing the feelings and drives of what I see in more and more Americans.

I did not sign my name to it precisely because it did NOT represent my opinion.

When read dispassionately, it should be clear that when the words "arab muslim" were used , they referred to people designed as "our enemies"--NOT to all Arabs and Muslims merely. The letter also made it quite clear that "arab muslims" and "our enemies" were the people (called "you," again and again in the letter) who are engaged in beheading, raping, mutilating, burning, hanging, and bombing.

Further evidence that the letter was a device designed to get people to face their own assumptions and feelings, was that I SAID EXACTLY THAT on websites where it was originally posted. [I did not first put a link to it on the University website.]

For example, I wrote this in the "Comments" section of the Horsefeathers websiste...

"I was writing what I believe will happen if our enemies attack us again."

Again...

"I (boldface) advocated nothing. I (boldface) said what I thought was happening and was going to happen even more if we were attacked again.
"Perhaps instead of attacking me (which is okay if you need a target) why not discuss the issues? For example,

"At what point or under what conditions will citizens begin to form militias to protect themselves?

"When is it a good/bad thing for them to do so?

"Under what conditions will citizens take the law into their own hands, as they say?

"When is this a good/bad thing to do?

"Under what conditions will citizens violate what had been their own moral code (such as not harming noncombatants) in order to protect themselves.

"Under what conditions do ordinary persons begin to see themselves as soldiers?

"These questions are more important than whether I am (or you are) the bigger %$$wit."

Clearly, these are sociological questions. Had I been the sort of racist war hawk that anodyne web asserts, I would not have raised those sociological questions; I would simply have attacked other commenters.

I posted the faked position on the Horsefeathers webiste because I thought it would enable us to discuss in a more rational way how we as a country may be changing--for the worse.

If anyone continues to believe that I was intended to incite violence or that I am a racist, they have only their own hardened positions to blame.

Sure. And the dog ate his homework.

The fires of corruption

Just imagine, for a moment, what would have happened during the Clinton administration if a Democratic congressman had run afoul of the law and was under investigation by federal authorities, only to have them called off the case by high-ranking administration officials after they met with said congressman.

Imagine the kind of "scandal" that would be generated by the right-wing propaganda machine over such a case. Imagine the cries of "corruption" and "cronyism" that would emanate from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, nonstop. Imagine the demands for a full investigation of the situation.

Well, we've known for a long time that a double standard is in play with both the media and the American right when it comes to illegal and corrupt behavior. It's only a scandal if a Democrat is involved; it's OK, of course, if you're a Republican.

Now consider the case of South Carolina Rep. Henry Brown, who, as reported by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, set a fire on his private property that he negligently allowed to burn out of control. Forest Service officials were preparing to charge him accordingly -- but were called off by the Bush administration:

On March 5, 2004, Rep. Brown conducted a prescribed burn on his property adjoining the national forest. Brown had a state permit authorizing a 25-acre burn but he set the fire on a day in which a "Red Flag Alert" was issued due to high winds. The fire quickly burned more than 200 acres of Brown's land and crossed over into the national forest, burning another 20 acres there. The Forest Service needed a helicopter, three fire engines and a bulldozer to bring the fire under control. A Forest Service review of the fire found that Brown was negligent:

"Mr. Brown was not adequately prepared to detect, or adequately equipped to suppress, the escaped fire on 5 March 2004 with only two men, a bucket of water, and no means of delivery of that water to the escaped fire."

... When Forest Service officials informed Rep. Brown that he would be cited for the fire, the Congressman expressed concern that his political opponents would find out about it and warned that if the Forest Service persisted its programs "might need to be scrutinized more closely." Brown then reportedly contacted agency officials at higher and higher levels without receiving the assurance of non-prosecution. It was not until he met with Agriculture Undersecretary Rey, a former timber lobbyist, that he extracted a promise to drop the matter. Even after agency specialists ruled that the collections requirement could not be waived, on August 24th, law enforcement agents were directed by email, "we are to take no action."

As the PEER spokesman suggested, this is a matter of corruption, pure and simple. That Brown has behaved corruptly -- the subject of a Charleston Post and Courier report -- is only part of the story.

The real issue, of course, is the behavior of Mark Rey:

In early May, Brown met with Bosworth and Natural Resources and Environment Undersecretary Mark Rey, a Bush appointee and former timber industry lobbyist.

The complaint says Brown told the men "he was concerned about being issued a (ticket) and about being billed for the costs of suppressing the fire, especially because this was an election year."

Bosworth told Brown he would not be billed, the complaint says, and USDA staff attorneys looked for a way to legally get out of charging the congressman. One memo said the chief "has a real credibility issue here," according to the complaint.

Two days later, Gregory was ordered not to ticket Brown. He was told the order came from Rey.

Rey's office said Tuesday, however, that the case had not been closed. Through a spokesman, Rey said he could not comment further.

But don't hold your breath waiting for anyone in the so-called liberal national media to even bother addressing this.

[Via GOTV.]

Radio Free Orcinus

Just got back from a very pleasant trip to sunny Southern California. The three of us enjoyed the sun and surf in San Diego for three days, and I got in some media work too.

Most pleasant of all was our Saturday dinner with the esteemed TBogg and his charming and lovely wife. We got to try to Timpani for the first time, and it was a great night of conversation. We owe.

The Friday evening talk at Temecula Valley was worthwhile, even though I was quite rummy from having been up since early early morning. But the audience -- mostly members of the newly formed Not In Our Valley coalition -- was quite engaged, and I was impressed with their determination to make a difference. Thanks again to Kynn Bartlett for setting it all up.

I also was on the San Diego's XETV Fox Morning News program on Monday for a brief discussion of hate crimes.

But unquestionably the most rewarding media time was the hour I spent Sunday in Los Angeles on Ian Masters' Background Briefing on KPFK-FM.

Ian and I ranged across a number of subjects, from hate crimes to fascism and the conservative movement. If you click on the link above, you can get a download that will play the whole hour. Check it out, if you have the time.

Many thanks to producer Louis Vandenberg for setting up the show. (And if you have the time and inclination, you might want to pitch in to help Louis in his decidedly uphill battle for a seat in California's 44th District.)

The Rise of Pseudo Fascism

[Part 1: The Morphing of the Conservative Movement]

Part 2: The Architecture of Fascism

The conservative movement's transformation into pseudo-fascism isn't immediately discernible because there's nothing recognizably exceptional about any single aspect of it. Indeed, most of it seems all too familiar.

Part of the problem, of course, is that we've come to think of fascism as primarily a European phenomenon. That's partly because fascism reflects the respective national identity of the nations where it arises; Nazism, for instance, was full of Germanic symbolism, and Italian fascism likewise suggested its national heritage. Its appearance in America, as such, will have little immediate resemblance to those earlier permutations.

Another reason it's unlikely to be recognized is that part of the mythology that has sprung up around fascism is that it is dead -- that it died in that Berlin bunker in 1945. But as reader Dante M writes:

Classical fascism is dead, and has been for a long time, despite the fevered wishes of skinheads and American Nazi Party members. But *fascism* as an ideology remains: it's the Devil of the 20th Century, and its best trick was fooling people into thinking it doesn't exist anymore, or that it was defeated in 1945, or that they'd know it when they see it (propaganda is another boogeyman that people are confident that they recognize on sight, even though the best propaganda never gets seen for what it is). Maybe fascism is a natural human reaction to hard times -- a push for the certainty that is so missing from modern (and postmodern) life: People. Nation. Leader.

The idea has evolved to fit the times, which is something that most people don't recognize -- you say "Fascist" and they will conjure up recognizable images (Hitler, mass rallies, WW II, etc.). Or else it's a slur without much thought behind it. No serious, practicing neo-fascist would ever use that word to describe themselves -- only the most diehard Hitler worshippers would proudly tag themselves as "fascists." I'd even wager that the most actually fascist of reactionaries would be offended if you called them that. They'd say they were patriots, and then call you a traitor.

Even the Nazis and the Fascists of Italy used a lot of tactics before assuming power, which is why fascism presents such a protean, serpentine aspect -- that's key to understanding them. The goal of the fascist is the assumption of absolute power -- the one-party police state. That's what they've always been about. Everything else is secondary to that objective. …

Fascism is a poisonous ideology that grows and adapts to its circumstances -- Eurofascism reflected European vices; American fascism is similarly home-brewed. Therein lies the challenge in identifying it and combating it. Fascism always wraps itself in the flag, always seeks absolute power, always brands opponents as traitors, always relies heavily on propaganda for dissemination of its ideas, always invokes subversive enemies (at home and abroad), always embraces militarism and permanent war, always favors politicizing of police functions (and expanding them and the surveillance state), always scorns intellectuals, artists, and bourgeois democratic values, always is hostile to leftist and labor movements, and is obsessed with idealized images of a mythic "better time" of the past (while at the same time destroying that past, and the nation as a whole).

Fascism continues to live on because it derives from the meeting of human traits as ancient as Cain and the relatively recent rise of mass politics. It is, moreover, a phenomenon specifically associated with crises of democracy; so as long as there are democratic states -- and the possibility of their failure -- then the potential for fascism remains with us.

The most serious problem with recognizing fascism's presence, however, comes from the widespread abuse of the term. As I explained previously, in "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism":

"Fascism" has come to be a nearly useless term in the past 30 years or so. In many respects, leftists are most responsible for this degradation; it became so common to lob the word at just about anyone conservative or corporatist in the 1960s and 1970s that its original meaning -- describing a very distinct political style, if not quite philosophy -- became utterly muddled, at least in the public lexicon.

… It is clear that liberals are every bit as prone to confusing fascism with totalitarianism as are conservatives. The difference, perhaps, is that the latter often do so deliberately, as a way of obscuring the genuine fascism that sits at their elbows.

As "fascism" has been bandied about freely, it has come loosely to represent the broader concept of totalitarianism, which of course encompasses communism as well. Right-wing propagandists like [Rush] Limbaugh clearly hope to leap into that breach of popular understanding to exploit his claim that those on the left, like Dick Gephardt or "feminazis," are "fascists." It's also clear as he denounces antiwar liberals as "anti-American" that he is depicting them as enemy sympathizers with the forces of "Islamofascism."

Most Americans have a perfectly clear idea of the basic tenets of communism (though in many cases it is fairly distorted), largely because it is an ideology based on a body of texts and revolving around specific ideas. In contrast, hardly anyone can explain what it is that makes fascism, mainly because all we really know about it is the regimes that arose under its banner. There are no extant texts, only a litany of dictatorships and atrocities. When we think of fascism, we think of Hitler and perhaps Mussolini, without even understanding what forces they rode to power.

Carefully examining the history of fascism begins to give us perhaps a better understanding:

In a historical sense, fascism is maybe best understood as an extreme reaction against socialism and communism; in its early years it was essentially defined as "extremist anti-communism." There were very few attempts to systematize the ideology of fascism, though some existed (see, e.g. Giovanni Gentile's 1932 text, The Philosophical Basis of Fascism). But its spirit was better expressed in an inchoate rant like Mein Kampf.

It was explicitly anti-democratic, anti-liberal, and corporatist, and it endorsed violence as a chief means to its ends. It was also, obviously, authoritarian, but claiming that it was oriented toward "socialism" is just crudely ahistorical, if not outrageously revisionist. Socialists, let's not forget, were among the first people imprisoned and "liquidated" by the Nazi regime.

Robert O. Paxton, in his landmark study The Anatomy of Fascism, neatly sums up the place of fascism in the history of politics as the emergence of a "dictatorship against the Left amidst popular enthusiasm." But what are its guiding principles?

In reality, there really are none. Fascism in the end is the manifestation, in the context of modern mass politics, of the raw will to power, the drive to achieve totalitarian control over others through any means necessary or possible.

But fascism is more than just a reaction or untrammeled will. It is a political force with a distinct set of characteristics.

Over the years, there have been many attempts to define and describe fascism. Chip Berlet, the researcher from the Cambridge, Mass., think tank Political Research Associates, describes it thus:

Fascism demands racial, ethnic, or cultural unity and the collective rebirth of a nation while seeking to purge demonized enemies that are often scapegoated as subversive and parasitic. Fascism is a form of authoritarian ultra-nationalism that glorifies action, violence, and a militarized culture. Fascism can exist as an ideology, a mass movement, or a form of state government. Fascism attacks both liberal democratic pluralism and left-wing revolutionary movements while proposing a totalitarian version of populist mass politics. Fascism parasitizes other ideologies, juggles many internal tensions and contradictions, and produces chameleon-like adaptations based on the specific historic symbols, icons, slogans, traditions, myths, and heroes of the society it wishes to mobilize.

Probably the most concise definition comes from Oxford political-science professor Roger Griffin, who calls it "palingenetic ultranationalistic populism". In one key essay, Griffin offers the following definition:

Fascism: modern political ideology that seeks to regenerate the social, economic, and cultural life of a country by basing it on a heightened sense of national belonging or ethnic identity. Fascism rejects liberal ideas such as freedom and individual rights, and often presses for the destruction of elections, legislatures, and other elements of democracy. Despite the idealistic goals of fascism, attempts to build fascist societies have led to wars and persecutions that caused millions of deaths. As a result, fascism is strongly associated with right-wing fanaticism, racism, totalitarianism, and violence.

Fascism, according to some who have studied it, is a kind of "political religion" -- that is, it coalesces around a "sacralisation of politics" that acts as a substitute faith for its followers. According to Italian political theorist Emilio Gentile, who studied the totalitarian movements of interwar Europe, this sacralisation takes place when:

... more or less elaborately and dogmatically, a political movement confers a sacred status on an earthly entity (the nation, the country, the state, humanity, society, race, proletariat, history, liberty, or revolution) and renders it an absolute principle of collective existence, considers it the main source of values for individual and mass behaviour, and exalts it as the supreme ethical precept of public life.

This imparts to fascism a particular trait that Paxton describes as one of the real telltale signs of its presence:

... [E]ach national variant of fascism draws its legitimacy, as we shall see, not from some universal scripture but from what it considers the most authentic elements of its own community identity. Religion, for example, would certainly play a much larger role in an authentic fascism in the United States than in the first European fascisms, which were pagan for contingent historical reasons.

What really sets fascism apart from nearly all other kinds of politics, however, is that, at its core, it is not about thought. It's all a matter of the gut.
Milton Mayer describes this in They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945 (p. 111):

Because the mass movement of Nazism was nonintellectual in the beginning, when it was only practice, it had to be anti-intellectual before it could be theoretical. What Mussolini's official philosopher, Giovanni Gentile, said of Fascism could have been better said of Nazi theory: "We think with our blood."

In his remarkable essay on "Ur-Fascism," Umberto Eco suggests the extent of this attribute of fascism by its reappearance in most of the traits by which he describes fascism, including "action for action's sake," "the rejection of modernism" "fear of difference," and the notion that "life is permanent warfare." Swedish political scientist Harald Ofstad likewise has zeroed in on "the contempt for weakness" as the essence of the norm in a fascist society.

However, it is Paxton's study that draws out this point in the greatest detail. Indeed, he describes the centricity of emotion -- and not any intellectual forebears -- as forming the basic architecture on which the fascist argument rests (pp. 40-41):

To focus only on the educated carriers of intellect and culture in the search for fascist roots, furthermore, is to miss the most important register: subterranean passions and emotions. A nebula of attitudes was taking shape, and no one thinker ever put together a total philosophical system to support fascism. Even scholars who specialize in the quest for fascism's intellectual and cultural origins, such as George Mosse, declare that the establishment of a "mood" is more important than "the search for some individual precursors." In that sense, too, fascism is more plausibly linked to a set of "mobilizing passions" that shape fascist action than to a consistent and fully articulated philosophy. At bottom is a passionate nationalism. Allied to it is a conspiratorial and Manichean view of history as a battle between the good and evil camps, between the pure and the corrupt, in which one's own chosen community or nation has been the victim. In this Darwinian narrative, the chosen people have been weakened by political parties, social classes, unassimilable minorities, spoiled renters, and rationalist thinkers who lack the necessary sense of community.

These "mobilizing passions," mostly taken for granted and not always overtly argued as intellectual propositions, form the emotional lava that set fascism's foundations:

-- a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;

-- the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether universal or individual, and the subordination of the individual to it;

-- the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against the group's enemies, both internal and external;

-- dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;

-- the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;

-- the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny;

-- the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason;

-- the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success;

-- the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess in a Darwinian struggle.

If these "mobilizing passions" seem familiar, they should: They have been adopted, as I described in Part 1, by the American conservative movement -- embodied by the Republican Party -- as the very architecture of its agenda since the advent of the invasion of Iraq, and particularly as the core of its 2004 campaign for the presidency.

This is not a mere coincidence, and the danger it represents -- obviously -- is profound.

Next: Pseudo-fascism and the GOP

Local reading

Some good material in today's P-I:

Kerry has strong lead in Washington state

OLYMPIA -- Washington state, once considered a fiercely competitive presidential battleground, is firmly in Democrat John Kerry's column heading into the final weeks of a volatile campaign, according to new polls.

Kerry, who considers the three West Coast states a key part of his electoral math to defeat President Bush, led the Republican president 51 percent to 42 percent among Washington respondents, according to a poll commissioned by The Columbian newspaper of Vancouver, Wash.

In the latest Elway Poll, Kerry leads 52 percent to 38 percent.

... A Republican presidential candidate hasn't carried Washington since Ronald Reagan's re-election bid of 1984. The Bush-Cheney ticket lost the state by 5.6 percentage points in 2000.

The new polls suggests the trend will continue.

"This is one of Kerry's better states in the country" and Washington no longer seems to be a battleground state, said Columbian pollster Thom Riehle, president of Ipsos-Public Affairs in Washington, D.C.

I think the Democratic worrywarts need to settle down and get real. In the meantime, of course, we should become accustomed to the media script that "Bush has opened a substantial lead", and take it with about a quarry of salt.

Anyway, there was also this great Horsey cartoon:

Orcinus in SoCal

Man! The rain hit early in Seattle this summer. My house-painting project remains on hold until I can get a few consecutive days of sun.

Which is why I'm especially glad to be heading to San Diego this weekend.

Aside from taking in the sun and the kind of tourism things 3-year-olds love (zoo, Sea World, etc.), I'll be on business a bit too.

Friday evening at 7 p.m. I'll be giving a talk to Peace Works! in Temecula Valley, addressing the subject of hate groups and hate crimes and the recent problems in the area, especially the growth of white-supremacist activity among young people in the area.

The meeting will be held at the Temecula United Methodist Church, and is a free event which is open to the public. The address is 42690 Margarita Road, Temecula, in meeting room #1.

It's worth noting that a recent gathering of Peace Works! observing the United Nations International Day of Peace attracted a group of right-wing "Protest Warriors".

Kynn Bartlett, my host for the talk (and the author of the estimable Inland Anti-Empire blog, whose work I've mentioned previously) was one of the people who got to deal with them:

Kynn Bartlett has been working with PeaceWorks since its inception nearly two years ago. He said that Tuesday's event had been organized to promote "peace, not just as the absence of war, but peace as a way of reconciliation, of living together with people in our community."

Turning to the group of protestors, Bartlett said that sometimes coping with people in his community is a challenge.

"When they walked up, the fellow with the anti-U.N. flag said, 'This is a special treat just for Kynn,'" Bartlett said. "They follow my Web site and are aware of the fact that I'm moving away.

"It's a lot like being stalked, really. For some reason, the same group of people shows up every time we have a public gathering in the park. I don't know why they're protesting against peace."

Protestor Freeman Sawyer was one of those picketing Tuesday. He said, in his view, the protest had mostly to do with the event's affiliation with the U.N.

"It's difficult for me to understand how any American citizen who every day benefits from the patriots and soldiers who helped establish our way of life could have anything to do with the United Nations," Sawyer said. "In my opinion, it's one of the worst organizations that has ever been developed."

The organizer of Tuesday's protest, Rick Reiss, cited his distaste for the U.N. as his reason for showing up.

"We believe the U.N. is basically a corrupt organization," Reiss said. "They're out here celebrating a United Nations day of peace, so we want to come out to serve a little balance."

These folks sound like John Trochmann's kind of people.

Anyway, in addition to the Friday evening talk, I'll be making media appearances promoting my new book, Death on the Fourth of July: The Story of a Killing, a Trial, and Hate Crime in America:

-- Sunday at noon on Los Angeles' Pacifica station, KPFK-FM, I'll be on for an hour-long interview with Ian Masters. Click here for the live feed.

-- Monday morning at 7 a.m. (or thereabouts) I'll be doing a brief appearance on the San Diego Fox TV affiliate, XETV-6, for the Fox News in the Morning program.

Another mysterious document

Hey, all you heroic, right-wing blog sleuths! Here's a fresh opportunity for you to put all those celebrated document-verification skills to work again! Yes, another chance for fame and glory!

Seems there's another questionable document that's been produced regarding George W. Bush's National Guard records. And we need some help tracking it down.

The problem was pointed out by that far-left rag, Air Force Times:

Another White House-released document shows a total of 56 points Bush apparently earned during this 12-month period, but it's awarded in one lump sum rather than credited for each training period. But this document also contains an error, listing Bush’s status as “PLT On-Fly” — meaning he was on flight status — when he had not been for a year. This, said retired Army Lt. Col. Gerald A. Lechliter, who has done an in-depth analysis of Bush’s pay records (www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/opinion/lechliter.pdf), makes the form’s authenticity suspect.

Here's what Lechliter had to say about the document:

The WH also released an undated memorandum from a Lieutenant Colonel Albert C. Lloyd (Retired) (Lloyd) who reviewed two Bush F526SPEs to verify Bush met his annual retention/retirement requirement from 27 May 72--26 May 73 by earning 56 points and 27 May 73-–26 May 74 by earning 56 points. Lloyd referred to these simply as AF Form 526 in his memorandum; they will be referenced herein as F526SPE. It evidently replaced the AF Form 712, "Air Reserve Forces Retirement Credit Summary." The WH also provided a summary pay document (SPD),60 together with finance forms, to back up its version of Bush's service after May 1972.

A major problem with the F190 from May 1973, certifying Bush's ANACDUTRA and INACDUTRA for the previous anniversary year, is its obsolescence: the form had become obsolete at the end of September 1972, some eight months earlier than it was signed. Why was his TXANG using an obsolete form? It should be noted, however, that there were no detailed F190, F40, F40a, or unit schedules, for any INACDUTRA after May 1972. There is no "Special Order" for the ANACDUTRA on May 1-3, 7-9, 1973, for which he received credit, although there was a "Special Order," dated "1 May 1973" for ANACDUTRA on May 22-24, 29-31, 1973, as well as for June 5-7, 1973. There was no "Special Order" for Bush's 13 days of ANACDUTRA in July 1973. No detailed forms, certifying the training was authorized and performed, have been made public to back up the WH-released forms showing all Bush's ANACDUTRA and INACDUTRA in October and November 1972, as well as in January, April, May, June, and July 1973. There was also a glaring error on the obsolete F190 from May 26, 1973: It showed Bush's "Aero[nautical] Rating" as "Plt On-fly," although he had been grounded since August 1, 1972. This error, together with the obsolescence of the form since October 1, 1972, makes the authenticity of this particular F190 suspect.

Get on it, guys! I'm sure you'll crack this case in record time!

Hey, and while you super-sleuths are at it, be sure to check out Paul Lukasiak's examination of possible tampering of Bush's files. (Longtime readers will recall that I've previously discussed this possibility at length.) I'm sure there's a wealth of material for you guys to dive into, seekers of truth that you are.

Ratfucked

There's a reason I usually shy away from making predictions in print: I'm crappy at it. OK, I did predict to my friends this year that the Mariners would suck. But it seems anytime I venture out on a limb and predict the outcome of news events, I'm proven wrong.

That was especially the case with the CBS documents. Especially the line about the network being fully vindicated. Hoo boy. What an embarrassment. Not as bad as CBS's, but still ... Next time I venture out with a prediction attempt, someone slap me upside the head, OK?

Ever since the word came down Sunday night that CBS was backing off the story, I've been contemplating my mistake. Some of it was an excess of rigor: Being an old curmudgeonly editor, it was apparent to me that the vast majority of the "forgery" charges were themselves bogus. As someone who's dealt a great deal in conspiracy theories and debunking them, it was abundantly clear that nearly all of the right-wing bloggers' claims were utter nonsense. They had, moreover, leapt to the conclusion that these were forgeries without anything approaching actual proof. My chief tenet -- and a point that still holds, frankly -- is that it's impossible to declare something a forgery without dealing with original documents, and without establishing proper provenance.

My mistake was to not pay enough attention to what CBS was doing as well. I assumed that they not only had secured some level of authenticity for the documents, they had a firm chain of their provenance. These are, after all, the kinds of practices that are taught in Journalism 101 (OK, maybe 301) in college.

Wrong! Not only did they do a poor job of authenticating the docs, their chain of ownership was absurd. I mean, I could have told them that Bill Burkett was not an unimpeachable source. Did they even bother contacting the person he originally claimed was his source? Evidently not. And that's just pathetic.

There were also plenty of warnings. What really raised red flags for me was that CBS only got around to interviewing Killian's secretary after they ran the story. At that point, I remained skeptical of the forgery claims, but I began having real doubts about CBS's thoroughness.

What was I thinking? After all, it's been apparent to me for some time that major news organizations -- and especially TV news organizations -- no longer adhere to the standards of journalism to which I became accustomed during my career in newsrooms. CBS, in this case, didn't even meet the kind of basic standards that we employed at the Missoulian or Lewiston Morning Tribune.

I understand their thinking: The memos mostly substantiated things we already knew about Bush's record. Contemporaries said the memos certainly sounded like things that Jerry Killian was concerned about, and were consistent with Bush's actual performance (or lack thereof). But it's a basic rule: You don't run with a story -- and especially not a major story -- without nailing everything down. And CBS didn't come close.

In the process, they probably destroyed any chance that there will be a serious discussion of Bush's military record. By bungling the story, they have made it radioactive. That's too bad, though in the end I don't know how much difference it actually will make.

There's an added element here, though, that needs discussing: The whole scenario -- particularly the way the Bush AWOL story has been effectively nullified -- that stinks of a classic Rovian Ratfucking.

This is especially the case if Burkett is telling the truth about how he came into possession of the documents: From a "mystery woman" named "Lucy Ramirez" who gave them to him at a rodeo.

Given that Burkett's credibility cannot be any lower than it is now, it's extremely unlikely that he received any such phone call or talked to any such person.

But on the off chance that he is telling the truth, it raises a question:

Any chance that "Lucy Ramirez" has a more than a passing resemblance to Yvette Lozano?

The train of bad logic runs on time

Sure. Michelle Malkin's just defending internment then -- she's not defending it now.

There are many reasons that historians and other critics of Malkin are dubious about Malkin's eye-rolling protestations that, honestly, she isn't green-lighting the internment of Arab Americans when she argues that the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II was legitimate.

For one, there's the logic of it: Why argue for relatively minor and measured responses such as simple racial profiling -- a reasoned debate over which is certainly possible -- by justifying a massive and outrageously oversized response such as rounding up and incarcerating 80,000 American citizens?

I mean, what's next? Can we expect another right-winger to write a defense of fascism as a way of praising the virtues of trains running on time?

But as Eric Muller has pointed out, Malkin has given herself the luxury of playing coy on this count. She doesn't have to argue for the internment of Arab Americans; she can let others do that for her.

Others, like John Leo in U.S. News and World Report, who reiterates uncritically all of Malkin's revisionist history and then concludes:

It's also reasonable and important to open an honest discussion of internment, past and present.

After all, it's just a short step of illogic from Malkin's thesis to Leo's, and thence to Michael Savage's (which is that we ought to be interning Arab Americans).

It'll be interesting to see if Malkin even bothers to discuss, let alone denounce, this use of her "scholarship."

[Speaking of which ... Malkin still hasn't responded to my e-mails after promising in person to submit to an interview with me. I'll be contacting her further and keeping you all updated.]

UPDATE: Malkin has graciously e-mailed me back. We're working out arrangements for an interview now.

Pseudo-fascism at work

[Lexi Thompson, state director for the Democratic National Party, shows where “Louisiana for Kerry” signs were burned at the doorstep of the local office. A large sign was also stolen and pro-Bush words were painted on the windows. P.C. Piazza/The Lafayette Daily Advertiser]

This story pretty much speaks for itself:

Vandals target local Democrats' office for second time

LAFAYETTE -- Vandals set fire to signs and wrote pro-President Bush messages on the front of Lafayette's Democratic Party Headquarters, the second time the office was hit by vandals.

The remnants of a small fire fueled with John Kerry/John Edwards campaign signs remained on the front steps of the headquarters at 310 Buchanan St. in downtown Lafayette on Thursday morning.

A mixture of ash from the fire and what appeared to be motor oil was used to smear "4+ GWB" across the front windows and "W" on the headquarters' door.

The office was closed Thursday because of Hurricane Ivan. The building's owner found the damage Thursday morning when he checked on the building, said Lexi Thompson, state director of the National Coordinated Campaign.

"Obviously, this vandalism is an attempt to intimidate volunteers and the Democratic effort," said Mike Skinner of Lafayette, chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party. "This is not Iraq. This is Louisiana. Issues will decide this election, not intimidation."

The situation could have been even more dangerous because the fire was set at the front door of the headquarters, Thompson said.

"Thank God we didn't have anybody here this morning," she said. "They were trying to harm us."

But, you know, the way some people talk, you'd think all the violence in this campaign is supposed to be coming from the left.

[A hat tip to Rob Salkowitz.]

The Rise of Pseudo Fascism

[Beginning a six-part series.]

Part 1: The Morphing of the Conservative Movement

When trying to make sense of the seemingly inextricable political morass into which we've descended, one of the real keys to understanding our situation is realizing that conservatism and the "conservative movement" are in fact two entirely different things.

Conservatism, like liberalism, is not a dogmatic philosophy, but rather a style of thought, an approach to politics or life in general. It stresses the status quo and traditional values, and is typified by a resistance to change. Likewise, liberalism is not relegated to a discrete "movement" but rather describes a general politics that comprises many disparate concerns.

The "conservative movement," however, is a decidedly dogmatic political movement that demands obeisance to its main tenets (and exiles those who dissent) and a distinctly defined agenda. Movement followers proudly announce their membership. (In contrast, there is no "liberal movement" worth speaking of -- just a hodgepodge of loosely associated interests.) Importantly enough, their raison d'etre has transformed from the extenuation of their "conservative" impulses into the Machiavellian acquisition of power, usually through any means necessary.

The presence of this discrete movement, in fact, is something that nearly everyone who follows the contours of the political landscape is well aware of. Recall, for instance, the recent New York Times piece outlining the work of a fellow named Rob Stein, who has carefully examined the structure of the movement and its effectiveness:

The presentation itself, a collection of about 40 slides titled "The Conservative Message Machine's Money Matrix," essentially makes the case that a handful of families -- Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Coors and others -- laid the foundation for a $300 million network of policy centers, advocacy groups and media outlets that now wield great influence over the national agenda. The network, as Stein diagrams it, includes scores of powerful organizations -- most of them with bland names like the State Policy Network and the Leadership Institute -- that he says train young leaders and lawmakers and promote policy ideas on the national and local level. These groups are, in turn, linked to a massive message apparatus, into which Stein lumps everything from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to Pat Robertson's "700 Club." And all of this, he contends, is underwritten by some 200 "anchor donors." "This is perhaps the most potent, independent institutionalized apparatus ever assembled in a democracy to promote one belief system," he said.

When movements like this take shape and gain real power -- and especially when they consolidate complete control of the reins power, as the conservative movement has done in the past four years -- they often take on a real life of their own, mutating into entirely separate entities that often bear little resemblance to their root values. In the process, they almost always become travesties of their original impulses.

Certainly, one only needs review the current state of affairs to recognize that the "conservative movement" -- especially as embodied by the Bush administration -- has wandered far astray from its original values. Just how "conservative" is it, after all, to run up record budget deficits? To make the nation bleed jobs? To invade another nation under false pretenses? To run roughshod over states' rights? To impose a radical unilateralist approach to foreign policy? To undermine privacy rights and the constitutional balance of power? To quanitifably worsen the environment, while ignoring the realities of global warming? To grotesquely mishandle the defense of our national borders?

Mind you, it is not merely liberals who have observed this transformation. It includes a number of longtime conservatives who remain true to their principles as well.

The "conservative movement," in the course of this mutation, has become something entirely new, a fresh political entity quite unlike we've ever seen before in our history, but one that at the same time seems somehow familiar, as though we have seen something like it.

What's become clear as this election year has progressed -- and especially in the wake of the Republican National Convention -- is the actual shape of this fresh beast.

Call it Pseudo Fascism. Or, if you like, Fascism Lite. Happy-Face Fascism. Postmodern Fascism. But there is little doubt anymore why the shape of the "conservative movement" in the 21st century is so familiar and disturbing: Its architecture, its entire structure, has morphed into a not-so-faint hologram of 20th-century fascism.

It is not genuine fascism, even though it bears many of the basic traits of that movement. It lacks certain key elements that would make it genuinely so:

-- Its agenda, under the guise of representing mainstream conservatism, is not openly revolutionary.

-- It is not yet a dictatorship.

-- It does not yet rely on physical violence and campaigns of gross intimidation to obtain power and suppress opposition.

-- American democracy has not yet reached the genuine stage of crisis required for full-blown fascism to take root.

Without these facets, the current phenomenon cannot properly be labeled "fascism." But what is so deeply disturbing about the current state of the conservative movement is that it has otherwise plainly adopted not only many of the cosmetic traits of fascism, its larger architecture -- derived from its core impulses -- now almost exactly replicates that by which fascists came to power in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s.

It is in this sense that I call it Pseudo Fascism. Unlike the genuine article, it presents itself under a normative, rather than a revolutionary, guise; and rather than openly exulting in violence, it pays lip service to law and order. Moreover, even in the areas where it resembles real fascism, the similarities are often more familial than exact. It is, in essence, less virulent and less violent, and thus more likely to gain broad acceptance within a longtime stable democratic system like that of the United States.

And even in the key areas of difference, it is not difficult to discern that those dissimilarities are gradually shrinking, and in danger of disappearing.

That this is happening should not be a great surprise. After all, as I've already explored in great detail, the mainstream conservative movement has increasingly had contact with the genuine American proto-fascists of the extremist right over the past decade or more, particularly in the trafficking of ideas, agendas and the memes that propel them.

As I warned then, the danger was one of a kind of political gravitational pull: The more extremist ideology crept into the mainstream, the more it would transform the nature of the mainstream. The model of this effect is the Southern Strategy; initially deployed by Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972, its long-term effect was to transform the GOP from the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Strom Thurmond, from a bastion of progressivity on race to the home of neo-Confederates who argue for modern secession and a return to white supremacism.

The final morph into Pseudo Fascism occurred under the dynamic under which the "conservative movement" operated after taking control of all three estates of American government in 2000. By seizing the presidency through means perceived by nearly half the nation at the time as illegitimate, conservative-movement ideologues were forced to govern without anything approaching a popular mandate. But rather than responding by moderating their approach to governance, the Bush administration instead acted as though it had won in a landslide, and proceeded to follow an openly radical course:

-- Instituting a massive transfer of the tax burden from the upper class to the middle, an approach that deepened the nation's economic malaise.

-- Appointing radical right-wingers to key positions in the nation's court system; shifting the emphasis in national security from terrorism to missile defense, a policy that left us vulnerable to the Sept. 11 attacks.

-- Instituting, in the wake of those attacks, the radical "Bush Doctrine" of unilateralist pre-emption.

-- Further using the attacks to undermine civil liberties under the Patriot Act and creating a policy of incarcerating citizens indefinitely as "enemy combatants".

-- Invading another nation by raising the false specter of the "imminent threat" of weapons of mass destruction.

-- Allowing intelligence officials to run amok, violating the Geneva Convention in interrogations at Bagram, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

-- Fighting, for clearly political reasons, every effort to have a thorough examination of the causes of the 9/11 security failures.

-- Moreover, at every step of nearly every policy it has pursued, the administration has erected obstacles to transparency, making clear it intends to operate in utter secrecy whenever possible.

The radical course followed by the Bush administration was, in fact, guaranteed to further divide the nation rather than unify it in a time of need. Moreover, the administration clearly proved itself wrong on so many major counts -- the economy, the pre-Sept. 11 handling of the terrorist threat, the rationale for war, the postwar occupation of Iraq -- that under normal circumstances, their competence above all should have come into serious question.

Maintaining power and instituting their agenda in this kind of milieu meant, for the conservative movement, a forced reliance on sheer bluff: projecting "strength and resolve" while simulatenously attacking their political opponents as weak and vacillating. To pull this bluff off, it required the assistance of a compliant press eager to appear "patriotic," and it received it in spades.

Mostly, it has succeeded in doing this by a constant barrage of emotion-driven appeals to the nation's fears in the post-9/11 environment:

-- Calling 9/11 "the day that changed everything," the Bush regime and its conservative-movement supporters have consistently projected a sense of overwhelming national crisis that requires reaching beyond traditional solutions and instituting a number of clearly radical steps.

-- Conservatives have continually stressed the primacy of Americanness, a group identity to which we are obligated, as "patriots," to subordinate all kinds of civil rights and free speech.

-- They have consistently emphasized the nation's victimhood in the 9/11 attacks -- and attacked any suggestion of a more nuanced view as "unpatriotic" -- and have further argued consistently that the 9/11 attacks justify nearly any action, regardless of legal or moral limits (see, e.g., Abu Ghraib), against America's enemies.

-- A favorite conservative theme is a dread of national decline under the corrosive effects of liberalism, often identifying it with equally dreaded alien influences. (See, e.g, Sean Hannity's bestselling screed, Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism.)

-- They have consistently argued for a closer integration of a purer American community under the aegeis of "national unity." However, this unity is not a natural one reached by compromise; rather, it can only be achieved by a complete subsumation of American politics by the conservative movement, creating essentially a one-party state. Citizens can join by consent if they like, or they can face exclusion as a consequence.

-- While denouncing their opponents -- especially Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry -- as "weak on terror," conservatives have consistently portrayed George W. Bush as the only person capable of making the nation not only secure from terrorists, but the dominant political and cultural force in the world, a role often portrayed in terms of a national destiny as the "beacon of democracy."

-- Most of all, they have stressed Bush's superiority as a president because of his reliance on his instincts and "resolve" and his marked refusal to engage in abstract reasoning.

-- At times, conservatives have even trod into arguing in favor of a war ethos (see, for instance the popular bumper sticker: "War Has Never Solved Anything, Except for Ending Slavery, Fascism, Nazism and Communism"); at other times -- as in all the talk about "shock and awe" in the Iraq invasion -- they have even suggested there is a kind of beauty to violence, especially in the service of the imposition of American will.

-- Finally, in defending the administration's actions -- particularly in invading Iraq under the pretense of a nonexistent "imminent threat," and for encouraging conditions that led to international-law violations at Abu Ghraib -- many conservatives have simply dismissed the critics by invoking 9/11 and the larger right, by sheer virtue of our national military power, to dominate other nations and individuals with no restraint. (The conservative movement's chief mouthpiece, Rush Limbaugh, was especially noteworthy in this regard, dismissing the Abu Ghraib as similar to fraternity hazing, and responding to a report that Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi had summarily executed six insurgents: "Good. Hubba-hubba.")

All of these appeals have come wrapped in the twin themes that are central to the appeal of the conservative movement:

-- An insistence that the movement represents the only "real Americans."

-- Pervasive expressions of contempt for the weak.

These latter traits, in particular, expose the underpinnings of the "conservative movement" for their genuinely corrosive and divisive nature.

But does all this add up to fascism?

Not in its fullest sense. But it does replicate, in nearly every regard, the architecture of fascism in its second stage of growth -- the stage at which, in the past, it has obtained power.

All that is needed for a full manifestation of American fascism, at this point, is for a genuine crisis of democracy to erupt. And if that occurs, it is almost inevitable that the differences between fascism and pseudo-fascism will vanish.

Next: The Architecture of Fascism

[Cross-posted at The American Street.]

Suckers

It's pretty funny, really, how right-wing bloggers are serially breaking their arms patting themselves on the back for having exposed "Forgerygate." Actually, all they've really managed to prove is P.T. Barnum's famous adage, perhaps recast as "There's a blogger born every minute."

Have any bloggers actually yet proven definitively that the CBS documents are fake?

Well, no. All they've been able to produce so far is a great deal of speculation, much of it later proven to be entirely without substance.

Times New Roman didn't exist in 1972? It existed in 1931.

You can create a nearly identical copy with MS Word? Perhaps that's because MS Word was designed to replicate an IBM typewriter.

The signatures look fake? Actually, the signatures are the only thing that experts have been able to say conclusively are genuine.

And on and on and on.

Perhaps the most amusing of the "forgery" theories is the recent suggestion that the documents released by Bush in 2000 (and re-released by the White House this year) are also forgeries.

At least, that seems to be the conclusion reached by those mental wizards at WizBang, who have developed a theory that Marty Heldt (whose work I've featured here several times) has also been peddling forgeries. This by way of arguing that Heldt is the source of the CBS documents.

The only problem with that? Heldt's sole source for the documents was a FOIA request, a fact that's easily substantiated by others, mostly journalists at the Boston Globe and elsewhere, who received the identical documents. It's further substantiated by the fact that the White House re-released the exact same documents earlier this year.

The source for the accusations against Heldt?

"Brooks Gregory", a supposed Democratic "political consultant" who claimed on an Internet forum:

I bought the document package from Marty Heldt and we subjected them to the most thorough investigation one could imagine. Why? Because if there was anything there, we damn sure wanted to use it. But guess what? Only two of those documents proved to be authentic and they were not even related to the charge being levelled.

The problem?

"Brooks Gregory" appears to be a fictitious person. Certainly, there was no person by that name attached to the Janet Reno campaign, as the hoaxter claims. And Marty Heldt has confirmed to me that he "peddled" no documents to anyone in any campaign, gubernatorial or otherwise, and the only documents he dealt with at all were those he obtained through FOIA.

Now, exactly who is falling for a hoax here?

This has, of course, been the typical MO for right-wing bloggers dealing with the CBS flap: Wrack your brains looking for seeming logical flaws, find a tidbit that -- with the help of your own faulty logic -- seems to fit, and then pronounce "AHA! I'VE GOT IT!!!" Which then guarantees it'll be picked up by mainstream media morons who've proven incapable of discerning shit from shinola in this matter.