Trumping Woodward

Kos also betrays a certain impatience with his own side:

"Stop whining . . . And keep working to build a Democratic Party with backbone. The guys currently in DC don't have it? Yeah, we know that. That's why we're supporting a new breed of Democrat that isn't afraid of Rove's shadow. That will fight when the DC Dems would rather cower in fear.

"We have a problem. Obviously. Democrats would rather talk about how they need to be strong, than actually be strong. They would rather talk about 'moral standing,' than actually, you know, stand for what's right. I know that. You know that. I suspect that even Democrats in DC know that. It's just that they're paralyzed by fear.

"That's why we need to work for fearless Dems who won't let themselves be held hostage to fear. And remember, this is a long-term process. Just like conservatives didn't quit politics when Nixon was killing them with new government programs like the EPA or OSHA, we can't take our ball home every time we lose on an important issue."

The 9/11 blame game continues, and as we see from Betsy's Page , now the Other Clinton is drawing flak:

"Hillary had to go and open her mouth the other day to attack the Bush administration and defend her husband's record on terrorism. This is what she said:

" I'm certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled 'Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States' he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team .

"First of all, to come out and say pretty clearly that if her husband had been president, the terrorists might not have succeeded on 9/11 strikes me as crass, vicious, and just plain nasty. Of all the Democrats, she should know the dangers of saying such things. And the contrast with President Bush refusing to respond to questions about what she and her husband were saying about this demonstrated much more class [on Bush's part]. And, of course, there is [Bush's] father who did not come out publicly and criticize President Clinton throughout Clinton's presidency unlike the way that Presidents Carter and Clinton have been quite open in their criticism of the present President . . .

"If the Democrats are going to start up with this nonsense attacking Bush for not having doing as much as Clinton had done, they have opened the door for reexamining the Clinton record and that is not a debate that makes the Clintons look good."

Scott Johnson has a long Power Line post about why he thinks Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato was being disingenous when he personally vouched for allegations that George Allen once frequently used the N-word, when it turns out that Sabato (who went to the University of Virginia at the same time as the senator) was relying on others and had no first-hand knowledge.

Is George Allen, after macaca and the Jewish revelation, washed up as a presidential contender? Fred Barnes , writing in the Wall Street Journal, says no:

"Many conservatives are souring on Virginia's junior senator as a presidential candidate. Still: Should Mr. Allen overcome the media onslaught, effectively counter Mr. Webb's call for a withdrawal from Iraq, finish the campaign without breaking ranks with President Bush, and win a slugfest by a modest margin, he may emerge as a tough-minded survivor. The press won't like him any better, but he might earn the respect of Republican voters around the country. Candidates have been 'misunderestimated' before, and stranger things have happened in politics."

Who was the Other Woman? Meaning, who did the Republican candidate for New York attorney general fear her husband was messing around with when she talked to Bernie Kerik about wiretapping him? The New York Post is on the case:

"Jeanine Pirro confided to friends that she feared her scandal-plagued husband was having an affair with his lawyer's wife, Lisa Santangelo - a stunning brunette 20 years her junior, sources said yesterday."

Was it true? "Lisa's husband insisted yesterday the rumors were unfounded."

Did you follow the media orgy over whether Terrell Owens of the Dallas Cowboys did or didn't try to kill himself? (A police report says yes; he says no, blaming a brief hospitalization on an allergic reaction to painkillers. Here (via Romenesko) are the views of two sportswriters. First, Jay Hart :

"Thanks to the 24-hour news cycle, the same one that's given us Scott Peterson, JonBenet Ramsey and Natalee Holloway, we now have T.O. -- the suicide attempt that wasn't. But what do we in the media care, now that we've swept the hours of speculation under the rug, wiped our hands clean and can start fresh again? Actually, we won't do that. Why would we, now that we have a juicy little story about a story that never happened?

"As hard as you might find this to believe, we -- and by we, I mean the media -- hold the rest of the world to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. It's easy to do when there's no accountability. We can judge whom we want, for what we want, without ever looking in the mirror. And if we're wrong, well, it's OK, because we were just trying to report something we thought was for the common good, which trumps all . . .

"Over the last several years, T.O. has brought a lot of attention on himself, but not this time. Here's a situation that he didn't create, that he didn't force, that he didn't want any part of."

And in the opposite corner, Gregg Doyel :

"Blame the media for the latest Terrell Owens fiasco?

"You must be joking.

"And by you, I don't mean just you, the reader. I mean you, the media. Because there are enemies among us, enemies in major markets like Philadelphia and Miami who this morning are saying that somehow, the biggest loser in this entire Terrell Owens suicide story is the media.

"In one way we did lose. The story changed on us -- allegedly -- as Wednesday morning became Wednesday afternoon. When the facts change, the ignorant out there point at the media and call us incompetent. Kind of like when the facts about weapons of mass destruction changed and John Kerry stopped supporting the war, he was ignorantly called a flip-flopper. (I told you the media is liberal.)

"But in the Miami Herald the headline says, 'We are to blame for overreacting.'

"Huh?

"Terrell Owens, a Hall of Fame talent at receiver, is hospitalized overnight for a possible suicide attempt, and the media is to blame for the coverage that comes next? Terrell Owens, one of the most fascinatingly repulsive characters in sports, is said to have had pills pried from his mouth, and the media gets ripped for climbing down this story's throat?

"You must be joking."

Sadly, the breathless coverage was no joke.