Searching for Friends

Picking up on a zinger that John McCain had delivered to his presidential rival, Estrich, who managed Michael Dukakis's 1988 presidential campaign, found a retort online from the Romney camp. She wrote:

"Besides, who is McCain to talk? 'Why don't you go cry about torture some more, old man,' Romney's spokesman is quoted as saying in response. 'When we're in charge, we're going to nonlethally stress the hell out of you in Gitmo #15.'

" 'Old man'? " she wrote. "Ouch. Accusing a man who spent years in a North Vietnam prison of 'cry[ing]about torture' and threatening to 'stress the hell' out of him?"

When the column was sent out, an editor at Michigan's Lansing State Journal, Derek Melot, thought the quote was so outrageous that he wondered why he hadn't heard it before. After an online search, he found that it had come from the satirical Web site Wonkette -- and was completely invented. Creators Syndicate, which handles Estrich's column, quickly sent out a "mandatory correction," and the gaffe apparently never got into print.Estrich, who teaches law at the University of Southern California, says she thought of attributing the quote to Wonkette but figured many readers would be unfamiliar with the site. She says she used the formulation "is quoted as saying" because "I worry about this all the time when I rely on secondary sources. . . .

"I guess I shouldn't consider Wonkette to be 'reporting,' but that's the problem in our brave new world. Where I come from, there's a problem with making up quotes and attributing them to campaign spokesmen, but I guess that's very old-fashioned of me."

Double-checking material from humor sites is also an old-fashioned virtue.

Katie's New Crusade

Katie Couric is taking a stand.

On Friday, when she anchored the "CBS Evening News" from Washington, Couric did a story on D.C. officials pushing for a voting member of Congress. But she went a step further--an unusual step for a network anchor--in endorsing their cause.

In a "Katie's Notebook" video posted on CBS's Web site and made available to its television and radio stations, Couric lamented that "these D.C. residents, who can send their sons and daughters off to war, still do not have a vote." After summarizing each side's case, Couric concluded: "Every American deserves to have someone on their side voting in Congress."

Even those who agree with her might question whether Couric, who was unavailable for comment, should be taking sides on a political issue. But she is no stranger to the controversy, having grown up in Arlington.

Moving right along, the LAT says that Bush sure is pushing a lot of ideas, such as curbing climate change, for a lame duck.