The press is atwitter today about the National Guard memos and the suspicion that they are forgeries. As I said last night, the media seems, the press seems to be adopting its traditional skeptical role much faster than they did with Swift Boat ads. But Atrios points out that there is ample evidence that typewriters at the time indeed could have been used to write the memos.

I guess we’ll have to sit by while the media casts doubt on the authenticity of the memos instead of investigating the charges. There must be others in the country who either knew Bush or other principals at the time who could shed light on this. So far, the only ones questioning the charges made by Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian are his son and wife who are simply speculating that there father wouldn’t have written such documents.

How many children would know enough about their parents’ work habits to make such blanket statements?

Meanwhile, thanks to Atrios, here’s ample evidence to support the documents’ authenticity. This typewriter was apparently widely availbale in the 1970s.

Click on the image for a larger size.

Keeping hecklers out of Bush’s campaign stops was apparently only the first step in stifling dissent. This makes you wonder what may be in store if there’s a second Bush administration with John Ashcroft & Co. protecting our liberties. Seems Bush has now enlisted the Secret Service in their war against anyone who opposes them. And he’s also taking aim at reporters who try to cover what happens to anti-Bush hecklers.

Officially, the Secret Service does not concern itself with unarmed, peaceful demonstrators who pose no danger to the commander in chief. But that policy was inoperative here Thursday when seven AIDS activists who heckled President Bush during a campaign appearance were shoved and pulled from the room — some by their hair, one by her bra straps — and then arrested for disorderly conduct and detained for an hour.

After Bush campaign bouncers handled the evictions, Secret Service agents, accompanied by Bush’s personal aide, supervised the arrests and detention of the activists and blocked the news media from access to the hecklers. The Bush campaign has made unprecedented efforts to control access to its events. Sometimes, people are required to sign oaths of support before attending events with Bush or Vice President Cheney. At times, buses of demonstrators are diverted by police to idle in parking lots while supporters are waved in. And the Secret Service has played an unusual role; one agent cooperated with a plan by the Bush campaign last month to prevent former senator Max Cleland (Ga.), a Kerry ally, from handing a letter to the agent outside Bush’s Texas ranch.

The seven activists, with the AIDS group Act Up Philadelphia, signed up as volunteers and came to the event site, a warehouse here in suburban Philadelphia, the night before to set up with the other volunteers. The activists were admitted Thursday to the Bush speech, which they quickly disrupted with chants of “Bush lies, people die,” and signs saying, “Bush: Global AIDS Liar.”

Bush forced a smile as the seven interrupted his speech in waves. As the crowd drowned them out with chants of “Four More Years,” the demonstrators were led roughly from the room by event ushers as a few attendees shouted “traitors.” Outside, plainclothes Secret Service agents, joined by Blake Gottesman, Bush’s personal aide, circled the demonstrators.

One uniformed Secret Service agent complained to a colleague that “the press is having a field day” with the disruption — and the agents quickly clamped down. Journalists were told that if they sought to approach the demonstrators, they would not be allowed to return to the event site — even though their colleagues were free to come and go. An agent, who did not give his name, told one journalist who was blocked from returning to the speech that this was punishment for approaching the demonstrators and that there was a “different set of rules” for reporters who did not seek out the activists.

Update: Atrios has noted the compliant press.

Swift boat veterans run ads attacking Kerry’s service and the mainstream media duly report them, and then weeks later get around to fact checking and lo and behold, the accusations are found to be false.

But new evidence on Bush’s privileged and dishonorable service in the National Guard gets questioned and The Washington Post and the New York Times are quick to run stories questioning the authenticity of the memos CBS uncovered about Bush disobeying an order to get a physical and that he tried to go “upstairs” to get out of his service.

And the papers can’t argue that the difference is that Bush folks were quick to counterattack and the Kerry folks weren’t because the administration hadn’t questioned the authenticity of the memos. You would think that if they were false, W would have told his people so and they’d be all over this.

Of course, maybe he knew he didn’t have to. The “liberal” media did it for him.

Well, Well. This is from the web site Daily Mislead:

The White House is currently attacking those who raise questions about President Bush’s National Guard record. They say the questions about Bush’s failure to fulfill his commitment are “dirty politics.”1 Yet a look at the record shows that it was President George H.W. Bush – and his top campaign strategist George W. Bush – who tried to smear the National Guard and military record of their opponents.

As reported in the August 23, 1988 Los Angeles Times, then Vice President George H.W. Bush’s campaign co-chairman John Sununu went on national television to impugn an opponent’s dealings with the National Guard during Vietnam. Sununu specifically claimed Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-TX) had improperly helped get his son into the Texas National Guard during Vietnam. Bentsen’s son served in the very same National Guard unit at the very same time as George W. Bush. The Bush campaign’s attacks came just days after Bush’s allies on Capitol Hill launched a vicious attack on Gov. Michael Dukakis (D-MA) for receiving a draft deferment during the Korean War.2

At the time of the coordinated attack, George W. Bush was serving as a senior adviser to his father’s campaign.

Update: Josh Marshall has more on this story, including the complete transcript of the CBS interview with White House spokesman Dan Bartlett, and Marshall cites other articles of interest

On top of the AP stories of the past couple days and the Boston Globe story this morning (see my earlier post), CBS has added new information that suggests Bush hasn’t told the truth. And after all, isn’t that was insinuated about John Kerry when Bush wouldn’t repudiate the Swift Boat Vet ads until they had done their damage. Bush, it seems, refused a direct order, according to memos CBS cited tonight on “60 minutes.”

The first memo is a direct order to take “an annual physical examination” – a requirement for all pilots

Another memo refers to a phone call from the lieutenant in which he and his commander “discussed options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November.” And that due to other commitments “he may not have time.”

On August 1, 1972, Col. Killian grounded Lt. Bush for failure to perform to U.S. Air Force/Texas Air National Guard standards and for failure to take his annual physical as ordered.

A year after Lt. Bush’s suspension from flying, Killian was asked to write another assessment.

Killian’s memo, titled ‘CYA’ reads he is being pressured by higher-ups to give the young pilot a favorable yearly evaluation; to, in effect, sugarcoat his review. He refuses, saying, “I’m having trouble running interference and doing my job.”

So W disobeyed orders and then refused to do what he promised to do.

It’s not just the newly discovered memos causing trouble. There are new questions as to why, when he moved to Massachusetts to attend Harvard Business School, Mr. Bush did not sign up with a reserve unit there, as he promised in a letter when he left the Texas National Guard

And why, with his erratic attendance record, he was subject to neither discipline nor active duty call-up as provided for in his contract with the Guard.

Larry Korb, an assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan has reviewed the Mr. Bush’s record and believes he did not fulfill his contract.

“Essentially, Bush gamed the system to avoid serving his country the way that most of his contemporaries had to,” Korb said.

But I like White house spokesman Dan Bartlett defense.

“I chalk it up to politics,” said White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett. “They play dirty down in Texas. I’ve been there. I see how it works. But the bottom line is that there is no truth to this.”

Asked if this is dirty politics, Bartlett replied, “Oh, I think it is.”

They play dirty politics. I am always amazed that the GOP can say such things with a straight face. The Republicans just finished a week-long convention that was one big mud bath.

This exchange occurred last night among Paula Zahn, host of Paula Zahn Now on CNN, Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson.

ZAHN: Now Tucker, interesting thing in this poll, also suggests the majority of Republicans polled believe that John Kerry has been attacked unfairly. Fifty-two percent say yes; 41 percent say no.

CARLSON: Yes. That goes into the who cares column. I mean, I’ve done stories on this over past election cycles on voters’ perceptions of the unfairness of attacks.

And it turns out, A, most people, no matter what they tell pollsters, I believe deep down think if you’re attacked you deserve it. B, when you complain about it, they think you’re a whiner.

I have never seen a race, and you know, Paul’s run a lot of races, maybe he has — but I personally have never seen a race where whining about the attacks, the other guy is inflicting on you, has gotten the candidate anywhere. People just say, “Oh, you know, knock it off.”

ZAHN: I can only give you two 10 seconds apiece. Paul Begala, going into this race, John Kerry’s single biggest vulnerability?

BEGALA: The fact that he for a long time let attacks go unanswered. Tucker’s right. General Patton said the object of war is not to die for your country. It’s to make the other S.O.B. die for his country.

The object of the campaign is not to respond to attacks. It’s to attack. And I think the Kerry campaign is going to do that.

I can agree with both Carlson and Begala. If the attacks get any coverage in the mainstream media, they automatically have some credence with a good portion of the electorate. And a politician complaining about them just makes them a complainer.

Begala is also right in that, like it or not, attack mode is the only winning mode in modern politics. It’s not the politicians’ fault, either. It’s our fault for making decisions based on specious arguments and dubious advertisements.

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, whose wife is a GOP political operative, tries as best he can to discredit a book that is due out next week. The headline writer helps. “The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty” details episodes in W’s young life that he rather not see in print. The author, Kitty Kelley, has been booked for a extraordinary three straight days on NBC’s Today, while some other media are not reporting the story.

Kurtz focuses on the latter media in an attempt to slam the book. Kelley has a checkered past and caution is advised. But the reasons for the caution and the reticence of some media should have been exercised on “Unfit To Command,” the widely discredited after it was widely publicized book about John Kerry’s Vietnam service.

ABC spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said the [Kelley] book “obviously would be subjected to serious scrutiny” before the network reported the allegations, “and if we had the author on we would ask her very probing questions.” CBS has not booked Kelley. She is tentatively scheduled to appear on CNN’s “American Morning” and “NewsNight With Aaron Brown.”

…The book did not pass muster at Newsweek, however. Editor Mark Whitaker said his magazine was given an advance copy for a possible story “and we passed. We weren’t comfortable with a lot of the reporting. We will write about it if it becomes a phenomenon and looks like it will have some impact on the campaign debate, not to further publicize the reporting in it.”

… Time Managing Editor Jim Kelly said he had not gotten an advance look at the book but “you obviously would have to fact-check the hell out of it.” Excerpting a book “by Kitty Kelley is a problematic proposition,” he said.

And the swift boat veterans’ book wasn’t?

But my favorite citing in the article is of Bush’s frustration in the 2000 campaign.

During the 2000 campaign, Bush repeatedly declined to address questions about possible past drug use, saying only that he had made “mistakes” when he was “young and irresponsible.” He said he had not used illegal drugs since 1974 but refused to say whether he had tried them earlier. “Enough is enough when it comes to trying to dig up people’s backgrounds in politics,” Bush said in 1999.

Yeah, we wouldn’t want to be smearing somebody because of his background.

Tonight at 8:00 p.m. EDT/PDT CBS’s “60 Minutes” will interview Ben Barnes, the former lieutenant governor of Texas who says he now regrets that, at the urging of the Bush family, he pulled strings to get George W. Bush a coveted spot in the “Champaign Unit” of the Texas National Guard. The unit was so named because of the many sons of the privileged who were in it. Other reports suggest tonight’s program may go into other discrepancies, inconsistencies and lies in the Bush family’s story of W’s Vietnam era service – or lack thereof.

The Associated Press has been running stories recently about the inconsistencies and lack of documentation of Bush’s service after it obtained new records – records the Bush administration previously said it couldn’t find — in the last few days.

The Boston Globe has uncovered additional information that casts doubt on Bush’s service.

I urge you to take the time to watch tonight’s “60 Minutes.” Can we trust a man who lied to get us into a war where now 1,000 troops have died and apparently lied about his military service?

Where a story is placed is as important as what’s covered. I’ve argued before that important stories that should be on the front page (the Bush campaign’s inaccuracies and distortions, for example) are far less effective when they are buried in the paper

I’ve also argued before that The Washington Post is particularly culpable in their placement of stories about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the single most contentious issue between the Muslim world and the U.S., in my opinion.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone then that today’s story about the Israeli attack that killed 13 Palestinians and injured 25 other people is on page A17, whereas the bombing a week ago by Palestinian militants that killed 16 people got front page coverage and a photo.

You can argue, as The Post often does through its ombudsman, that front page stories are determined in large part by what stories are breaking that day. The killing of seven Marines in Iraq, Florida’s cleanup after Frances and the aftermath of the Russian tragedy are among the stories making front page news today.

But The Post’s placement of stories of the killing of Palestinians and Israelis has followed a pattern for too long, especially for an issue that should play a greater role in the election this November.

Chris Matthews, of the misnamed “Hardball” on MSNBC (it should be “Blowhard” in honor of its host or “Softball” for when he fawns all over people he likes), is catching flak for letting former Sen. Alan Simpson* get away with another unsubstantiated slur.

“In four months of service,” Simpson said in reference to John Kerry, “it’s very difficult for this cowboy to understand how you get three purple hearts. Just mark it down, that’s all I’m saying.” It was the equivalent of a Democrat going on the air and saying, “Well, I’ve heard George Bush used to do a lot of cocaine 30 years ago, and I know it’s tough to stop doing drugs, so it’s just difficult for this American to understand how it could be that he’s not still coked up to the gills every day. Just mark it down, that’s all I’m saying.”

Matthews, to his credit, pounced, asking Simpson, somewhat incredulously, “You don’t think he would have inflicted those wounds himself?” A little bit after backing off slightly in response to that question, Simpson changed course and gave us his imitation of a crystal ball reader:

I think what you’re going to find, they’re going to go into his records just as they would yours or mine or anybody else’s. They’re going to go into Edwards, and guess who will do that? The media. They’re going to pick the leaves off the onion and they’ll go goofy with these two guys in the next two months.

Simpson seems to be implying, first, that there are somewhere copious records detailing Kerry wartime indiscretions that the media has so far ignored, and second, that John Edwards has something to account for about his own Vietnam era behavior. Whereas in fact, thanks to the media’s belated investigation into the dubious allegations of the creatively-named Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Kerry’s war records have already been examined more closely than a urine sample from Marion Jones; and Edwards didn’t even enter the draft lottery until 1972, a year at the tail-end of the war and, more importantly, a year in which no one was called up.

So how did Matthews respond? He grinned at Simpson and exclaimed, “Sounds good to me!”

Well, Chris, it didn’t sound so good to us. To us, it sounded like an on-air reporter letting a ludicrous hypothetical speculation, meant to tar a candidate, go unchallenged.

As noted earlier, The Washington Post today put on page 1 above the fold and under a picture of George and Laura a story that takes to task the GOP for its distortions of Kerry’s position.

I sense that journalists are reaching a point where we may see more of these stories. I don’t think you’ll see it as much on broadcast news and cable talk shows, especially when it comes to challenging the GOP. First, broadcast news is limited by time; nothing lasts more than five minutes before the talking heads feel compelled to move on to another topic. Besides, I’m convinced that most of them just aren’t that bright. More precisely, they are ignorant of the issues. They don’t know when they are being fed a bunch of crap.

But The Post, the New York Times, the LA Times, USA Today and a few other major papers could provide more reality checks. What would help is if we all start pestering them for such pieces.

My suggestion is send emails to reporters covering the campaigns as well as editors and ombudsmen. Tell them you’d like them to compare the rhetoric with the facts.

Here are some contacts below, though I’m not sure of all the emails. In some cases, I’m using the conventions the papers use to guess at email addresses. It really won’t take that many requests to get some results.

The Washington Post
Glenn Kessler – kesslerg@washpost.com (He co-wrote today’s Post story)
JimVandHei – vandeheij@washpost.com
Dana Milbank whitehouse@washpost.com
Dan Balz – balzd@washpost.com (He writes a lot of the campaign analysis pieces)
ombudsman@washpost.com

The New York Times
Dan Okrent – public@nytimes.com (Ombudsman)
National Desk – national@nytimes.com
Washington Desk – washington@nytimes.com
Managing Editor – managing-editor@nytimes.com
Executive Editor – executive-editor@nytimes.com
Adam Nagourney is a key reporter but does not reveal his email address, and the Times doesn’t use an email naming convention consistently.
Jodi Wilgoren’s email address is wilgoren@nytimes.com
David E. Sanger – dasang@nytimes.com
Elisabeth Bumiller doesn’t provide her email address.

LA Times
The email convention for the LA Times is simply Firstname.Lastname@latimes.com

I’m not as familiar with the specific reporters covering the campaign but Don Frederick is the 2004 political editor – Don.Frederick@latimes.com

A complete LA Times staff directory can be found here.

USA Today
Susan Page and Jill Lawrence are two reporters but the paper doesn’t provide email addresses. You can provide a comment here.

If we can get these papers to do more fact checking, other journalists may follow.

*Editor’s Note: Thanks to an alert reader, I’ve changed Cranston to Simpson in the first sentence. I guess I was just longing for the good old days.