A Conservative Provocateur, Using a Blowtorch as His Pen

[TomClash]

A Conservative Provocateur, Using a Blowtorch as His Pen
By JIM RUTENBERG
Published: February 23, 2013

At 11:42 a.m. on Feb. 14, a conservative online magazine called The Washington Free Beacon posted a dispatch about a speech Chuck Hagel gave in 2007 in which it said he called the State Department “an adjunct to the Israeli foreign minister's office.

The report was based on “contemporaneous” notes an attendee posted online. An hour later on the floor of the United States Senate, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina urgently cited that statement as another reason to delay Mr. Hagel’s nomination as defense secretary.

Mr. Hagel denied saying it, and no recording has surfaced. But after a successful filibuster against the nominee, a group called the Emergency Committee for Israel effectively declared partial victory and vowed to “redouble its efforts to bring to light Mr. Hagel’s complete record.”

All in all, it was a very bad day for Mr. Hagel, and a smashingly good one for the conservative political operative of the moment — Michael Goldfarb.

For instance, he said, a Free Beacon report that the retooled liberal magazine The New Republic had “dropped at least five prominent Jewish writers from its masthead” in what “may signal the publication’s continued drift away from a staunchly pro-Israel standpoint,” was tongue-in-cheek. (It drew angry rebuttals that The New Republic’s editor Franklin Foer is Jewish and roughly half of the writers dropped were not Jewish.)

. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/us/politics/michael-goldfarb-gleeful-provocateur-at-intersection-of-many-worlds.html?hp&_r=0

[zbdent]

1. Using standards set by Repugniconvicts, here's the "killer statement" for the 2016 election ...

from my notes at a meeting in _ on _ Feb, 2013, Republican _ said that "Obama was a f*cking welfare N*gger."

About as legit as some "contemporaneous notes" from a blogger.

Romney's "47% comment" would have had as much weight as my statement ... had nobody actually captured it.

[TwilightGardener]

2. Provocateur--is that what they call rumor-spreaders now? What's sad is that the Repub Senators

simply repeat everything these jackasses print, and use it to hold up serious business.