I haven’t actually been following this story very closely, but it will be interesting to see how our friends in the right wing blogosphere react to this:
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 Darling, a former lobbyist for the Alexander Strategy Group on gun rights and other issues, offered his resignation and it was immediately accepted, Martinez said.
For those not following along at home, basically several news organizations reported that the Republicans were circulating a memo with some “talking points” about the political hay they could make over Terri Schiavo. This was followed by an immediate firestorm among conservatives who claimed, among other things, that in fact the Democrats were engaging in political dirty tricks and that Republicans had nothing to do with this memo.
Despite being wrong on both counts, the early returns aren’t showing that they’re holding themselves to the same level of accountability that they seek to apply to the mainstream media. Rather than officially backing away from their earlier accusations of a “vast left-wing/mainstream media conspiracy” generating this memo to make Republicans look bad, they seem to be playing semantic games and arguing over pluralization and the “definition of is” (metaphorically speaking).
I’m not holding my breath for any retractions.
UPDATE: I’m going to give credit to Josh Claybourn, who has issued a retraction for his criticism of ABC News. He is right that the original Washington Post story has many holes, but he seems to be giving the memo a relatively fair treatment now (he previously backed away from the charges that the memo was created by Democrats).
