RED QUEEN CONSERVATISM LIVES!

Regarding the chorus of conservative yawns which have greeted the revelation that the President personally authorized the release of misleading intelligence on Iraq's WMD as part of an effort to discredit Joseph Wilson, it's helpful to consider, if only for purposes of contrast, the uproar from conservatives at reports, later proven false, that Sidney Blumenthal had been spreading false information about Monica Lewinsky in an effort to discredit her story of an affair with President Clinton. This entry from Jonah Goldberg, who of course owes his entire career to Clinton's tomcatting, is more or less representative of the Right's collective conniption at this news. Michael Ledeen went this far:

Just as Don Corleone and his sons bought, blackmailed, or extorted the favors of businessmen, politicians, judges, and journalists, so Clinton's tenacious survival of a series of mortal threats to his Presidency is intimately linked (as was his initial rise to power) to the successful manipulation of business, political, judicial, and journalistic institutions, beginning with the spectacular purge of all the U.S. Attorneys at the outset of the first term, and culminating so far with the intimidation of potentially damaging witnesses, probing journalists, and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. And just as real-life mafiosi often maintain Jewish consiglieri, so the Clintons have their Nussbaums, Landows, and Blumenthals. (emphasis added)

Real charmer, that Ledeen.

So, just for the record, in the hermetically sealed moral universe of conservatives (where all compasses point to the right), when the President sends out his lackey to spread false information about the President's ex-girlfriend, it is inexcusable, a threat to the republic. When the President sends out his lackey to spread false information about why the President sent hundreds of thousands of American troops to invade and occupy another country, it's no big deal. Got it?