I keep wondering why the Democratic politicians - many of whom have legal training - won't pick up the cudgel of libel suits and defamation suits for this kind of thing. Sure, the old "New York Times vs. Sullivan" decision grants lots of latitude for making mistakes while criticizing public officials, but it doesn't give a blank check for total fabrication. And the subsequent "Firestone" court decision gave latitude for reporters to make mistakes when writing about people in the public eye. But it did *not* absolve writers from being culpable for making up stuff. Stories that are made up do not have a libel defense. People who are the victims, particularly people who are defamed by, false stories can name their own settlement costs.

The woman slimed as "Kerry's intern" should have taken the author of that fiction and Matt Drudge, who gleefully repeated it without picking up a phone to check its veracity, for at least six figures. Bill Clinton should have dragged into court people telling stories such as his supposed secret cocaine landing strip in the Ozarks, or the innumerable people he supposedly killed. Jerry Falwell should be reduced to having church bake sales to pay off the debts for his whoppers. This would also give him time to reflect on the Commandment against bearing false witness.

One rationale I've heard for not pressing a libel action is that the material then becomes court record, and can be cited and repeated (with attribution) by others. What, like that's not already happening without attributon when such whoppers are unchhallenged?

Come on, Democrats -- are you afraid that if you take some of these slimers to court that the Republicans won't *like* you anymore?

but it's actions like this that make me wonder if he really intended to win back in '04: he didn't give up his Senate seat, he didn't respond to attacks made against him, he took a really stupid stance about his vote for the war...

Am I the only one?

... Kerry won anyway. Go figure.

Granted, Kerry didn't fight back very effectively against these kind of smears. But it shouldn't have been up to him alone. The media had an obligation to examine the Swift Boat stories before spreading them so uncritically and they didn't do their job. By the time they got around to debunking the stories the damage had already been done. And of course the debunking never got anywhere near the same attention as the original stories did. So the people who were inclined to believe the stories were able to just keep acting as though they were true, even after they had been shown not to be.

The Republicans have been running despicable smear campaigns against Democratic candidates for many election cycles now. The Democrats have never learned to effectively counter them and the media refuses to show them up for what they are. This situation MUST change.

Here's the thing: John O'Neil slimed Kerry for lying about going into Cambodia. John O'Neil claimed they never went into Cambodia. John O'Neil was hired by Nixon to challenge Kerry's claim that the those swift boats went into Cambodia.

But for christ's sake, why does no one point out that John O'Neil is on tape telling Nixon in 1971 that they were in Cambodia?

(transcript: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0408/24/asb.00.html --scroll down a bit.)

I believe this is part of the archive at the University of Maryland. Although you wouldn't know offhand, because it got so little coverage.

This alone should have discredited O'Neil as a legitimate critic of Kerry and sunk the Swifties before they ever got their vicious little motors running.

The press let this slide, and the only excuse, the only excuse, is because they were chasing the drama, not the facts.

History was changed for ratings.

I want to be sick every time I think of this. I thought we'd gone through the looking glass in 2000. It seems like we're stuck there. If Colbert could only turn back time...

Isn't it great to have presidential candidates like Kerry and Gore who can fight back against smears and lies, and really show what they're made of, two years after the campaign is over?

Kerry told the Republicans to bring--it--on. I cheered. War Hero's gonna show 'em, I thought. Then they brought-it--on: at the Republican Convention, in the media, via the Swifties. And damned if he didn't crumple.

"Don't let your mouth overload your hardware." -- Culpeper Cattle Company

The SBVT have actually done me a favor, and you too. I'll get to that in a minute.

I grew up in the early 1950s when war veterans were given a special respect because a half million of them died saving this land from a very real threat. There was an unwritten code of conduct about how civilians treated those who fought and returned home. No questions asked. If you didn't like a particular individual veteran, you could attack anything about him except his service. That was off limits.

But along came Vietnam and things started to change. Sure, all returning vets were "heroes" but there was a string attached. You only remained a "hero" if you shut up and waved the flag. Guys who came back from Vietnam disillusioned and mad as hell didn't fit the image any more.

The American public in general have always been hero worshipers. They love their heroes and the feel-good myth surrounding them. If you returned home with issues about the war you just came through, you must be weak, perhaps a coward, even though you wore the CIB, the Bronze or Silver Star and a Purple Heart or two.

Americans, I've found, are funny like that. Hero worshipers of the Nixon era were exasperated by men like John Kerry. Why couldn't he just keep his mouth shut and be their hero? He must be either a lying Communist traitor, or a mental nut job. Sure, war is hell, but real men don't come home and cry about it. Look at John Wayne! He was a real American hero, wasn't he? You'd never picture him coming home whining about injustice. He'd just belly up to the bar, have some booze and punch out the nearest faggot.

Hero worshippers believe war is a noble thing. There are rules. It's a fair fight. Our World War II heroes were the victim of atrocities like Malmedy and Bataan, not the perpetrators.

Hero worshippers have a blind spot when it comes to G.I. Joe rounding up civilians and unarmed prisoners at the edge of a ditch and murdering them. If it doesn't fit the hero myth, it must be a lie. If it wasn't a lie, then it must be explained away somehow and forgotten.

Now here's how the SBVT did us all a favor:

They are hoist by their own petard. They drove the final nail into the coffin of war hero worship. They banded together and told the American public that it's OK to make distinctions about veterans who wore the same uniform and bore the same scars of war as they did. The SBVT said it was OK to pick apart a man's (or woman's) service to their country and to use it to smear him and shame him.

The Bush campaign, fearing John McCain, smeared him with innuendo that he was "crazy" from his six years in the Hanoi Hilton, and therefore unfit for the presidency. Saxby Chambliss, a certified draft-dodging coward, smeared war amputee Max Clelland by saying he was weak on American defense. And then George W. Bush let the SBVT rip apart John Kerry's service. More recently, Iraq War veteran Paul Hackett was not only smeared by mad dog, hero-worshipping Jean Schmidt, but his own Democratic party leaders left him high and dry.

So here's the deal, people: You now have permission to let the shit fly at any war veteran you like. The SBVT have made it OK. You can discard any of those quaint reservations about not going after somebody because they once fought with courage for our country. The SBVT and the Republicans have declared a free fire zone on veterans running for office. Democrats can do the same.

Look out John McCain, what's good for the goose is sauce for the gander.