Wednesday, April 06, 2005

MSM... better late than never?

The Washington Times has an article regarding the purported Schiavo Memo: Is the Schiavo Memo Faked? One of the things I find interesting in this story is the fact that there are many democrats who say up and down that the memo was passed around from republican to republican, but nobody can recall actually seeing it.
The Times surveyed all 44 Democrats and the chamber's one independent, and only one of them, Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, said through a spokeswoman that he saw it circulated on the Senate floor.
"He said that the memo was being circulated by Republican members on Thursday before we went out of session, and that is when he saw it," said his spokeswoman, Allison Dobson.

Interestingly enough,
Two Democratic offices refused to respond — Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat — the latter even as he continued to accuse Republicans of being behind it.
"We will not participate in the survey. News outlets have investigated and authenticated the memo was real and came from Republican sources. We have no further comment," said spokeswoman Tessa Hafen. "If you want more information on the memo, you should work on finding the Republican who wrote it."
She did not respond to a request to name the newspaper or network that had "authenticated" the memorandum.
It seems ever since these guys started asking questions, I have yet to see a shred of evidence that it was actually put out by any republican staffers....

Yet, dear readers, tall-tale legends of the elusive origins of this memo live on, even if only in the minds of wishful thinking opportunists:
Joe Shoemaker, a spokesman for Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said in several conversations over three days that his boss saw the memo on the floor.
Asked independently, however, Mr. Durbin said he never saw it.
"No, I did not see it," he said. "I heard about it reported on the news."
Asked about the discrepancy, Mr. Shoemaker later said that the senator's floor staff thought he had seen it. The staffers saw a "gaggle" of senators standing around discussing a document during floor debate, and Mr. Durbin walked over to them.

A "gaggle" of senators? After the truth of this finally comes out in the wash, my guess is that we will likely be seeing a "flight" of democrat operatives and MSM news editors.