THERE GOES SWIFTY! This week's New Republic has so much good stuff on the lying Swifties that it's hard to know where to begin.

From Peter Beinart's "TRB" column (sub. req.):

The medals and the Cambodia charges are partisan hack stuff, cynically repeated in service of the greater Republican good. What genuinely upsets conservatives - including conservative veterans - is something different. First, conservatives think it's hypocritical for Kerry, who denounced the war, to now take credit for having fought in it. As The Wall Street Journal editorialized this week, Kerry has "managed the oxymoronic feat of celebrating both his own war-fighting valor and his antiwar activities when he returned home." But what's oxymoronic about that? What Kerry "celebrates" is that he volunteered for Vietnam - and served heroically - when elites (including Bill Clinton, Dan Quayle, and George W. Bush) were finding ways not to go. That's noble, even if Kerry thinks the war itself was not. And, if Kerry is a hypocrite for having served in a war he opposed, what about Dick Cheney - who avoided serving in a war he supported?

From the editorial (sub. req.):

Journalists, in short, became accomplices to fraud. And they should have known better. In 2000, Bush and his right-wing allies learned that the way to win political arguments is to launch rhetorical attacks based only loosely - if at all - on the facts and then depend on reporters to spread them as credible perspectives on the truth. And, ever since, this White House has conducted its business the very same way, shamelessly peddling lies about everything from budget projections to weapons of mass destruction without the slightest fear of retribution.

From Ryan Lizza's "Campaign Journal" (sub. req.):

Never in a campaign has a more disreputable group of people, whose accusations have been repeatedly contradicted by official records and reliable eyewitness accounts, had their claims taken so seriously.

Is the New Republic partisan? Well, sure. It's nominally Democratic in a centrist, hawkish kind of way. But it also supported the war in Iraq, even going so far as to endorse Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primaries. It also ran opposing views in favor of other Democrats - and couldn't find a single person willing to write on Kerry's behalf.

In other words, TNR is far from being the house organ for the Kerry-Edwards campaign, and at one time it was even sympathetic to Bush. [Update: I originally referred to the "Bush-Edwards campaign." D'oh!] So its judgment on the Swifties bears paying attention to.

MAYBE I SHOULDN'T HAVE STAYED HOME AFTER ALL. Editor & Publisher has some eye-opening details on the luxuries awaiting reporters assigned to the Republican National Convention. Hey - who's got time to do any real reporting when you're getting a facial and sucking down a few bottles of complimentary beer?