As America enjoyed its Weinergate Money Shot yesterday afternoon, a curious trend emerged in our Twitter stream: Liberal Defensiveness.

“What about the lying-to-get-us-into-war story?” asked Harry Shearer. “But we still have Clarence Thomas bribery,” observed Steve Weinstein. “Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Alberto Gonzalez, & John Yoo and Jay Bybee, when they okayed & ordered torture? Fully erect,” snarked LitBrit. “I don’t remember Weiner campaigning as a Conservative Christian without faults. Newt did though,” observed Anomaly100. “Weiner has been identified for sending topless pics of himself, just like Bush was identified for killing thousands and ruining the economy,” grumbled TLW3.

All of which is true.

And none of which matters.

Read more »

So, we were thinking the other day, this “scandal” doesn’t really work unless there’s a pattern of naughty behavior…

• Big Government: “Déjà Vu: Another Congressman Bares Naked Torso (and More) for Online Pal”
• Radar: “Weinergate Grows: Another Woman Provides Sex Messages From His Account”
• Capital Tonight: “Rep. Anthony Weiner’s office appears to be on lockdown in the wake of new reports of his exchanging of explicit on-line communications with a woman who is not his wife.”

We don’t have the time to read through the barrage of purported exposés, but if they turn up true, that explains Weiner’s noncommittal remarks about the Mysterious Package.

Update: Weiner confesses…

Read more »

Accounts differ regarding the method of alerting the colonists; the generally accepted position is that the warnings were verbal in nature, although one disputed account suggested that Revere rang bells during his ride.

A sentence added to the Paul Revere Wikipedia page at 2:31 p.m. Sunday by user Tomwsulcer.

2:46 p.m. User Dajames, Paul Revere talk page: “In the article on Paul Revere, someone has added false information in an effort to support Sarah Palin’s FALSE claims about Paul Revere… This must be removed as it is a LIE designed to mislead.”

2:50 p.m. Tomwsulcer: “A lie? If you follow Wikipedia’s rules, we must maintain a WP:NEUTRAL position, representing the mainstream position as well as disputed versions. I think the addition represents this fairly — the mainstream position is that Revere’s warnings were verbal, but there are differing accounts that the warnings were done with bells — with two sources: WDHD television plus a live interview, with a highly influential US politician relating these facts.”

2:50 p.m. Sentence deleted by CutOffTies.

Read more »

The Epistemological Wonderland that is Weinergate continues its incredible journey through uncertainty with today’s story from Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily iPad app:

But according to data provided exclusively to The Daily from TweetCongress.org, a nonprofit website that captures each member of Congress’s Twitter feeds in real time, the shot seen round the world was transmitted using TweetDeck — a popular Adobe desktop application that links up with social networking sites. A review of Weiner’s Twitter stream from May 27, the day of the crotch pic, shows that Weiner had been posting only from TweetDeck — one of many ways to post messages to Twitter — that entire night.

If you’re not familiar with the Twitterverse, TweetDeck is one of the most popular third-party Twitter-posting apps — so popular that Twitter itself just bought it. It’s like providing the damning evidence that Weiner drove a Chevy.

Read more »

“This news anchor for Russian Canadian Broadcasting can’t keep herself from bursting into laughter while reporting a story about…”

No, wait. Let’s hold back that detail for a moment. Presuming you don’t know Russian, you have to appreciate it in the abstract.

Okay. Ready?

Read more »

Title: “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture”

Author: David Mamet

Rank: 60

Blurb: “My interest in politics began when I noticed that I acted differently than I spoke, that I had seen ‘the government’ commit sixty years of fairly unrelieved and catastrophic error nationally and internationally, that I not only hated every wasted hard-earned cent I spent in taxes, but the trauma and misery they produced.”

Read more »

Example #1: Joe Lieberman, vice-presidential candidate, 2000.

Example #2: John Edwards, vice-presidential candidate, 2004.

Class dismissed.