So, Ondolette, I googled "modified limited hangout" just to make sure it means what I think it means, and lo and behold what is the first cite:

The 1976 review of John Ehrlichman's book in ...

wait for it ...

TIME Magazine.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,947688,00.html?promoid=googlep

Swampland promised much but delivers little. There is the odd craziness of AMC (who was on the quote Straighttalk Express unquote recently). An earnest Karen Tumulty, and oddly in and out Jay Carney and the ever present Klein. The commenters have been pretty tough.

The root of the problem is not with Swampland but with Stengel whose appalling lack of standards, and flagrant kowtowing to the Right fit in with the tradition of Time a la Luce.

Don't expect much from Time. The offerings get shorter and shorter, the distortions grow in proportion. I mean: Kristol, Krauthammar, Klein (KKK) and Halperin (whose grovelling to Hewitt is now part of blog lore): this gang of 4 will ensure Time's irrelevance to anyone who thinks.

When Klein exposes himself like this I like to play a little game - count the number of times ANYONE in the comments section comes to his defense or is the least bit gun shy about taking him to the woodshed. The answer is pretty much none at all. The best part is that it's HIS blog! Doesn't this guy have any loyal readership? If not, then how can TIME possibly justify keeping him on at all?

If they're going to retain a writer who is INDEFENSIBLE and for whom no reader is loyal enough to stick up for, then the only explanation left is that he provides a function for the company, because he clearly is not bringing readership in.

Klein is simply a concern troll. His Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer defense is perhaps the weakest rebuttal I may have ever heard.

Does TIME (that fine publication founded by that upstanding warhawk Luce for US to intervene in Southeast Asia) have a Joe Klein Barbie(TM), where you pull the string and it whines

Reporting is Hard!

Might be a good idea.

As was noted in an essay for the Columbia Journalism Review -- and what would they know about journalism, TIME began as an explicit rejection of "objective" journalism -- unless by "objective" you mean "following the predilections of Boss Luce":

From "Now It's Time Inc.'s Time As AOL Merger Goes Sour: The Magazine Company's Journalists Are Among Its Harshest Critics"

...During its first four decades, Time often operated outside the bounds of most journalistic standards of objectivity that we honor today. Henry Luce — Yale wasp and propagandist for America’s divine right to export its values — announced unrepentantly: “I am biased in favor of God, the Republican party, and free enterprise.” He once told a colleague that from first page to last, “what comes out has to reflect my view and that’s the way it is.”

And he had strong views — on China (a fervent advocate of the corrupt Nationalist government of Chiang Kai Shek), on Roosevelt (hated him), on Willkie, Dewey, Eisenhower (strong supporter), and, until proven mistaken, on Vietnam (backed the hardliners). “Luce never pretended that any of his magazines would ever be objective,” says Alan Brinkley. “On issues he cared passionately about, he would brook no deviation from the position he held.”...

http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/year/02/6/hickey.asp

The only part of this article which confuses me is Hickey's allegation that unlike TIME's first 4 decades, today "we" honor journalistic principles of objectivity.

I guess that depends on who "we" is. Maybe Hickey means CJR, because he certainly can't include the news producers (such as TIME, the NYT, the Washington Post, ABC, CNN, not even mentioning Fawx Nooz) who have been cheap propagandists for my entire lifetime (and of course before), particularly when it comes time to back yet another hawkish foreign policy of subversion, bullying, the hiring of terrorist armies (aka "Freedom Fighters"), or outright war.

...we lay people... -- shooter242

Yes. You and Spiro Agnew.

I can see how you might want to defend Klein's take on this, but even Klein admits it's too tough for him to know all the facts. That really is beyond the pale.

Can you at least admit then Klein either should have written about a topic he does fully grasp (back to the typical horse race stuff he likes) or a topic that he could research and then fully grasp?

It would be the same reason that I'm not willing to write an article about particle physics, especially one that calls one bunch of scientist idiots for not grasping something that may or may not be true....because it's over my head.

As an aside, I don't think this is over Klein's head, he was lazy and played, and now won't fess up.

Shooter laid Spiro Agnew?

One would hope Spiro used protection.

Six minute youtube of Bob Dylan in an interview session in early 1960's making some attempt to explain to a Time Magazine reporter why he has no respect for Time Magazine.

"I don't take it seriously"[...]"They have too much to lose by printing the truth."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR8YuIGqWi4

Time Magazine has been outed for the deceitful rag that it is for a very long time.

As an aside, I don't think this is over Klein's head, he was lazy and played, and now won't fess up.

-- AnnieW

There ARE topics that require a lot of expertise to really understand. Law can be like that sometimes, but not here and not that often (see groklaw.net for an example of open source legal analysis). It just takes the tenacity to dig in and figure it out. This is true of so many things that seem so hard at first glance. The bottom line: If the rest of us could figure it out, it wasn't that hard. We all know Klein could have easily sorted this out, but that is NOT what he is paid to do. He is paid to be a left-leaning concern troll who just happens to always support the GOP position and his "mistakes" fall to the benefit of GOP talking points. Funny how that always happens with everything Klein writes of substance. As Duncan would say: "It's good for the Republicans - it always is." or some such.