IT'S NOT MILLER TIME ANYMORE. I had intended to take a closer look at the Dark Lord's address today, and perhaps I will later on. But on reflection, it seems that the most significant moment of last night - indeed, of the entire convention - was the ranting, hate-filled keynote speech delivered by Democratic senator Zell Miller, of Georgia.

Miller had been prancing and preening around the RNC all week, practically becoming a co-host on the Fox News Channel, where his disgruntled-Democrat act was an irresistable story line. But make no mistake: Miller is a phony, puffed-up fool who up until a couple of years ago had nothing but nice things to say about John Kerry. Check out "Zig Zag Zell," on the American Progress website.

Still, nothing prepared me for what I saw last night. His face twisted in rage, bellowing like a crazed hyena, Miller essentially accused Kerry of disloyalty - treason, practically - for having the temerity to run against an incumbent president during a time of war.

This excerpt is rather mild compared to some of the other passages, but important nevertheless:

In 1940, Wendell Willkie was the Republican nominee....

He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time.

And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue.

Shortly before Wilkie died, he told a friend that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between "here lies a president" or "here lies one who contributed to saving freedom," he would prefer the latter.

Where are such statesmen today? Where is the bipartisanship in this country when we need it most?

Today, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our commander-in-chief.

Excuse me? Is it even necessary to point out that Bush's dubious prosecution of the struggle against terrorism, his grotesque misjudgment in going to war against Iraq, and his shocking incompetence in managing the aftermath of that war are the most critical issues facing the country? Doesn't Bush have to defend himself? Wouldn't even his most ardent supporter concede that these are issues worthy of debate? As William Saletan points out in Slate today, this is why we have elections.

Miller visited CNN late last night, and the gang was uncharacteristically well-prepared, ripping apart his lies as he sputtered and fulminated. In particular, they went after Miller's contention that Kerry is soft on defense, and that he has so frequently voted against weapons systems that he would leave the US military with little more than "spitballs." Let's roll the tape. Pardon the length of this excerpt, but it's worth it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Senator Miller, the Democrats are pointing out that John Kerry voted for 16 of 19 defense budgets that came through Congress while he was in the Senate, and many of these votes that you cited, Dick Cheney also voted against, that they were specific weapons systems.

MILLER: What I was talking about was a period of 19 years in the Senate. I've been in the Senate for four years. There's quite a few years' difference there. I have gotten documentation on every single one of those votes that I talked about here today. I've got more documentation here than the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library put together on that.

JEFF GREENFIELD: You also were, I would say, almost indignant that anyone would possibly call America military occupiers, not liberators, on at least four occasions. President Bush has referred to the presence of American forces in Iraq as an occupation, and the question is: Are you not selectively choosing words to describe the same situation the president of the United States is describing?

MILLER: I don't know if the president of the United States uses those words, but I know Senator Kennedy and Senator Kerry have used them on several occasions.

GREENFIELD: Yes. So has President Bush.

MILLER: Well, I don't know about that.

GREENFIELD: Well, we'll-

WOLF BLITZER: You know that when the secretary - when the vice-president was the secretary of defense he proposed cutting back on the B-2 Bomber, the F-14 Tomcat as well. I covered him at the Pentagon during those years when he was raising serious concerns about those two weapons systems.

MILLER: Look, the record is, as I stated, he [Kerry] voted against, he opposed all of those weapons systems. That, to me, I think shows the kind of priority he has as far as national defense.

Look, John Kerry came back from Vietnam as a young man unsure of whether America was a force for good or evil in the world. He still has that uncertainty about him.

WOODRUFF: You praised him-

GREENFIELD: Then why did you say in 2001 that he strengthened the military? You said that three years ago.

MILLER: Because that was the biographical sketch that they gave me. This young senator - not young senator, but new senator had come up there, and all I knew was that this man had won the Purple Heart three times and won the Silver Star and-

Look, I went back and researched the records, and I looked at these, and I - when I was putting that speech together, I wanted to make sure, whenever I sat down with people like you who would take these talking points from the Democrats and who also have covered politics for years, that I would know exactly what I was talking about, and we don't have time to go through it on the air, but I can go through every one of those things that were mentioned about where he voted.

He voted against the B-1 Bomber-

BLITZER: A lot of-

MILLER: -on October the 15th, '90, and on and on.

WOODRUFF: But do you simply reject the idea that Vice-President Cheney, as Wolf said and as we know from the record, also voted against some of these systems?

MILLER: I don't think Cheney voted against these.

BLITZER: No, but he opposed some of them when he was the defense secretary, and sometimes he was overruled by the Congress because he was concerned, he was worried that the defense of the United States could be better served by some other weapons systems, not specifically those. I'm specifically referring to the B-2 and the F-14 Tomcat.

MILLER: I'm talking about John Kerry's record. I'll let Dick Cheney, the vice-president, answer those charges. He knows what happened in the Department of Defense years ago. I don't know that.

Do you think Miller realized he had just destroyed his credibility?

Last night I wrote on the fly that Miller might have delivered the most hateful major address since Pat Buchanan's "culture war" speech in 1992. Somewhat to my surprise, that immediately became a talking point in CNN's coverage.

Greenfield referenced Buchanan and told Aaron Brown: "I mean, when you say basically that the effort against terrorism is being weakened because of the Democrats' obsession with bringing down a commander-in-chief, you are basically saying that the other party is not part of an effort to defeat the enemies of the United States."

Bill Schneider said he thought Miller's speech was even angrier than Buchanan's: "In a way, yes, I do. I do because it was basically accusing the Democrats - there were some breathtaking accusations."

Joe Klein: "The difference between this speech and Pat Buchanan's speech in '92 is that Pat Buchanan was making a diffuse attack on - you know, on cultural liberals. Zell Miller was making a very particular and very personal attack on a nominee for president of the United States."

Okay, this is a lot of CNN, and it is experiencing some serious ratings problems this week: on Tuesday, at least, it even did worse than MSNBC. I don't know how long Miller's outburst will be remembered. The papers today rely mainly on Miller's advance text, and of course tomorrow it will be all Bush.

On the other hand, we still remember Buchanan's hateful invective of 14 years ago, and of how it helped do in Bush's father. This could be one of those things that takes a little while to register. But if and when it does, Karl Rove may be sorry he'd ever allowed this vicious, fake little man to command center stage.

NEW IN THIS WEEK'S PHOENIX. Last night I was free - at last! - to watch the proceedings on CNN. Earlier, I holed up with the Fox News Channel, watching the GOP on GOP-TV.

THE DARK LORD RETURNS. Dick Cheney has just finished his speech. Good news for Kerry: the Dark Lord is staying on the ticket. It was a deeply negative performance, of course, but also masterful in its way, making Miller's and Romney's tinny attacks look even more ridiculous.

Cheney's attacks on Kerry were filled with inaccuracies and distortions, of course. Maybe Somerby will catalogue them.

Wow! On CNN, Judy Woodruff just committed truth against Zell Miller, pointing out that Kerry has voted for 16 of 19 defense budgets during his years in the Senate, and that Cheney opposed many of the same appropriations that Kerry voted against. And now Jeff Greenfield is pointing out that Bush himself has occasionally referred to American troops as "occupiers," which had Miller so exercised on the podium. Even Wolf Blitzer is getting into the act.

Miller is sputtering and melting down. He has no idea of how to respond.

Anyway ... enough for tonight. I'll have more to say about Cheney's speech tomorrow.

ZELL FROM HELL. Did Karl Rove vet Zell Miller's speech? This might be the most hateful major address delivered at a national-party convention since Pat Buchanan's "culture war" speech of 1992, delivered with remarkable bitterness and anger.

It's so idiotic that it's not worth picking apart, but here's a taste:

For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.

It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.

I'd never heard that before, but it apparently comes from a Marine Corps priest named Dennis Edward O'Brian. Well, fine. It's also very close to fascism, is it not? Or at least an extreme form of militarism.

MINOR-LEAGUE MITT. Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's speech was a disgrace. Rather than the governor of a major state, he sounded like a Belmont selectman who'd won a contest to address the RNC. (No doubt I'm being unfair to the Belmont selectmen.) It was a combination of cheap, low attacks, meaningless schmaltz, and hero worship of the Maximum Leader. This is a guy who's going to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate in 2008? I don't think so.

Here's a line for the ages: "George W. Bush is right and the Blame America First Crowd is wrong!" I'm not sure I've heard the phrase "blame America first" since neocon godmother Jeane Kirkpatrick was running around unsupervised in the 1980s.

To top it off, in introducing Romney, his lieutenant governor, Kerry Healey, repeated the lie that Kerry is the most liberal member of the Senate. Try #11. Yes, Kerry's a liberal, but he's one who's right in the mainstream of the Democratic Party. I'm not sure if Healey doesn't know or doesn't care. Given the way she was giggling, it was probably the latter.

It will be interesting to see what the Globe and the Herald make of this fiasco tomorrow.

COSMIC JUXTAPOSITION. I'm flipping back and forth between C-SPAN 1 and 2. On 1, the Republicans are showing yet another treacly tribute film to the late Ronald Reagan. On 2, Walter Mondale is giving his acceptance speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention.

Just as Reagan's hearse was heading down the highway, Mondale was promising to end Reagan's "illegal war" in Nicaragua. The Democrats went nuts. "We want Fritz! We want Fritz!"

Mondale was - is - a good and decent man. He and George McGovern may be the two finest people that either party has nominated for president in my lifetime. They would have changed this country in a far more positive way than any Republican president since - oh, I don't know - Theodore Roosevelt.

Here comes Kerry Healey. Good Lord, she's dumping on Michael Dukakis. And she sounds like a second-rate game-show host!

CHENEY'S LAST STAND? Here's what ought to happen tonight, shortly after 10, when Lynne Cheney has finished introducing her husband. Madison Square Garden should go pitch dark, with just a little black light flashing here and there. A lone spotlight should illuminate the podium. And then, from beneath the stage, the Dark Lord himself should arise, twisting one corner of his mouth up before announcing, "Good evening."

This is the last opportunity for George W. Bush to guarantee his re-election. If Dick Cheney whips out a chart showing the results of his latest EKG, announces that he's too sick to continue, and introduces John McCain as his replacement, then John Kerry can keep right on windsurfing. But if Cheney intones, "With respect to your nomination, I accept," then Kerry's got more than a fighting chance.

TWIN DISASTER. I'm glad to see that someone is willing to say out loud what we're all thinking: the Bush twins sucked. Frankly, I was wondering if they were drunk. Slate's Julia Turner writes:

Toward the end of the debacle, Jenna, who has slightly better timing than her sister, explained what they were doing on stage: "You know all those times when you're growing up and your parents embarrass you? Well, this is payback time, on LIVE TV." Was it ever.

Yes, they're just 22. But they're young for their age. It looks like they take after Dad, who by his own admission didn't grow up until he turned 40. I'd just as soon we all went back to "respecting their privacy" - if only they'll let us.

TRICKY DUBYA. Greater Boston's John Carroll is back writing his "Campaign Journal." He's got a good one today on Arnold Schwarzenegger's high praise for George W. Bush as a worthy heir to ... Richard Nixon. That was one of last night's weirder moments, and I'm surprised it didn't engender more comment.

Certainly Bill O'Reilly understands that the comparison isn't exactly welcome. On Monday, when former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld opined that John Kerry would probably defeat Bush "on points" in the presidential debates, but that Bush would come off as more human, O'Reilly immediately sought to cast Kerry as Nixon, and Bush as - yes! - John F. Kennedy.

Heavy sink the shoulders upon which the mantle of Richard Nixon rests.

ISN'T IT GREAT THAT WE'RE WEENIES? Altercation has already pointed to it, but you must see today's edition of ABC's "The Note," which congratulates Republican spinmeisters for the media's supine behavior in New York. The Note-sters gush that Karl Rove and company "[p]layed the press perfectly." Which could only happen if reporters were looking to be played.

GOD ALMIGHTY. I was up until nearly 5 a.m. on a top-secret mission, so only now am I starting to clear my head and take in the latest coverage. To begin, two good pieces on the missing link at the Republican National Convention: the religious right.

The New York Times' David Kirkpatrick proved how evil and nefarious the liberal-media conspiracy really is by - gasp! - worming his way inside a gathering of Bible-thumpers and telling the truth about what he heard. His lead:

At a closed, invitation-only Bush campaign rally for Christian conservatives yesterday, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas called for a broad social conservative agenda notably different from the televised presentations at the Republican convention, including adopting requirements that pregnant women considering abortions be offered anesthetics for their fetuses and loosening requirements on the separation of church and state.

Kirkpatrick was able to attend this "Family, Faith, and Freedom Rally," even though it was closed to the press, because he "was invited to the event by participants who accompanied him." Did that amount to subterfuge? Kirkpatrick doesn't really tell us enough to judge. He does write that "in an e-mail message to The New York Times, Nicolle Devenish, the campaign's communications director, criticized the newspaper for covering an event that 'was closed to the press' as 'not professional or appropriate.'"

It certainly seems to me that what he found was newsworthy enough to warrant sneaking in, as long as he didn't actually misrepresent himself. Read it for yourself and see.

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe's Charlie Savage finds that at least some of the Godly are upset at all those moderates being trotted out at the podium every night. Savage writes:

Since the convention began Monday, they say they have not only been kept from the spotlight of prime-time speaking spots, but have been offered few official outlets at all. The lineup of meetings where delegates spend the day before the nightly rallies have offered scant forum to those who want to discuss faith and politics.

Savage also observes that Karl Rove has made a fetish out of trying to motivate the four million evangelicals who supposedly stayed home in 2000. To that end, he quotes a religious-right figure named Rod McDougal as saying, "I think they're making a mistake. We didn't realize they were going to eliminate and censor everything about God.... They need some people of faith up there."

Gee, I didn't realize that John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Laura Bush were atheists. Shows you what I know!

ALL THEY WANT IS A PLANE AND A MILLION DOLLARS. The lying Swifties, having taken John Kerry's presidential campaign hostage, are now making demands that Kerry must meet in order for them to call off their sleazy ad campaign. It's a four-point list, but it basically comes down to one thing: Admit you're a lying, disgraceful, worthless human being and we'll go away.

Why are these people still hanging around, many days after virtually every single one of their claims has been shown to be bogus? Here's some more Somerby. Read it and scream.

NEVER COMPLAIN, NEVER EXPLAIN. House Speaker Dennis Hastert refuses to apologize for linking George Soros to the international drug cartels.

ROMNEY FOR PRESIDENT? Don't laugh. Well, okay, laugh. The Globe's Sarah Schweitzer reports on our absentee governor's New York moment here. Newsweek's got a picture of him on a goddamn horse, which, sadly, is not online, though the story is.

Meanwhile, the Herald's David Guarino reports that Romney wouldn't exactly have much of a record on which to run.

CONTINUING COVERAGE. While I'm holed up here at Media Log Central, my Phoenix colleagues are running around New York, uploading constantly. Click here for the Phoenix's continuing coverage of the convention.

NOT BAD FOR A CYBORG. But the nets missed a chance to cut to Dick Cheney when Arnold Schwarzenegger said, "And when Nelson Mandela smiled in election victory after all those years in prison, America celebrated, too."

Cheney, when he was a Wyoming congressman, voted against a 1986 resolution calling for Mandela to be freed from a South African prison.

SEE YOU IN COURT. John Dean writes that John Kerry should sue the Swifties for libel. He makes an interesting case - and cites Barry Goldwater as a precedent.

BUSH ON THE COUCH. Newsweek's cover piece on George W. Bush contains some mighty telling details about his relationship with his father. Let's cut right to the chase:

Many of Bush's friends, as well as his critics, wonder why Bush failed to consult one particularly experienced and able expert in the field of foreign affairs: his father. "41" often calls "43," but usually to say, "I love you, son," President Bush told NEWSWEEK. "My dad understands that I am so better informed on many issues than he could possibly be that his advice is minimal." That is a pity, say some old advisers to 41, because 43 badly needed to be rescued from the clutches of the neocons, the Defense Department ideologues who, in the view of the moderate internationalists who served in 41's administration, have hijacked American foreign policy.

But the fact is that President Bush did not want to be rescued. To say he has a complicated relationship with his father is an understatement. Bush clearly admires, even worships, his father, says a friend who notes that Bush wept when his father lost political races. But he doesn't want his father's help. To some degree, he is following a Bush family code. According to family lore, Bush's grandfather Prescott refused an inheritance from his father, while W's dad refused Prescott's plea to put off joining the Navy in World War II before going to college. "No, sir, I'm going in," said the 19-year-old George H.W. Bush. In the Bushes' world, real men are supposed to make it on their own, without Dad's looking over their shoulders. After the 1988 presidential campaign, W was eager to shed the nickname "Junior."

But George W. hasn't just been independent, he's been defiant. The degree to which Bush defines himself in opposition to his father is striking. While 41 raised taxes, 43 cut them, twice. Forty-one is a multilateralist; 43 is a unilateralist. Forty-one "didn't finish the job" in Iraq, so 43 finished it for him. Much was made of 43's religiosity when he told Bob Woodward that "when it comes to strength," he turns not to 41, but rather to "a higher father." But what was the president saying about his own father?

...

You don't have to be Freud or Sophocles to conjure up some rivalrous or rebellious feelings of the son toward the father. George W. spend much of his early years, and a good deal of his adulthood, trying and failing to catch up to his father as a student, athlete, aviator, businessman and politician. When Bush, in a drunken rage at the age of 26, challenged his father to go "mano a mano" with him, all his father could say was how "disappointed" he was. What could be more wounding?

But that was many years ago. Bush without question bears scars, possibly serious ones, that affect his behavior today. But unlike so many other sons of the powerful, he pulled his life together and made some kind of peace, or at least truce, with his demons.

Written by Evan Thomas, Tamara Lipper, and Rebecca Sinderbrand, the piece - "The Road to Resolve" - is striking in its willingness to plumb the president's psychology. It seems unlikely that a vanilla publication such as Newsweek would have been willing to publish something that would be so likely to piss off the notoriously touchy Bush clan a year ago, when the president was still riding high.

Also, check out this Jonathan Alter column on Bush's nasty campaign style, epitomized by his reluctance to dissociate himself from the lying Swifties. Writes Alter: "So much for any sense of decency. The man who was once an inept right-wing president but a nice guy is now just an inept right-wing president."

RUSH SAVES BUSH FROM TRUTH. George W. Bush told the truth on Saturday. But don't worry. He's not going to let it happen again. He made sure of that earlier this afternoon in a characteristically fawning interview conducted by Rush Limbaugh.

As you may recall, the president was asked by Matt Lauer, in an interview for NBC's Today show, whether the US could win the war on terrorism. (The interview was broadcast yesterday.) Bush replied: "I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world - let's put it that way."

It was a good, honest answer. Unfortunately, it was also at odds with the triumphalism of his past remarks. As Elisabeth Bumiller reported in today's New York Times, Bush said as recently as July 14, "I have a clear vision and a strategy to win the war on terror." Bumiller went on to write, "It was unclear if Mr. Bush had meant to make the remark to Mr. Lauer, or if he misspoke." Misspoke? Re-read what he said. Rarely has he been so honest and coherent.

Of course, Bush's candor was immediately labeled a mistake. It would have been nice if John Kerry or John Edwards had jokingly welcomed Bush to the real world. But no. Edwards made a stiff statement insisting, "This is no time to declare defeat. It won't be easy and it won't be quick, but we have a comprehensive plan to make America safer." (Note that Edwards didn't say that Bush was wrong.) Even Bush's sycophants on the Fox News Channel said Bush had stepped in it, though they tried to explain it away.

So today ... El Rushbo to the rescue! "Well, I appreciate you bringing that up," Bush - calling in from Des Moines, where he was campaigning - told Limbaugh, adding that he should have been "more clear." Bush explained: "What I meant was that this is not a conventional war. It is a different kind of war. We're fighting people who have got a dark ideology who use terrorists, terrorism, as a tool." And: "In a conventional war there would be a peace treaty or there would be a moment where somebody would sit on the side and say, 'We quit.' That's not the kind of war we're in, and that's what I was saying."

After talking a bit about his confidence that Iraq and Afghanistan will become "free nations," Bush said, "I probably needed to be a little more articulate," then followed up with this: "I know we'll win it, but we have to be resolved and firm, and we can't doubt what we stand for."

Still more: "We're making great progress. Today at the [American] Legion I said we're winning the war on terror, and we'll win the war on terror. There's no doubt in my mind."

Look, optimism has its place. But terrorism is clearly a problem to be contained and controlled. To say that it will be defeated entirely is unrealistic to the point of foolishness. Just ask the Israelis and the British. Bush could have followed up his remarks to Lauer by expanding on them in order to educate the public. Instead, he went right back to pandering. No surprise there.

Bush and Limbaugh went back and forth for about 20 minutes, justifying the war in Iraq, engaging in a some light Kerry-bashing, and previewing his Thursday-night convention speech, although only a bit. "I'm going to save some of it for the speech if you don't mind," Bush said. "You're a good friend, and I hate to let you down." Replied the groveling Rush: "I understand, I understand completely."

As they were closing, Bush asked the longtime OxyContin abuser, "How you feeling?" Limbaugh replied, "I've never been happier," no doubt grateful every day that he never received the sort of "justice" that the Bush family is famous for dishing out to drug abusers, and that Limbaugh himself has supported in the past. Limbaugh also told Bush that people are "praying" for him.

"That's the most important thing people can do, is pray. And I appreciate that," Bush said.

"I can't speak for everybody," Limbaugh said in closing, "but I can speak for quite a few. They love you out there, Mr. President, and they only wish you the best."

Gee, how come Matt Lauer didn't speak to Bush that way?

No sooner had Bush gotten off the phone than Limbaugh got weird. "I want to make a prediction. I hope I'm wrong, but I want to make a prediction," he said, noting that he expected mainstream news organizations would cover the interview. "I wouldn't be surprised - I would not be surprised if somewhere early on in their stories ... don't be surprised if they find a way to work in the Abu Ghraib prison stuff."

Huh? Well, there's no arguing with Rush. After all, as he said of the mainstream media, "I know these people like every square inch of my glorious naked body." Got that?

WONDERFUL OR MARVELOUS? MSNBC.com's "Question of the Day" is up on the home page right now. Have a look. The question: "Did Rudy Giuliani's speech reassure you or move you to support the Bush-Cheney ticket?" The choices: "Reassure" and "Move you to support." Really.

I chose "Reassure" so that I could see the results. It looks like I voted with the majority, 75 percent to 25 percent. Of course, we'll never know how "Turn you off" or "Drive you to support the Kerry-Edwards ticket" might have fared. (Thanks to John Doherty.) [Update: Well, that didn't take long. The question now reads "Did Rudy Giuliani's speech move you to support the Bush-Cheney ticket?" The new options are "Yes" and "No."]

McCAIN THROWS BUSH A LIFE-PRESERVER. Rudy Giuliani spoke to the delegates. John McCain spoke to the country. That's why - despite the gushing you hear over Giuliani's funny, serious, nasty, and at times eloquent speech last night - McCain actually did Bush more good, and got a leg up on his New York rival in (God help us) the 2008 presidential campaign.

I can't find it online this morning, but I'm pretty sure it was Fox News nitwit Morton Kondracke who called McCain's speech "self-serving" in comparison to Giuliani's. What Kondracke liked about Rudy was the way he slashed at Kerry. Later, Kondracke amended his remarks to allow that, well, McCain did offer a rationale with the war in Iraq, and that was useful to Bush.

Well, duh. In fact, McCain - who'd wanted to go to war with Iraq for years - put forth a far more effective argument than George W. Bush has ever managed to muster. If Bush can figure out a way to incorporate McCain's case into his own stump speech, he'll be a lot better off. McCain was wrong, but he was wrong in a way that was so much more palatable than Bush. Here's the heart of what McCain said:

The years of keeping Saddam in a box were coming to a close. The international consensus that he be kept isolated and unarmed had eroded to the point that many critics of military action had decided the time had come again to do business with Saddam, despite his near daily attacks on our pilots, and his refusal, until his last day in power, to allow the unrestricted inspection of his arsenal. Our choice wasn't between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war.

It was between war and a graver threat. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Not our critics abroad. Not our political opponents.

He followed that immediately with his memorable attack on Michael Moore.

Now, of course, there is much in McCain's assessment with which to disagree. He failed to mention that Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had already concluded that Saddam Hussein did not have nukes. McCain also left out the fact that UN weapons inspectors were swarming around Iraq, and that they actually had to leave so that Bush could commence bombing. And, of course, there is the matter of Bush's giving the finger to the world rather than building a genuine international coalition - a tragic mistake given the horrors that are taking place in Iraq today.

Still, McCain was right when he argued that sanctions had pretty much run their course, and that something had to be done. (After all, that's why John Kerry voted to grant war-authorization powers to Bush.) It's just that the "something" Bush chose has turned out to be a widely predicted disaster.

As for McCain's failure to rip into Kerry, a failure that Kondracke found so distasteful - well, everyone who follows politics knows that McCain likes and respects Kerry on a personal level and detests Bush. (The depth of McCain's distaste for the lying Swiftie ads is revealed in this R.W. Apple piece today.) Would anyone have found it even remotely credible if McCain had suddenly gone after Kerry as a flip-flopping weasel?

Rather than coming off as a Republican partisan, McCain projected an image as a truly independent politician who's chosen a man he dislikes over one he likes strictly as a matter of principle. Just as Giuliani thanked God for Bush, Bush ought to thank God for McCain. If McCain managed to help himself in the process, well, what of it?

THE REST OF THE STORY. It's not online, unfortunately, but there's a hilarious omission in today's Boston Globe. The "Names" column includes a photo of Vanessa and Alexandra Kerry with this caption:

POP AND POLITICS - Vanessa (left) and Alexandra Kerry ask for quiet while urging the crowd to vote this fall at the MTV Video Music Awards Sunday in Miami.

The discerning will note that the reason they were asking quiet was that they were getting booed (and cheered) by the crowd.

"HOPE NOT FEAR." You can watch the Log Cabin Republicans' 30-second commercial here. Pretty slick move, drafting Ronald Reagan: I'm not sure he'd agree, but he's not going to complain. Rudy Giuliani and John McCain appear in a positive context, too.

I also like the narrator talking about "the politics of intolerance and fear that only lead to hate" while images of Pat Buchanan, Jerry Falwell, and Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum flash by on the screen.

JUST ANOTHER WORKING HACK. Here is Michael Moore's debut column on the RNC for USA Today.

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?

PRAGUE SPRING? Earlier today I took part in a media conference call with some of the founding members of Mainstream 2004, a group of self-described moderate Republicans who are seething over the right-wing extremism that has come to dominate their party. The organization debuted with a splash today, taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times.

"We're seeing a Republican Party that's being taken over by some pretty hardcore activists at the grassroots level who are often way out of the mainstream of the communities they are from," said former Arizona attorney general Grant Woods. He went on to call the right-wingers folks who "don't have anything better to do" than to engage in political activism, while the people who should be the heart and soul of the Republican Party are engaged in more-normal endeavors - like working.

Like the others who spoke, Woods was particularly exercised over the modern Republican Party's sorry record on the environment and on outreach to African-Americans and other minority communities.

The organization's agenda sounds like that espoused by most Democrats: environmental protection; fiscal responsibility; ending barriers to stem-cell research; appointing "mainstream federal judges"; enhancing domestic security at chemical and nuclear plants and in shipping; and rebuilding alliances to "restore America's standing in the world."

Yet these Republicans, at least as a group, will not go so far as to renounce George W. Bush's re-election campaign. Woods allowed only that he's backing a hoped-for presidential run by his home-state senator John McCain in 2008. Former Michigan governor William Milliken declined to say who he plans to vote for, saying he has "severe misgivings" about Bush but adding, "I don't see in John Kerry at this stage the answer to all the problems that confront us inside the country and internationally."

The exception was Rick Russman, a former member of the New Hampshire Senate, who said he's decided to support Kerry if only "because I think the party needs to lose a few elections" to find its bearings again.

In some ways, the group - rounded out by former New Mexico governor David Cargo - sounded like New England Republicans. For some years now, the region's moderate Republican senators have been a thorn in the side of the national Republican Party, standing for an old-fashioned mix of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism. This movement is epitomized by Maine's two GOP senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, as well as by Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee. Vermont senator Jim Jeffords even went so far to change his affiliation from Republican to independent a few years ago to protest his party's march to the right.

Given that background, I asked Russman whether he thought the New England Republican Party had anything to teach the national party. "I'd like to see some of our leaders, like these senators from Maine and others, take the lead in that and try to take the party back to the mainstream," he responded. "There's got to be a critical mass that says the pendulum's gone too far. We're starting to lose a great number of people."

That's probably an exaggeration. But there's no question that the hard-right extremists are out-of-touch with mainstream, independent voters, and Karl Rove knows it. That's why this week's speakers are heavy on moderates such as New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, former mayor Rudy Giuliani, and McCain. As Woods said, if party leaders wanted to show their true face, "they should have Tom DeLay deliver the principal speech."

Still, though the Mainstream 2004 folks may be in touch with the electorate-at-large, there's not much evidence that they're in touch with modern Republicanism. Everyone who spoke during the conference call today was a former officeholder. Cargo shone the best possible light on that, saying, "We can really tell it like it is." But their status only served to underscore the sense that there is no place for them in today's GOP.

Milliken praised this New York Times op-ed piece by former US senator Ed Brooke, a Massachusetts Republican, an African-American, and a liberal. Brooke warned that the 2004 convention may be shaping up, in its "extremism," like the one that nominated Barry Goldwater 40 years ago. Yet what neither Milliken nor Brooke want to admit is that today's GOP - which is far to the right of what Goldwater could even have imagined, or wanted - is thriving and winning elections.

I was unable to get an immediate reaction from the Republican National Committee; if I receive one, I'll post it. What I was hearing from the dissident moderates, though, sounded like the Republican version of 1968's Prague Spring. The difference is that the Rove gang won't have to roll in the tanks - certainly not this year, and maybe not ever. Woods himself said that the focus is on the long-term. Yet both major parties are becoming more ideological, not less. It's hard to see how Mainstream 2004 is going to change that.

ROMNEY BEHAVES HIMSELF. Give Mitt Romney this much: at least you can take him out in public. Our silky-smooth governor always says exactly what he wants to say, and no more. And he would never say anything that would call into question his nice-guy reputation. Of course, there are those of us who happen to think that waging war on poor families and gay couples isn't something that a nice guy would do, but I'm talking about manners here, not substance.

Anyway, I was watching this morning's Fox & Friends a little while ago - yes, I am spending a great deal of time with the Fox News Channel, for reasons that will become evident later this week - when on came Romney for some chit-chat. It wasn't long before E.D. Hill and boys were baiting Romney with their favorite subject: the phony Swifties, whose lies about John Kerry's military service are being kept alive at this point solely by right-wing talk radio, the Internet, and the Fox News Channel. (That is to say, by no one who has actually done any reporting on the matter.)

Romney started off shakily, saying that the whole thing was a "mistake ... on both sides of the aisle," adding that Kerry "really brought on a lot of this on himself" by basing so much of his campaign on his record as a Vietnam War veteran.

Really, Governor? Has Kerry made too much of his military service? Probably, at least so far as it has kept him from talking more specifically about what kind of a president he would be. Does that mean it's his fault that he's been subjected to weeks of lies about the medals he won and circumstances under which he won them? Er, isn't the answer to that obvious?

But then Romney settled down and said:

But fundamentally John Kerry served his country with honor and pride. He's heroic for having fought there. Anybody who found themselves under enemy fire, in harm's way, is someone whom I respect. And I think the people who are attacking him for his Vietnam service are making a mistake. I think it's wrong. I wish they wouldn't do so. I don't know what it's going to do politically.

Not bad - similar to the position that George W. Bush has taken, only a bit more fleshed-out and coherent.

Naturally, Romney also attacked Kerry for having "not followed the example of Bob Dole" in resigning from the Senate (Kerry instead appears to have followed the example of Bush, who did not resign as governor of Texas in 2000), and for wanting to "go back to the politics of weakness and uncertainty and vacillation." But obviously that's well within the bounds of proper political discourse.

What's interesting about this - and my apologies for taking so long to get to the point - is how the Republicans are reaping the benefit of having it both ways with regard to the lying Swifties. Their vicious accusations - which have been almost entirely discredited - have presumably had a lot to do with Kerry's recent drop in the polls. Meanwhile, Republicans such as Bush and Romney take the high road.

You could give credit to Romney for good manners. In fact, though, whether he knows it or not, he's playing a role that only helps to further the Swifties' ongoing assault on Kerry. After all, sliming is a lot less effective if it ends up hitting the intended beneficiaries in the face. By denouncing that which is helping them, Bush and Romney are playing a very old game.

HASTERT SLANDERS SOROS. WILL ANYONE NOTICE? Welcome to the official kickoff of Media Log's coverage of the Republican National Convention. I'm taking a radically different approach from the way I covered the Democrats - rather than traveling to New York, I'm embedded at Media Log Central, where I have non-stop access to cable TV, radio, and the Internet. Modern political conventions are TV shows, so why not cover them that way?

I posted some pre-convention items on Saturday and Sunday, so by all means scroll down and have a look. Meanwhile, I want to call your attention to House Speaker Dennis Hastert's astonishing remarks on Fox News Sunday yesterday, in which he said he doesn't know whether billionaire financier George Soros gets any of his money from the international drug cartels.

Think I'm kidding? Well, the transcript is available. The occasion was a joint appearance by Hastert and Senate majority leader Bill Frist - their "first joint TV interview ever," said host Chris Wallace, who unctuously added, "So thank you for honoring us with that."

Within a few minutes, Hastert was honoring Wallace and his viewers with slander against Soros so mind-boggling that Wallace appeared stricken. Let's roll the tape:

WALLACE: Let me switch subjects. You both had very deep reservations about McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform before it was passed. In fact, I think you say in your book, Mr. Speaker, that you thought it was the worst piece of legislation that had been passed by a Republican Congress since you've come to Washington.

Now that everyone seems upset with these so-called independent 527 groups, whether it's MoveOn.org on the liberal side of the spectrum or Swift Boat Veterans for Truth on the conservative side, do you feel like saying, "I told you so"?

HASTERT: Well, you know, that doesn't do any good. You know, but look behind us at this convention. I remember when I was a kid watching my first convention in 1992, when both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party laid out their platform, laid out their philosophy, and that's what they followed.

Here in this campaign, quote, unquote, "reform," you take party power away from the party, you take the philosophical ideas away from the party, and give them to these independent groups.

You know, I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't know where - if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from. And I ...

WALLACE: Excuse me?

HASTERT: Well, that's what he's been for a number years - George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he's got a lot of ancillary interests out there.

WALLACE: You think he may be getting money from the drug cartel?

HASTERT: I'm saying I don't know where groups - could be people who support this type of thing. I'm saying we don't know. The fact is we don't know where this money comes from.

Of course, it's true that "we don't know" whether George Soros gets his money from international narco-terrorists. It's also true that we don't know whether Dennis Hastert supports a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in order to conceal his own longtime relationship with a man back in his district. I mean, Hastert is probably straight, and his marriage probably isn't just an elaborate ruse. But hey ... we just don't know, do we?

And by the way, mega-kudos to Wallace. If he hadn't pressed Hastert on whether he might be referring to "the drug cartel," Hastert could have claimed later that he meant the Drug Policy Alliance, an anti-prohibition group that Soros supports. Not that that would have made any sense - after all, Hastert was clearly talking about groups that give to Soros, not get money from him. But Wallace forced Hastert to make his ugly insinuation explicit.

So are the mainstream media going to take note of Hastert's slanderous aside? Or will it be allowed simply to fade to nothingness? [Update: The New York Daily News nails Hastert here.]

GUERRIERO'S MOMENT. This could be a big week for Patrick Guerriero, the former Melrose mayor who's now executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans. The Bush-Cheney campaign is trying mightily to toe the line between hard-right anti-gay politics and happy-face image-making. Guerriero is making it clear that no compromise is possible: if you embrace hate politics, you're a hater, period.

The Globe's Yvonne Abraham profiles Guerriero today, and he has an op-ed piece in the paper as well.

SEEING RED, SPENDING GREEN. If nothing else, the Republican convention is an opportunity for the New York Times to rake in big bucks from anti-Bush organizations.

Its 20-page special section on the convention today has no less than five full-page ads from groups critical of the Republicans: the MoveOn PAC (nine former Bush voters who are supporting Kerry); the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (an anti-privatization lobbying group); the Center for American Progress ("Cost of Iraq War: $144,400,000,000"); Sojourners, a religious-left organization ("God Is Not a Republican"); and Mainstream 2004, moderate Republicans who feel alienated by Bush's right-wing policies on foreign policy, tax cuts, and the environment, among other issues.

Yoko Ono also has a full-page "Imagine Peace" ad in the "A" section.

DEPT. OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION. Slate's Jack Shafer was extraordinarily kind to me in his piece last week on the legendary press critic A.J. Liebling. Read it here.

FOUR YEARS AGO, HE DIDN'T HAVE A JOB? From today's New York Times:

"I'm constantly in touch with Karl, Karen, Dan Bartlett, people who are involved with the campaign," Mr. Bush said in the interview last week. "I don't limit my conversation to a particular time of the day.'' But, he added, "if the question is, 'Is it different running this time now that you're the president?' the answer is yes. I've got a job to do."

In 2000, you may recall, Bush was governor of Texas. I guess that doesn't count. But of course, it's very, very bad that Kerry's missed a lot of votes. Just one more example of how your intelligence is being insulted every day.

BLOGGER STRIKES BACK. For those of you who receive Media Log by e-mail, mucho apologies for the multiple copies of the David Brooks item. It was caused by a momentary problem with Blogger.com, the software that I use to publish Media Log, combined with my own lack of patience.

BROOKS'S FAVORITE REPUBLICANS. They're all dead! For just one day, at least, David Brooks the newly minted, hardcore conservative pundit has gone back to being David Brooks the thoughtful, slightly right-of-center moderate. In a long piece for today's New York Times Magazine, "How to Reinvent the G.O.P.," Brooks lays out the specifics of an overarching Brooksian political philosophy. It is a fine essay, yet it is also unintentionally hilarious.

Brooks harks back to 2000, when he and William Kristol made the case in the Weekly Standard for what they called "national-greatness conservatism" and hitched their wagon to the presidential campaign of John McCain. It was a courageous move, given the long odds facing McCain. The Standard, founded by Rupert Murdoch as a house organ for the newly ascendant Republican Party of the Gingrich era, found itself frozen out, at least until after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, when the GOP's interventionist McCain wing and the isolationist Bush wing came together. (There's a decent explanation of national-greatness conservatism - and of the roles played by Brooks, Kristol, and McCain - in this 2002 American Prospect article by Richard Just.)

What cracks me up about Brooks's piece are two things: the only Republicans and proto-Republicans he can find to say much nice about are Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt; and the program Brooks lays out sounds a whole lot more New Democrat than Bush Republican: entitlement reform, social mobility, an end to corporate welfare, energy independence, and mandatory national service.

The most important Brooksian priority - what he calls "the war on Islamic extremism" - is, of course, something that George W. Bush has attempted to transform into a trademarked slogan of the Republican Party. But I've seen no evidence that real-world Democrats (that is, John Kerry, not Howard Dean) aren't just as committed to combating Islamist terrorists as Bush is. Perhaps rather more so, since Kerry presumably wouldn't have more than 100,000 troops tied up in Iraq while Osama bin Laden and company run free on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Brooks isn't calling his philosophy national-greatness conservatism anymore, and his attempts to come up with a new name are painful. He tries out "strong-government progressive conservatism," but though it does have the merit of actually describing his ideas to some extent, it doesn't exactly roll trippingly off the tongue.

Brooks's politics come across as a meld of the best of Bill Clinton and John McCain - a slightly more conservative version of the New Democrat agenda, which itself was quite a bit more conservative than the Democratic Party of George McGovern and Walter Mondale. Kerry ought to take a good, hard look at some of the ideas that Brooks is proposing. Why not? It's pretty clear that Bush won't.

THE SECRET LIBRARY POLICE. Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young, in picking apart a slightly daft piece by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., writes:

I assume Vonnegut is referring to claims that under the Patriot Act, John Ashcroft's goons have been terrorizing libraries and monitoring Americans' reading habits. In fact, law enforcement agencies have always had the power to request library records as part of a criminal investigation; a provision of the Patriot Act gave them the power to do so in counterterrorism investigations without notifying the suspect. (Remember, we're talking about materials related to terrorist acts and not, say, the wit and wisdom of Michael Moore.) Whether or not such powers are appropriate, in the two years after the passage of the Patriot Act this provision was used exactly ... zero times. [Young's ellipses.]

No doubt Young was relying on stories like this. But here's an excerpt from the results of a study conducted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:

In the year after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, Federal and local law enforcement officials visited at least 545 (10.7%) libraries to ask for these records. Of these, 178 libraries (3.5%) received visits from the FBI. The number of libraries queried fell significantly below the 703 libraries reporting such requests the year before the terrorist events. The actual number questioned in the past year may, however, be larger, because the USA Patriot Act makes it illegal for persons or institutions to disclose that a search warrant has been served. A warning about these secrecy provisions on the LRC questionnaire may have served, in some cases, as a deterrent to candid answers. Fifteen libraries acknowledged there were questions they did not answer because they were legally prohibited from doing so.

In other words, the answer to the question of whether and how the Patriot Act is being used to snoop on library patrons is inherently unknowable, since the act also makes it a crime for librarians to disclose whether they've been visited or not. The very fact that the number of reported library visits by law-enforcement officials fell in the year after 9/11 is telling, wouldn't you say?

PLYING THE MEDIA WITH LIES. Media Log is still technically on vacation. But I've been catching up on the news following a three-day backpacking trip last week, and I continue to be astounded at what's happening to John Kerry's presidential campaign.

The media have not necessarily done a horrible job of covering the claims of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Indeed, if it weren't for news orgs such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, it might not be as clear as it already is that the vets' claims consist of nothing but ugly lies.

Still, editors and news directors should consider that the way they practice journalism allowed the lies to circulate and propagate, putting John Kerry's presidential campaign on the defensive and costing him a few points in the polls heading into the Republican National Convention.

The outrageous claims of the Swiftvets - that one of Kerry's Purple Heart wounds was self-inflicted, that he and his crew weren't really under fire when he rescued James Rassmann and won the Bronze Star, that he executed a Vietnamese kid in a loincloth in winning the Silver Star (it was actually a Viet Cong soldier with a grenade-launcher) - should have been treated as presumptively untrue from Day One.

You didn't have to do any investigative reporting to know that the official military records backed up Kerry's version of events (no, military records aren't perfect, but they're not meaningless, either), and that Kerry's hometown newspaper, the Boston Globe, had investigated his military record extensively on at least two separate occasions, in 1996 and again in 2003. Right-wing conspiracy theories aside, there is zero evidence that the Globe has ever tried to cut Kerry any slack. Plus there is the fact that all but one of the men with whom Kerry actually served support Kerry's version of events. (How deep is the lying? The very fact that the Swiftvets say they "served with Kerry" is itself a lie.)

The invaluable contribution that the Times and the Post made was to show that in many cases the Swiftvets had changed their stories over the years from pro-Kerry to anti-Kerry, and that some of them claimed to have witnessed events that they could not have.

But the Swiftvets and their shadowy backers understood something about the media: if you make an accusation, news orgs will cover it, get a response from the person or persons being accused, and run with it. Truth isn't the issue, at least not in day-to-day campaign coverage. Getting both sides is the name of the game, even if there isn't a single reason to believe one side and every reason to believe the other.

The only charge raised against Kerry that seems to be sticking at all is that he falsely claimed to have been in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968 - a charge that has gained resonance because Kerry once mistakenly stated that Richard Nixon was president at that time. But as the historian Douglas Brinkley has said, Kerry was involved in extremely dangerous missions in and around the Cambodian border during that time period. It is curious, to say the least, that Kerry-haters are willing to overlook blatant lies by the Swiftvets about where they were and what they saw while pillorying Kerry for misremembering the timing of events that actually occurred.

Yesterday brought a brief flurry of new excitement in the form of a Robert Novak column reporting that retired rear admiral William Schachte - who's not a member of the Swiftvets group - was continuing to claim that he was present when Kerry "nicked" himself and therefore unjustly won his first Purple Heart. Yet we already have the testimony of others who were there that Schachte was not. As the Times recently reported, Patrick Runyon and Bill Zaladonis insist they were the only crew members with Kerry when the incident occurred. "Me and Bill aren't the smartest, but we can count to three," Runyon was quoted as saying. But you know the game: Novak reports, you decide, even if you don't have the background to make an informed analysis as to who's telling the truth.

As always, Bob Somerby has been invaluable in dissecting the lies of the Swiftvets, and of the pathetically poor preparation that cable-news hosts have brought to the table when they have interviewed them - even those who suspect that the vets are lying, like MSNBC's Chris Matthews. (If he'd do his homework, he'd know they're lying.)

Kerry, I think, is making one serious mistake. He has denounced the lies of the Swiftvets, as he should. But by going after the ties between the Swiftvets and the Bush-Cheney campaign - ties that became all too apparent with the resignation of Bush water-carrier Benjamin Ginsberg - Kerry is playing George W. Bush's game.

Rather than denounce his supporters' lies, Bush has attempted to turn the entire issue into one of the 527s, the independent political organizations running negative ads on both sides. Kerry won a victory with Ginsberg's self-immolation. But if it turns out that there are similar ties between the Kerry-Edwards campaign and some of the liberal 527s (a development that would hardly be a surprise), then the media will be able to pronounce this an "everyone does it" story and transform the entire Swiftvets campaign into a matter of moral equivalence with the anti-Bush ads being run by MoveOn.org and others.

It's not. What the Swiftvets are doing is as dirty and shocking and disgraceful as anything done in modern political history - far worse than the infamous Willie Horton ad that George H.W. Bush's supporters ran in going after Michael Dukakis. Kerry cannot let the lies of the Swiftvets be held up as somehow the same as entirely truthful ads questioning Bush's missing months in the Texas Air National Guard.

THE REST OF THE STORY. Media Log is on vacation, and will not officially be back until August 30 ... maybe a little earlier, depending on what I want to say about the Republican National Convention.

But I can't resist asking why the Globe couldn't manage to report that state rep Paul Kujawski has been accused of staggering out of his car and taking a leak in front of state troopers after he was pulled over on the Mass Pike on suspicion of drunk driving.

For crying out loud, I heard this particular detail yesterday afternoon. (And no, I didn't get it from listening to Howie Carr.) The Herald's Ann Donlan has it today, writing that Kujawski "got even deeper in trouble after urinating in front of the troopers who stopped him." But the Globe's Elise Castelli, after reporting that Kujawski had been charged with drunk driving, disorderly conduct, and "open and gross lewdness," goes on to write: "The police declined to comment on what transpired after Kujawski's car was pulled over."

Far from doing Kujawski any favors, the Globe makes it sound like he exposed himself to a busload of kindergarten students or something.