Death Wish

"Trying to balance the freedom and openness of the Internet with the desire to be responsible and avoid these kinds of outrageous comments can sometimes be challenging. But the fact remains: only a fraction of Huffington Post readers comment on news stories, and only a tiny fraction of those responded to the Cheney story in such an offensive manner . . .

"This tactic of digging through open comment threads to find outrageous comments that can then be cited as evidence of 'the angry left' has become a favorite of the swiftboat set."

I would agree that it's absurd to view these assassination fantasies as anything other than the rantings of the fringe, and that they shouldn't be used to tar an entire ideology. All I'm saying is that it's really sad that some loons feel this way, and that the Internet culture, however briefly, gives them a megaphone.

Speaking of VPOTUS, here's what I have to say in today's paper:

The reporters traveling with Vice President Cheney as he flew from Afghanistan to Oman yesterday were granted an interview with someone who would be identified only as a "senior administration official." But the official's identity would not remain a state secret for long.

"Let me just make one editorial comment here," the SAO said about the vice president's talks with Pakistan's leader. "I've seen some press reporting says, 'Cheney went in to beat up on them, threaten them.' That's not the way I work. I don't know who writes that, or maybe somebody gets it from some source who doesn't know what I'm doing, or isn't involved in it. But the idea that I'd go in and threaten someone is an invalid misreading of the way I do business."

The SAO also said that "I was very careful" in choosing words to criticize House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Iraq strategy.

The first-person pronoun gave away the game. But it also raised the question: Why did Cheney feel the need to speak on a not-for-attribution basis, and why did the seven journalists on the trip go along?

Lee Anne McBride, Cheney's press secretary, could not, under the ground rules, confirm the obvious. But, she said, "it was important to provide the press and public with briefings on these meetings, and it was determined that a more comprehensive readout could be provided on a background basis."

Administration officials concluded that, for diplomatic reasons, Cheney could not publicly discuss private conversations with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Mark Silva, a Chicago Tribune reporter who made the trip, was among those pressing Cheney's staff for an on-the-record briefing, saying the vice president has been elected twice.

"At the start of our meeting with a senior administration official, in which he advised us that he insisted this talk be on background, we asked him, too, to go on the record," Silva said. Cheney agreed to be identified only while discussing the suicide bombing at Bagram air base in Afghanistan that occurred while he was there.