Mike Shear and The Washington Post have a story today about whether Jim Webb ever used the “N-word.” Why? Just read Marc Fisher’s column nearby.

“I’d just ask people to look at the facts,” said Allen’s campaign manager, Dick Wadhams. “We’ve had one person go on the record, and not one of [Shelton’s] teammates has come forward to back him up. It’s an interesting new standard in journalism: If somebody called you and said, ‘I want to make a charge against Jim Webb,’ should that person automatically be afforded the assumption of truth?”

Mike Shear answers, “yes” And for those who charge that The Post is part of the liberal media cabal, the story proves otherwise. To prove they are not liberal, The Post felt compelled to run a story because the Allen campaigned demanded it, after Webb was asked by the Richmond Times Dispatch if he ever used the word.

Webb’s comments to the Times-Dispatch prompted Allen campaign officials to direct a reporter [Ed. Note — meaning Shear] to Dan Cragg, a former acquaintance of Webb’s, who said Webb used the word while describing his own behavior as a member of ROTC during his freshman year at the University of Southern California in the early 1960s.

Cragg says that Webb admitted using the word when interviewed by Cragg for a 1983 article in a Vietnam veterans magazine. Yet, Cragg’s account is not supported by his own documentation.

Cragg, who described himself as a Republican who would vote for Allen, did not include the story in his article. He provided a transcript of the interview, but the transcript does not contain the ROTC story.

This is more evidence of the MSM’s caving in to the pressure from the right about their supposed liberal biases. To prove otherwise, they run a story like this. Mike Shear, who lectured bloggers at a conference earlier this year about posting unsubstantiated stories, runs a story based on an admitted partisan’s charge when his own documentation can’t support it.

Let’s make clear the differences: Against Webb, we have one man making this charge. His own notes for his interview belie his accusations.

Against Allen, we have his own admission of fascination with the Confederacy, though he was a privileged son raised in California. He hung a Confederate flag in his home and a noose in his office. And several people have confirmed his use of the racial epithet and now another who has come forward confirming hearing the deer head in the mailbox story years ago from one of the participants in the prank. And oh yeah, Allen called a dark skinned kid a “macaca.”

Liberal media! More apt, Wimpish Media, Hypocritical Reporter

Commenting on the HP scandal re the illegal acquisition of phone records, Congressman Joe Barton (R-Tex.) said on CNBC this afternoon”I don’t think anybody should be able to get my phone records without my permission, period.”

Anyone know how he might feel about the NIC getting them?

Well, if a clear majority of Americans wanting us out of Iraq isn’t enough to rip Bush’s grip off the trigger, about a majority of Iraqis?

I’m too much of a political junkie. I can almost quote in real time as the clips of President Clinton’s interview with Chris Wallace roll on endlessly on talk shows. I need a life.

But what strikes me about this is how many folks describe it as a sort of meltdown, or at best, a loss of temper. Maybe my family has too much Italian blood in it, because if you want to see someone blow a gasket… Well, let’s just say I hope I never see it on YouTube.

We are often critical of our politicians for being scripted, cautious and afraid to make a mistake. Indeed, there are some that think Clinton was scripted and feigned outrage to fire up the troops and deliver a roadmap for wimpy Dems. Maybe. But it comes off to me not only as a spirited defense, but a great example of questioning the motives, integrity and perhaps intelligence of a reporter. I don’t watch Chris Wallace that much to have an opinion as to whether he is a “right wing hit man,” though at least once I remember thinking his father must have cringed if he saw what clearly was to me a right wing bias in an interview I saw. But that was only one example. I’m willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. And the question was legitimate.

But Clinton was right to call out Fox News. There is honest debate about whether the MSM is liberal or a lackey for corporate America. But it is not debatable whether Fox news is right-wing, not just in its talk shows, which are typically stacked with conservative pundits, but in its delivery of the news.

But it goes beyond Fox News. I wish more politicians would take on their questioners. I think many pundits should too, but that would only ensure they were not invited back. Doesn’t help when you bite the hand that feeds you or insult your host in any venue. But politicians should more often say, “That’s really a dumb question” or “Your premise is not justified and reveals a bias that’s really not professional.” And then they should take a couple of seconds to debunk the premise or say why the question is dumb.

Clinton was not afraid (what has he got to lose?) to show a little flash of good old fashioned gumption. But it was hardly a meltdown or an out of control moment. It was a guy being himself and not being afraid of his own passion, although I guess you could say, in one sense anyway, that Clinton doesn’t have a reputation for that fear.

Webb has a new TV ad and it’s terrific. It effectively conflates Bush and Allen and their “stay the course” theme for Iraq. But more important and effective is that the candidate himself delivers the message and does so in an authoritative manner. I think in today’s climate, where voters are looking for responsibility, candidates who deliver the message themselves win a lot of votes. Best of all, he delivers a succinct message that, for the life of me, I don’t understand why it hasn’t become the mantra for Democrats this year: “The people who failed to prevent this disaster are not the ones you can count on to fix it.”

The Bush administration also likes to say that critics of the Iraq War are Monday morning quarterbacks. “Let’s not play the ‘blame game’,” they say. One, that belies their mantra about others who should accept responsibility for their actions. You’ve often heard that from conservatives vis-à-vis welfare recipients. They should take responsibility for their actions, but the president won’t accept responsibility for his. But also, as Webb says, given the monumental disaster that Bush’s foreign policy has been and the outlandish costs, destruction of America’s integrity and loss of life, that we shouldn’t expect this gang that can’t shoot straight to get us out of this quagmire.

Another point I think needs to be addressed is this spin that comes from the Bush administration that we all thought Iraq had WMD. I heard it last night from Fran Townsend, assistant to the president for homeland security, who said,

What I‘m saying is, the intelligence that was provided in the NIE suggesting that Iraq was a threat to the region and to the world, was believed on by—on both sides of the aisle, that formed the basis of our going into Iraq. The intelligence turned out to be wrong. That said, we are safer as a result of not having Saddam Hussein in power.

The only reason “both sides of the aisle” believed there were WMD is because the Democrats only knew what the administration told them and what they told them was wrong, some say a lie. Either way, you can’t say with any intellectual honesty that both sides believed in the WMD charge.

Apparently, the web site FackCheck.org was playing loose with the facts when it debunked Vote Vets ad that claims Sen. Allen voted against body armor. It’s amusing to see how the right wing neo-radicals attack the ad. As I read Media Matters’ analysis of the ad and FactCheck’s parsing of words, I’m reminded of all the times during the 2004 campaign the GOP said Kerry voted to raise taxes dozens of times, citing even bills where he didn’t vote to decrease them and all sorts of bills that were only tangentially related to taxes. Now it is the right who cries foul in its defense of George Allen because the sponsor of the bill didn’t use the words “body armor.”

Again, the hypocrisy of the right astounds me.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is thought to be winning the worldwide PR world with his appearance this week at the U.N. He said many of the right things.

On Thursday, he explained that when he called for the destruction of Israel and dismissed the Holocaust as a myth, his issue was not with the Jewish people but with Zionists, “who are not Jews.”

“We love everyone in the world — Jews, Christians, Muslims, non-Muslims, non-Jews, non-Christians,” he said, adding “we are against ugly acts.”

“Everyone is respected. But I repeat, we are against aggression, occupation, killings. … We declare this in a loud voice,” he said.

…”We support … peace and permanent stability in Lebanon, and we will fall short of no measure in promoting this goal. Whether it’s in the cultural or spiritual support that we can render or whether it is the role that we can play in the international arena, we will do our best. And this is the fundamental principle of our foreign policy, and it does not preclude Lebanon,” he said.

At the news conference, Ahmadinejad also expressed love and affection for the American people, just as President Bush reached out to the Iranian people in his General Assembly speech on Tuesday. Ahmadinejad said he wished he had more time here to spend with them in person.

“The people of the United States are highly respected by us,” he said. “Many people in the United States believe in God and believe in justice.” He thanked the New York City police and security forces for protecting him during his stay here and apologized to New Yorkers for traffic disruptions from the arrival of world leaders to attend the U.N. General Assembly session.

But most important,

He said his country was ready to negotiate a suspension of uranium enrichment.

“We have said that under fair conditions and just conditions, we will negotiate about it,” he said.

Now no one believes all those oh-so-nice things he said. Surely, his actions speak louder than words. But words are the currency of diplomacy and with his invitation to negotiate, how does it hurt us to do so? Yet, this is still a pissing match.

But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iran must suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing before any full-fledged negotiations.

“Iran has been told by the international community … that they should suspend and if they suspend the negotiations can begin. It’s as simple as that. I don’t think we need any further conditionality,” she told reporters after a Security Council meeting on Mideast peace.

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov makes a key point

“I think that artificial timeframes do not work,” he said. “The quality of the agreement is much more important, and especially in this particular case there is no objective reason for any ultra-rush if you wish.”

If you listen to the NPR’s report last night on “All Things Considered,” he sounds like a politician who, at the very least, wants respect, which is a point I’ve made before.

The same point is made is yesterday’s AP story.

Ahmadinejad said the United States’ objection to Iran’s nuclear program — which he claims is for peacefully purposes only — was essentially aimed at aborting his country’s progress. And he said if the world stops treating his country as a subordinate, then things might be different.

“If they recognize that we too, as a nation, have rights … the concerns too will be removed,” he said.

Respect it a key issue in negotiating with the Muslim world. And why is it necessary for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment if it is willing to “ready to negotiate a suspension of uranium enrichment”? Even if they said yes before negotiations, what’s to stop them from restarting it? First and foremost, we need to find out what they want and what they’re willing to give to get it.

Because let’s face it: We have no options. We couldn’t attack Iran if we wanted to and such an attack would doom our children’s generation to decades of terrorism.

Ideals and Realities Clash In Bush ‘Freedom Agenda’

The timing of Bush’s address on democracy to the U.N. General Assembly and the overthrow of a democratically elected government underlined the complexities and contradictions in his “freedom agenda.” With the president’s attention focused on the Middle East, the state of democracy elsewhere in the world does not rate as high on his priority list. In the case of Thailand, the situation is complicated by growing U.S. unease with the ousted prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra.

“The president’s freedom agenda is inherently selective,” said Thomas Carothers, head of the democracy project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “We care very much about democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, but . . . Thailand’s just not part of the story, so this falls off the map a bit.”

Thailand is hardly the only example. Bush strongly supports Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president who took power in a military coup, and plans to meet with him at the White House twice in the next week. Bush will also host Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, at the end of next week despite the suppression of opposition parties, newspapers and human rights groups in the oil-rich Central Asian republic.

The administration has likewise embraced autocratic leaders in such disparate places as Azerbaijan and Ethiopia while generally tempering criticism of anti-democratic policies in Russia and China. Even in the Middle East, Bush has treaded lightly in nudging allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia to reform.

On the other hand, the White House ratcheted up its pressure this month on the repressive government in Burma. After meeting with a dissident, Bush personally lobbied to get the U.N. Security Council to put Burma on the agenda last week for possible sanctions. And first lady Laura Bush hosted a roundtable at the United Nations on democracy in that country.

When the president talks about promoting democracy, as he did in New York on Tuesday, he focuses mainly on Iraq and Afghanistan. Some other countries that he once highlighted as success stories have been dropped from his speeches, most notably Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

In Ukraine, the popular coalition that led the “Orange Revolution” of December 2004 has splintered and the new prime minister is the same one the street protests targeted. In Kyrgyzstan, the brother of the president who took office after the revolution of March 2005 has been accused of trying to frame an opposition leader by planting a heroin-filled wooden doll in his luggage.

The coup in Thailand poses the latest challenge to Bush’s commitment to “ending tyranny in our world,” as he vowed in his second inaugural address. Aides said yesterday that he did not mention the coup in his U.N. speech because they were still gathering information, but they did not explain why he said nothing later in the day as it became clear that the military had ousted Thaksin.

Having read a number of posts on neo-radical blogs suggesting that Jim Webb blew his appearance on Hardball last night, I expected to hear him stumble over the question of whether he has paid bloggers. (He has at least one, Lowell Feld of Raising Kaine.) He didn’t answer the question. You could criticize him for that, but if we slammed every politician for dodging questions, we’d have time to write about nothing else.

But thanks to those Allen sycophants. Look at the clip. Webb does a great job of talking about the right issues. And he puts Matthews in his place to boot. I’ve been critical of Webb’s style. But more and more his taciturn style his beginning to look like a serious politician talking about serious issues in a no-nonsense way. He’s showing guts taking on interviewers when they ask stupid questions and looking more and more like a guy who can take on Republicans in the Senate.

Amazing how often the Bush administration lies, er, I mean, gets “mixed up.”

In an embarrassing turnabout, the Department of Justice backed away Wednesday from a denial by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales of responsibility for the treatment of a Canadian who was seized by American authorities in 2002. The man was deported to Syria, where he was imprisoned and beaten.

Asked at a news conference on Tuesday about a Canadian commission’s finding that the man, Maher Arar, was wrongly sent to Syria and tortured there, Mr. Gonzales replied, “Well, we were not responsible for his removal to Syria.” He added, “I’m not aware that he was tortured.”

The attorney general’s comments caused puzzlement because they followed front-page news articles of the findings of the Canadian commission. It reported that based on inaccurate information from Canada about Mr. Arar’s supposed terrorist ties, American officials ordered him taken to Syria, an action documented in public records.

On Wednesday, a Justice Department spokesman said Mr. Gonzales had intended to make only a narrow point: that deportations are now handled by the Department of Homeland Security, not the Department of Justice.

The spokesman, Charles Miller, said the attorney general forgot that at the time of Mr. Arar’s deportation, such matters were still handled by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was part of the Department of Justice.

“He had his timeline mixed up,” Mr. Miller said.