ABC claimed the high ground of credibility when you challenged them on their most recent sycophancy about Iran. Now you have decimated that claim, and revealed the cesspool that is their actual habitat with this well-researched, unimpeachable post.

As I have been saying for a while here and elsewhere, the Democrats are doing a fair job of going after the Administration now. But it falls to us to take on their enablers in the press. Glenn, you have earned your prominence, and that prominence means that when you throw punches like these, they will do some damage.

Keep it up, man.

Alleged "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey has given an exclusive interview to ABC News.

ABC News investigative correspondent Brian Ross recently interviewed Palfrey, who for over a decade operated what she terms an "erotic fantasy service" in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area, for an upcoming investigative report on "20/20" and on "The Blotter" on ABC News.com.

From ABC's "The Blotter"

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/dc_madam_speaks.html

So he moves up in the world -- after doing his part with the leading DC whores, Ross gets to chat with their madam....

Today's Richard Cohen and David Broder columns demonstrate that the problem is still with us.

I have this fantasy of a South Africa-style truth & reconciliation process in which the unindicted co-conspirators of the press would have to fess up to avoid facing the consequences of their malfeasance.

Pigs will fly before that happens, but a man can dream....

You would think that self-awareness would be a prerequisite for folks like political columnists. But it sure doesn't turn out that way.

The similar event this weekend that got to me was the obscene observation from notorious anti-blogger Richard Cohen at, I kid you not, Huffington Post:

As Paul Wolfowitz is proving, it turns out all is not fair in love and war. Only war. Take a nation to war for spurious reasons and no one much complains. But arrange a raise for your girlfriend, and you get booed in the atrium of the World Bank and have to visibly sweat in public.

No one complained. As if Cohen himself had only just happened upon the scene of the crime. As if Cohen himself had not said:

Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise.

As if Cohen himself had not said:

the Iraq war is not the product of oil avarice, or CIA evil, but of a surfeit of altruism.

As if Cohen himself had not said:

so many liberals, myself included, originally supported the war (because it) engaged us emotionally.

There can not (and should not) be official accountability for the malfeasance of these wretches. But we can (and must) hold their feet to the fire.

Finding disgusting contrasts between modern journalism and what Halberstam did is a fish-in-a-barrel exercise, of course, but this is the one that really gets to me: when Bob Woodward finally took some heat for his own shameful role in Plamegate, he actually said this:

I was trying to protect my sources. That's Job No. 1 in a case like this."

For Woodward, protecting sources outweighs the obligation to his reader. It outweighs his obligation to his employer. It even outweighs his obligation to tell the truth.

I have no first-hand knowledge of this, but I have heard that if a Navy captain ever runs a ship aground, his/her career is over. No parsing of words, deflection of blame, or room for spin. It happens on your ship, you're done.

That level of responsibility obviously doesn't prevail in the larger military, as the Tillman/Lynch travesties make plain. But imagine if such consequences awaited the purveyors of the stenography Glenn has been hammering lately. Adam Nagourney, Judy Miller, Steno Sue Schmidt and a bunch of their prominent pals would be where they belong -- sniffing out city council intrigues for the Poughkeepsie Journal. And the fear of such a fate would focus the minds of other reporters wonderfully.

I don't know if there ever was an effective internal feedback loop to weed out these willful fools. But I do know that the closest thing to a functional conscience now is us.

Keep throwing the high, hard ones, Glenn.

Like you, Glenn I am gobsmacked despite myself. This is obviously the real foundation of the world views of the neocons. As obvious as that fact is, it is still astounding when someone says it out loud, and even more so when that someone is a Harvard professor of government.

But perhaps the most puzzling thing is why at this late date -- when the incompetence and venality of George Bush is so manifest, and the consequences of the unleashing of his id are so devastating -- Mansfield chooses this moment to reveal his explicit, unambiguous opposition to the Constitution. It suggests that the "exigent circumstances" justification is a mere convenience, and that fascism is not merely a must-be-tolerated evil, but the goal to me maximized.

I have been warned off pathologizing right wing politics many times. But it is hard to imagine any other way to make sense of what Mansfield says. If the neocons want this Prince now, it is hard to imagine the circumstance in which they would tolerate adherence to Constitutional restraints.