In our Social Security debunker of a couple weeks back, we mentioned briefly the so-called Galveston plan, named after a municipal government that opted out of Social Security in favor of a defined-contribution program of private accounts. We pointed out that only the wealthy seem to do better (no surprise there) – it turns out we underestimated how bad a deal it is. Social Security, of course, gives annual cost-of-living adjustments to keep pace with inflation – private accounts like those in Galveston are missing that component, meaning after a few years the Texas plan will start to get smaller and smaller.

Check out Sen. Barbara Boxer’s study, which has lots of nice charts. (Via Think Progress.)

Reuters tells us today, in its oh-so-mainstream-media way, that

The U.S. count of major world terrorist attacks more than tripled in 2004, a rise that may revive debate on whether the Bush administration is winning the war on terrorism, congressional aides said on Tuesday.

The number of “significant” international terrorist attacks rose to about 650 last year from about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides briefed on the numbers by State Department and intelligence officials on Monday.

What Reuters doesn’t tell us though is what prompted the State Department and their intelligence buddies to come clean this time around. They said that last year they confused some numbers. What happened as a result?

The State Department last year initially released erroneous figures that understated the attacks and casualties in 2003 and used the figures to argue that the Bush administration was prevailing in the war on terrorism.

It later said the number of people killed and injured in 2003 was more than double its original count and said “significant” terrorist attacks — those that kill or seriously injure someone, cause more than $10,000 in damage or attempt to do either of those things — rose to a 20-year high of 175.

Unfortunately, maybe because he doesn’t read much, Pres. Bush hasn’t heard about these “new” numbers. He thinks things are going well, and told a room full of people just that as recently as March of this year, 2005, when he gave a speech at The National Defense University. He actually said:

…terrorists are less likely to endanger our security if they are worried about their own security. When terrorists spend their days struggling to avoid death or capture, they are less capable of arming and training to commit new attacks. We will keep the terrorists on the run, until they have nowhere left to hide.

Well, according to the State Department, there are still plenty of places to hide, and terrorists aren’t having to run very fast. Bush then went on to, incredibly, list for everyone a bunch of reasons why “we’re more secure,” even though we’re not. It mostly had to do with some relatively minor successes other countries have had dealing with terrorism, probably in spite of his Administration.

Finally, in stunning, Freudian feats of denial, blame and projection (or Rovian Orwellianism, take your pick), Bush actually talks about the vagaries of dictatorship (guffaw), tyranny (thigh slap), radicalism (choke) and the virtues of opposition and dissent (huh?). He wraps it up with an analysis of how dictators tend to – get this – blame and project. I swear, I couldn’t make this stuff up:

Our strategy to keep the peace in the longer term is to help change the conditions that give rise to extremism and terror, especially in the broader Middle East. Parts of that region have been caught for generations in a cycle of tyranny and despair and radicalism. When a dictatorship controls the political life of a country, responsible opposition cannot develop, and dissent is driven underground and toward the extreme. And to draw attention away from their social and economic failures, dictators place blame on other countries and other races, and stir the hatred that leads to violence.

Stir the hatred that leads to violence? Draw attention away from domestic failures? Does this guy ever look in the mirror? Or is that where he gets all his best material?

He goes on with absurd stuff, seriously, about honest representative government, rule of law, and free and fair elections. We’d print more here, but it’s just too painful. Read on though, if you must.

Looking at the server logs, it seems that many of our readers use the blog RSS feed to access our content, and might miss our fabulous work done using ancient technology like word processors and HTML. Each week we read and research dozens of right-wing articles and transcripts, and present our debunking. So visit our home page! Without further ado, here is an RSS-friendly version of our weekly newsletter (which you can subscribe to here):

Justice DeLay’d, again: The trouble with Tom

The charges against Delay betray the wholesale prostitution of the legislative branch of the United States government, as well as ruthless politics camouflaged behind poll calibrated conservative populist and religious rhetoric. More than selling books, the Hammer and Company broke laws to collect money, spread influence, and dole out political goods in ways that spit in the face of the public good and line the pockets of themselves and their supporters. These tactics also violate house ethics rules and the law. Within the new Rovian political calculus of divide and conquer, DeLay & Co. may well stand a 50/50 chance of riding this thing out by holding the Hammer up as a noble conservative under attack from Godless liberal detractors. Read On!

Debunker: More on Bolton: Nuke the U.N., cont’d.

Right wing commentary creates the impression that John Bolton is the perfect man to clean up the corrupt and ineffective United Nations. You say tomato, we say rotten tomato. More sensible voices argue that he is in fact a dangerous ideologue, with a disregard for international institutions and for the facts, and he has a bad temper to boot. No wonder W loves him. Read on!

Debunker: The filibuster.

Frist and his paymasters talk up the Armageddon Option.  Following hot on the heels of the Schiavoist conference “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith” (featuring a Tom DeLay video appearance) comes “Justice Sunday: Stopping the filibuster against people of faith,” a telecast designed to beam directly into churches across America, and with a scheduled guest star of Senator Bill Frist. It seems like such a clever plan: get voters while they’re in church and tell them that Democrats (presumably G odless commies) are fighting “against people of faith” (and, presumably, Jesus himself). Read on!

Debunker: Social Security.

Privateers’ Golden Oldies: trust fund & minorities.  If a trillion dollars falls in the forest, does it make a sound? Apparently – it’s the sound of a handful of Privateers who just can’t stop repeating the same old crusty myths. Read on!

Debunker: Miscellaneous.

Freedom means protest; Wal-Mart sucks; and God and love. If democracy and liberty mean that David Horowitz and Ann Coulter have to get hit by pies every now and then, we’ll take ours with extra cream. Read on!

Debunker: The estate tax, the energy bill, and the bankruptcy bill. What do they all have in common?  Read on!

Debunker: Project Minuteman.

Blame the foreign laborers department. At the beginning of April, Operation Minuteman, a group of armed vigilantes, began their patrol of a 20 mile stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border to prevent illegal immigration. This xenophobic, jingoistic, and illegal group is naturally being hailed by the right as heroic and patriotic. And why not, they encompass three favorite right wing themes, anti-government rhetoric, blaming our problems on foreigners, and guns. Read on!

And check out our Wing Nuts section for some of the zanier quotes from the right and far right. Just what kind of man does young evangelist Doug Giles think women really want these days? (Hint: not “metrosexuals"!)

From The Note, earlier today:

The President participates in a service project at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Townsend, TN at 12:30 pm ET, then talks about Earth Day at 1:30 pm ET. He then heads to the ranch in Crawford, TX, where he’ll be from this evening until Tuesday. (He meets with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in Monday April 25.)

I wonder if he talked about hydrogen cell cars with the Crown Prince?

The inimitable Thomas Frank finds the ‘moral values’ divide in the 60s culture-war backlash:

Conservatives generally regard class as an unacceptable topic when the subject is economics—trade, deregulation, shifting the tax burden, expressing worshipful awe for the microchip, etc. But define politics as culture, and class instantly becomes for them the very blood and bone of public discourse. Indeed, from George Wallace to George W. Bush, a class-based backlash against the perceived arrogance of liberalism has been one of their most powerful weapons. Workerist in its rhetoric but royalist in its economic effects, this backlash is in no way embarrassed by its contradictions. It understands itself as an uprising of the little people even when its leaders, in control of all three branches of government, cut taxes on stock dividends and turn the screws on the bankrupt. It mobilizes angry voters by the millions, despite the patent unwinnability of many of its crusades. And from the busing riots of the Seventies to the culture wars of our own time, the backlash has been ignored, downplayed, or misunderstood by liberals.

The 2004 presidential campaign provides a near-perfect demonstration of the persistent power of backlash—as well as another disheartening example of liberalism’s continuing inability to confront it in an effective manner. […] A newcomer to American politics, after observing this strategy in action in 2004, would have been justified in believing that the Democrats were the party in power, so complacent did they seem and so unwilling were they to criticize the actual occupant of the White House. Republicans, meanwhile, were playing another game entirely. The hallmark of a “backlash conservative” is that he or she approaches politics not as a defender of the existing order or as a genteel aristocrat but as an average working person offended by the arrogance of the (liberal) upper class. The sensibility was perfectly caught during the campaign by onetime Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer, who explained it to The New York Times like this: “Joe Six-Pack doesn’t understand why the world and his culture are changing and why he doesn’t have a say in it.” These are powerful words, the sort of phrase that could once have been a slogan of the fighting, egalitarian left. Today, though, it was conservatives who claimed to be fighting for the little guy, assailing the powerful, and shrieking in outrage at the direction in which the world is irresistibly sliding.

Read on.

Hats off to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, John Nichols of The Nation Magazine, and Steven Clemons of The Washington Note, for jumping further into the abyss that is UN ambassador nominee John Bolton. They’ve fished up for us, and displayed in remarkably concise form, a whole bunch of new reasons not to trust Bolton – with much of anything, much less the crucial position of UN ambassador.

Based on some of these new revelations, Republican Senator George Voinovich pushed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday to delay their vote for Bolton’s nomination, a bold move and an extremely strong truth-to-power statement to Bush&Co. about the extent of verifiable concern over Bolton. And Good God Almighty, Voinovich succeeded. Apparently, it is adequately concerning that Bolton has spent time on the clock threatening analysts, exagerrating WMD intelligence, and trashing our diplomatic efforts with North Korea and Iran.

But there’s even more. John Nichols tells us that it was also Bolton who headed up the Repug efforts to block the recount in Florida in 2000:

He was put in charge of undermining the recount in Palm Beach County. And you’ll remember Palm Beach County was the place where you had so many of the chad problems, and there are pictures of Bolton, you know, just jumping into situations and forcing people to stop counts, and that stalling of the count in Palm Beach County was a critical part of the screwing up of the whole process. Then when the ballots were taken to Tallahassee, after the Florida State Supreme Court ordered a fuller recount, Bolton went to Tallahassee with them, and it was John Bolton who burst into the room on December 9, 2000, when they were recounting the ballots from Miami-Dade County, one of the most critical of the counties, and announced, “I’m with the Bush-Cheney team, and I’m here to stop the count.” Now, Bolton had no power to do that. I mean, he didn’t have the authority to stop any count. But he did it repeatedly, and he did it with immense force.

And, Steven Clemons says that Bolton yelled at a couple of people at The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in 1993, and also tried to get them fired:

…new allegations…have come up about Mr. Bolton’s abusive behavior and attempts to get people fired…at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which he went onto in 1993…John Bolton served as a commissioner on this. But there are two individuals who apparently were harassed at great lengths by John Bolton, both of whom work at different institutions today.

Not only has this type of antisocial and undemocratic behavior made Bolton increasingly unattractive to our public service circles, he’s apparently no longer a welcome face in the private sector either. Steven Clemons also reports that Bolton’s former employer, the high-powered DC-based law firm Covington and Burling, has refused to hire him back, because he’s so mean to people:

…he was also rejected a return to his law firm, Covington and Burling by senior partners because of their concerns over his abusive behavior. So this question about serial abuse is actually more dramatic than many of us had realized…What’s important about this is there are two angles on Bolton that are very important. One is this surprising abusive behavior question and the lengths to which John Bolton takes his vindictiveness. That’s a workplace ethic issue and something, and it’s really struck a chord in the American public that none of us expected…

As for that North Korea thing, Steven Clemons again explains:

…in July 31, 2003, John Bolton was very frustrated with the direction of the Bush Administration’s North Korea policy. We were on the eve of launching the first round of what are called the six-party talks with North Korea. And John Bolton decided to impose himself on South Korea. South Korea didn’t want to provide him a venue. Gave his speech, which had not gone through the full clearance process and essentially threw a grenade into the middle of this delicate process of negotiation with the North Koreans at that time, which was among our highest national security objectives, trying to tie down North Korea’s nuclear pretensions and ambitions. And Bolton gave this incredible speech, after which North Korean leadership called him human scum, earning Bolton’s, you know, obvious fury for obvious reasons. North Korea is not an easy country to deal with. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that Bolton himself went to extraordinary lengths to sabotage Secretary Powell, Richard Armitage and our ambassador, our envoy dealing with this North Korean nuclear issue, Charles Pritchard, and was at odds frequently. This is just one case of many other cases, where Bolton’s loose cannon style was amazing.

A funny note: Freepers are, freakishly though predictably, taking the dangerous and damaging North Korea incident as a sign that Bolton is actually more recommendable for the job than previously thought. Not very sensible, given that the UN is all about arms control and disarmament, peace-keeping, humanitarian assistance, and human rights. For more on the UN’s success with their mission, see our latest Debunker on Foreign Policy.

All this clearly amounts to the obvious: John Bolton doesn’t play well with others. Not a good boding for a position which requires more than anything an ability to…play well with others.

The Nelson Report is one of those pricey beltway-insider tipsheets for corporate and government subscribers. So it is strange to read this level of rhetoric in explaining that the confirmation of Bolton – who would surely be rejected on the merits – is pure power politics, in particular a “total war” to preserve a united White House front. Indeed, frustrated Republican committeemen like Lincoln Chafee speak of a general “deference” to the president’s choice. And this is the same “deference” that certain senators wish to give the president when it comes to judges. Via Steve Clemons:

What we are seeing is a fight for the political soul of the nation. We’ve had these before, in the existential sense. . .in my political lifetime, the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement, the women’s rights versus, to a certain extent, the right to life movement. But this time it’s totally and completely a fight about God. . .specifically, whether God is going to rule in the United States.

… Tom Delay manifestly believes this, and it sounds like any number of Senate Republicans either agree, or lack the imagination or moral courage to disagree. . .why else would some endorse threats against Republican-appointed judges who dare to interpret the law in secular terms? This is what the Bolton fight is really about: you can’t dump him, because that lets the Democrats win on both the facts and principle. . .fatal notions to a desire to pack the courts with religious and secular policy extremists.

I don’t know what’s more disturbing — that they might be hiding something, or that they might be hiding nothing, and just being secretive on principle. AP:

The Internal Revenue Service recently refused to provide two university researchers with records requested under the Freedom of Information while simultaneously asserting, “We are not denying the release” of the documents.

The Education Department recently cut off all communication with an interest group about its FOIA request after the group published a critical report based on the first batch of documents released in response to that request.

The first case involves researchers at Syracuse’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data center which has studied these IRS enforcement records for 15 years.

The second case involves People for the American Way, who say “that after it issued a report Feb. 7 critical of the voucher program, the Education Department had not responded to a second FOIA request or to an appeal of the withholding of some documents from its first FOIA request.”

PFAW is the same group that is getting charged $400,000 for records from the Justice Department. They can’t catch a break!

Previously: 7 out of 10 Americans concerned about government secrecy.

We mentioned Dana Milbank’s coverage of last weekend’s Schiavo-inspired conference on “judicial tyranny.” The Nation’s Max Blumenthal has another account of that bizarre tent-show:

Michael Schwartz must have thought I was just another attendee of the “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith” conference. I approached the chief of staff of Oklahoma’s GOP Senator Tom Coburn outside the conference in downtown Washington last Thursday afternoon after he spoke there. Before I could introduce myself, he turned to me and another observer with a crooked smile and exclaimed, “I’m a radical! I’m a real extremist. I don’t want to impeach judges. I want to impale them!”

Some colorful characters, there. (Via Billmon.)

Note to judges: watch your “behavior.”

From yesterday’s Media Channel News Dissector:

INVESTIGATING ROBOTS.TXT

Shebar Windstone tells us of an ongoing investigation:

“For a website that I’m working on, I’ve been researching the how-to’s of a standard piece of website paraphernalia known as ‘robots.txt,’ which tells search engine webbots & other trawlers which directories & files they may access/index & what is forbidden, & which may also restrict or deny entry to some or all webbots. Sometimes webbots are excluded because they consume too many system/server resources or because website owners have deals with the owners/managers of specific search engines. What isn’t disallowed or excluded is permitted. Many professionally done sites have a robots.txt; most non-profit & amateur sites do not.

“Below I’ll copy several examples of robots.txt that I’ve found, for you to glance through & get some idea of how brief or detailed such a page might be. The real jaw-dropper ? what spurred me to write this message ? is too long to copy here, & I’d like to encourage you to go see it for yourself:

* www.whitehouse.gov

*In case the significance of this isn’t clear to you: disallowing access to specific directories is to put information beyond the reach of search engines, forcing people to manually go through a website to find out what it says & where. Some parts of a website may be closed to the public for very good reasons, such as: user privacy, protection from hackers, protection of trade secrets, to deny access to non-subscribers or unregistered users, or to prevent search engines from linking to pages that are online only briefly. But in the case of whitehouse.gov, one can only conclude that the purpose of such exclusions is to keep the public in the dark (or to push us back to the Dark Ages).”

True to their usual form, the Repugs are using the death of Pope John Paul II to try to peddle their particularly tasteless flavor of political Koolaid. And apparently they couldn’t wait to open this new drink stand for business, because they announced his death, on Fox News of course, a full 26 hours before he actually died. Now, in all fairness, Pope John Paul II was way more conservative than I am, but I seriously doubt that even he went gently into any good night after that stunt.

So, the Repugs immediately began painting the Pope as the poster boy for all their antiblather: anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-dignity, anti-anything having to do with anything they didn’t already like. One of the premier vehicles for such is an obituary published at FOXNews.com, which sounds nice at first, but launches directly into Right Wing rhetoric as soon as it possibly can:

…while John Paul II was often progressive with the external workings of the church, he held strong traditional views on many of the incendiary moral issues of the 20th century. He considered abortion to be a form of “murder,” and condemned medical experimentation on human embryos.

Equally adamant in his opposition to assisted suicide and euthanasia, he termed the practices “intolerable and too burdensome.”

He was vehemently opposed to homosexual sex, pre- and extra-marital sex, and the use of contraception. In 1995, he dismissed a French bishop who supported the use of condoms by people with AIDS.

He also continued the 2,000-year moratorium on women becoming priests, which drew harsh criticism from women’s groups who felt they were being alienated from involvement in the church.

Wow. Not only does this not-very-moving eulogy make the Pope sound like a Republican, it makes him sound pretty crazy. Kind of like Phyllis Schlafly, John Ashcroft and Carrie Nation all rolled into one.

Well, okay, this obit does reflect Pope John Paul’s positions on these particular issues, and they do parallel Right Wing agenda. However, what the Radical Right Fox News fails to point out is that Pope John Paul was equally opposed to, and spoke out against, their equally crazy penchant for preemptive war. And, unlike any Republican I know, he championed issues of economic justice by condemning the rampant abuses of capitalism and advocating for worker’s rights. And, contrary to Bush Doctrine, he was an unflagging supporter of social programs for the sick, the poor and the homeless. He was absolutely opposed to Neoconservative tendencies towards cultural hegemony and economic imperialism. He opposed their beloved death penalty laws and believed in making the education of disadvantaged children a fiscal priority.

Nothing Republican about any of that. Ergo, Pope John Paul II was not a Republican. Actually, we need to remember that he wasn’t even American, not for one minute, ever, while they try for awhile to make us think that in some figurative way he was, that he was actually a concurring, working member of Bush’s wacky, religious America.

“He helped create the template for a line of attack he repeatedly invoked against Democrats, including Mario M. Cuomo of New York, describing them as liberal.” And now he’s planning on raising $10 million for his new Swift Boat-style 527, Stop Her Now.

Who is she? Hillary Clinton, of course.

Who is he? GOP operative Arthur Finkelstein, who just married his partner in Massachusetts, in the face of a long, gay-baiting career working for Jesse Helms, Bob Smith and others.

Bill Clinton, in a news conference announcing his foundation is donating $10 million (there’s that number again) to treat children with AIDS, described Finkelstein this way: “Either this guy believes his party is not serious and he’s totally Machiavellian, [or] he may be blinded by self-loathing.”

While we don’t go in for armchair psychology, we understand that you might have to get your hands dirty when you take out the trash. We’ve seen a lot of nasty invective against Hillary in the last 13 years, and it didn’t end when she left the White House. A significant part of the commentary empires of Rush Limbaugh, NewsMax, and others is still devoted to trashing Clinton in the basest terms, combining their usual paranoid conspiracy-mongering with a sadly popular strain of misogyny against a woman who happens to have a mind of her own. “Stop Her Now,” planned for a 2006 senate race without a named Republican candidate yet, will be no different.

But there is a difference between unchallenged hatred in America and in New York – Clinton has managed to become quite popular with New Yorkers, who see her as an effective an honest senator. Even Republicans have been won over.

So, if the cottage industry of “Hillary haters” wants to damage her image in New York in ‘06, and the best they can come up with is the guy who made “liberal” a dirty word (plus another web site from the guy who came up with “Repeal [Tip] O’Neill”), then their $10 million isn’t going to get them far. Everybody who is willing to listen to the usual dirt about Clinton has heard it all already.

(See also: Wonkette, Steve Gilliard.)

The PBS show NOW has an interesting collection of resources about the nation’s economy, from the perspective of the middle and working classes: income volatility, debt, wage trends, the “financial state of the union”, trade and employment issues, and Social Security. (Via Mark Thoma.)

See also the L.A. Times’s “New Deal” series from last year, which asks: “If America is richer, why are its familiar so much less secure?”

As we tread boldly into the “Ownership Society,” or whatever, it’s important to realize that the economy hits us in more ways than the Dow Jones index.

“a striking lack of intellectual comment and argument” … “failure to express disagreement in the form of an intellectual argument” … “intellectually lazy” … “unable … to maintain an intellectual standard” … “has lost the ability to conduct an intellectual argument.”

These are the epithats David Horowitz hurls at “the left” in his latest half-baked defense of Discover the Network, a lightweight McCarthyite project which we have described as a paranoid fantasy and conspiracy theory. We pointed out before that Horowitz’s Campus Watch has shown itself quite willing to run with extreme or absurd claims on no evidence at all – even to insist when called to account.

In this recent apology, Horowitz bumbles through an “exchange” with one of his critics, Michael Bérubé. Horowitz makes up for his general lack of coherence with simple verbiage, while Professor Bérubé’s responses seem to taper off. By the end, after a Bérubé’s response to Horowitz’s seven-paragraph rant is just a few bullet points. The “moderator” (some kind of assistant to Horowitz) scolds the professor before giving his boss the final word.

[Jamie Glazov]: Prof. Berube, it was clear to you that, in this second round, you just had your final turn. We had ascertained that this would be your final opportunity to discuss each of the points that Mr. Horowitz would raise, and that Mr. Horowitz would then have a final reply. And yet, this is all you have to contibute to what was supposed to be an intellectual dialogue.

Mr. Horowitz, what is your take here on Prof. Berube’s contribution to our second and last round?

[Horowitz]: This answer from Michael Berube is disappointing but not surprising. As I have already observed, the left has become so intellectually lazy from years of talking to itself (and “at” everyone else) that it has lost the ability to conduct an intellectual argument with its opponents.

A damning demonstration, indeed, if only it weren’t completely false. As Bérubé points out, Front Page Magazine simply deleted all but the last couple sentences of his point-by-point reply! This from the vanguard of so-called “academic freedom” — while accusing his opponent of being “intellectually lazy"!

In all previous engagements I have read between Horowitz and his critics, Horowitz places his own meager offerings of “intellectual debate” (typically taking the form of wild accusations and unsupportable assertions) alongside the statements of his opponents (who, lacking training in clinical psychology, find mere reason ineffective to reach him). This display of arrogant dishonesty sets a new low for the most dishonest pseudo-intellectual on the right.

This version of “academic freedom,” apparently amounting to silencing all who break with the Horowitz party line, is actually descending upon Florida and other state legislatures. What a strange, sad movement he has, where his disciples (like Mr. Glazov) are taught not only to ignore not only the substantial arguments that might threaten their worldview, but to lie about it shamelessly: “And yet, this is all you have to contibute to what was supposed to be an intellectual dialogue.” Don’t trust your teachers. Follow the leader.

I think it’s pretty clear who’s indoctrinating whom.

Mike Allen sources the Republican Shiavo memo:

• This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.

• This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.

in today’s Washington Post:

The legal counsel to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) admitted yesterday that he was the author of a memo citing the political advantage to Republicans of intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, the senator said in an interview last night.

Brian H. Darling, 39, a former lobbyist for the Alexander Strategy Group on gun rights and other issues, offered his resignation and it was immediately accepted, Martinez said.

Martinez, the GOP’s Senate point man on the issue, said he earlier had been assured by aides that his office had nothing to do with producing the memo. “I never did an investigation, as such,” he said. “I just took it for granted that we wouldn’t be that stupid. It was never my intention to in any way politicize this issue.”

Can you smell the cynicism? So I guess Darling used to be the ‘culture of life’s’ point man on gun rights. Ah but the hypocricy only begins there. Kos has a brilliant little post that shows a few of the right wing accusations, lies, and other fulminations that spouted forth when the memo first surfaced:

Sen. Bennet:
Sen. Robert F. Bennett, Utah Republican, said the issue “stinks” of a news fabrication similar to the one that engulfed CBS anchorman Dan Rather during the 2004 presidential campaign, after he reported that President Bush did not fulfill his duties while in the National Guard, citing documents that CBS later admitted could not be authenticated.

Tucker Carlson:
“Last week a memo surfaced, reportedly written by the Republican members of Congress explaining how to make hay with the Terri Schiavo case, the Talking Points Memo, Ah, I think within a week or two it will become clear that that memo was a forgery, possibly written by Democrats on the hill in an effort to discredit Republicans. Bloggers are saying that now and it sounds like they may be right.”

Fred Barnes:
“So rather than an example of aggressive reporting, the memo story turns out to be yet another instance of crude liberal bias, in this case against both Republicans and those who fought to have Schiavo’s feeding tube restored. Naturally, the memo had a second life when the story was picked up by other news outlets, pundits, and columnists. How did ABC and others get wind of the memo in the first place? It came from ‘Democratic aides,’ according to the New York Times, who ’said it had been distributed to Senate Republicans.’ Not exactly a disinterested source.”

Newsmax:
There was just one problem: Closer examination by The American Spectator, talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, The Weekly Standard, and Accuracy in Media (AIM) indicates that the memo is a fraud - a political dirty trick, if you will, specifically aimed at causing public revulsion at Republicans.

Rush Limbaugh:
“Truth Detector: Supposed GOP Schiavo Memo Forged by Democrats.”

Michelle Malkin:
I suspect that no one at the Post or ABC News still believes the amateurish, unsigned, misspelled memo was circulated by Republican Party leaders.

Accuracy in Media:
Accuracy in Media today questioned the authenticity of the much-publicized “GOP Talking Points” memo on the Terri Schiavo case.
In the Agora:
On Friday four staffers accused a renegade aide to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) of distributing forged “talking points” to members of the media and claiming Republican authorship. In the Agora’s extensive investigations in the alleged “GOP” Schiavo talking points memo reveal possible tricks from low level Democratic aides. Two of the four GOP staffers tell ITA they were eyewitnesses to the exchange.

Ass Rocket:
In the meantime, there is not a bit of evidence connecting the memo to any Republican, and, for all of the reasons we have repeatedly spelled out on this site, there are excellent reasons to believe it is a hoax perpetrated by still-unidentified Democrats.