Glenn Greenwald catches Joe Klein in an act of journalistic dishonesty and incompetence. In a nutshell: The GOP dropped a big fat worm (no relation to me) in front of Joe and he took the bait. Standard operating procedure for the passive punditry, but unlike 98% of cases involving GOP talking points disguised as "educated opinion," this time Greenwald and other bloggers are pointing out to Klein that he has a giant hook through his cheek. It's not a pretty sight:
http://feeds.salon.com/~r/salon/greenwald/~3/190969294/index.html Joe Klein has just
posted yet again about his FISA confusion, and it has now moved well beyond farce into an almost pity-inducing realm. If Time has any dignity at all, someone there will intervene and put a stop to this. It's actually difficult to watch.
In the last five days alone, Klein has now written five separate times about his FISA debacle, and is further away than ever from having any idea what he's even talking about -- first was
the column itself; second was the
Swampland post the same day in which he emphatically defended the accuracy of what he wrote in response to my post; third was the
post yesterday in which Klein said he "may have made a mistake in <his> column this week about the FISA legislation" -- the understatement of the year; fourth was an Update he added to that post this morning claiming that he did speak to a Democrat but "may have misinterpreted a Democratic source's point" and "if <he> did, a correction will appear in the print magazine next week"; and now, his fifth effort in
tonight's post, actually worse than all the others, in which he still professes confusion after "spen<ding> the past few days nosing around in the ongoing dispute about what the House FISA Reform bill actually says."
The result of all this "nosing around": "I've reached no conclusions." And he then unleashes this:
I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right.That's been the point all along (although one doesn't need "legal background" -- just
basic reading skills and a molecule of critical thought).
I now know who Klein's editor for this piece was and I will have much more to say about all of this tomorrow. In comments to Klein's new post tonight, the lawyer (and blogger) Anonymous Liberal
quickly debunked the new, insultingly false claims from Klein about the alleged "dispute" over the meaning of the House bill. And the normally mild-mannered Ryan Singel of Wired earlier today -- prior to Klein's latest effort -- wrote his
second detailed post excoriating Klein's completely ignorant, now-willfully false claims about FISA ("Klein now has two blog posts and one column (printed in Time magazine) that are all shot through with errors. . . . THREAT LEVEL, paraphrasing Klein's column, continues to believe that Klein is well beyond stupid. He's dangerous").
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