Think Transgress: Pro-Clinton Blog Retracts McCain Smear

Photo of Tim Graham.
By Tim Graham | March 28, 2008 - 11:44 ET

Mark Hemingway at the Corner pointed at this one: As Hillary's Army publishes paperbacks complaining about the "Free Ride" John McCain is getting from the press, the Hillary brigade at Think Progress didn't give McCain a free ride, they gave him an inaccurate smearing. They claimed that Sen. McCain's conservative-indigestion-causing speech on foreign affairs plagiarized phrases from an Admiral Timothy Ziemer. Oops, they report today, we had it backwards:

UPDATE: It appears that Ziemer’s speech may have been plagiarized from McCain. According to the McCain campaign, the senator used these lines before Ziemer — in 1995. We regret the error.

UPDATE: As a blog that strives to maintain credibility and transparency, we would like to explain our mistake. When we were alerted to the tip that Adm. Ziemer gave a similar speech in 1996, we searched LexisNexis and McCain’s campaign site for whether the senator used the disputed phrases before that time. We did not find anything. After we published the post, the McCain campaign contacted us and pointed to a speech given by the senator in 1995, which appears on McCain’s Senate site. As soon as we were alerted to the error, we rushed to publish a correction. Once again, we regret the error.

The smear was filed under their topic heading "Corrupt Establishment." Isn't it always giggle-inducing when a pro-Hillary blog claims to expose a "Corrupt Establishment"? Tom Maguire at Just One Minute offered more:

Yes, hindsight is 20/20, but how much prescience would have been required for Think Progress to have pinned this down?  For example, one of the McCain phrases that stood out was "War is wretched beyond description."  A search on the word "wretched" at McCain's Senate site produces just three hits, one of which is the 1995 speech.

What seems to have confounded the person who noticed this is that Google's search spiders seem to be blocked from the McCain site; neither a conventional Google search nor a Google search on McCain's Senate site deliver the 1995 speech.

—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center

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Nothing like the taste of crow.

Good point. Google is not the be all and end all for search engines.

But how lame can they be. "I couldn't google it so it must be true! Run with it!!"

Somebody needs to work on their journalism skills.

"Do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt with modest warrant" William Shakespeare

I wonder why...

They'd want spider searches blocked on the McCain website? One would think a politician would want to encourage searches...
JMR

A corruption-story the TV media will-not cover.

Plagiarism

Looks like "plagiarism" is the new word to demonstrate the media's knowledge (ignorance) in this campaign. I'm sure some of the MSM have just learned what it means. However, it is actually quite a bit more compicated than they know.

NEVER,NEVER trust a "liberal"

psst: Elizabeth H. challenged Barry about Rev.Wright on The View today. I wish Barry had responded similarly about Wright as he had about Imus. But I guess, to him, only prejudice against whites can be condemned outright. When it's "God DAMN America", we must see the whole picture, see the man for all the "good" he's done. BS, Barry.

Hey isia... I gotta' run,

Hey isia...

I gotta' run, but I have been surprised Justin hasn't had a story about this today regarding Obama, The View and all the little love-fest swooning they had with him....lol.

Maybe there will be one later...

"Never murder your opponent when he is committing suicide." ~ W. Churchill

Anyone remember the days

Anyone remember the days when a "reporter" would have first asked the subject of an article to comment upon the "investigation" of his alleged plagiarism?

Vote 4 change. Vote 4 anything. See Jack & Mr Shy's first campaign ad for the ONLY viable 3rd party candidate.

Yup.

But these bloggers were interested in nothing more than a "gotcha" moment.

"Do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt with modest warrant" William Shakespeare

I Do, Jack

Those days left around the time Walter Cronkite decided that the purpose of the news media was not to report news, but to shape public opinion. Unfortunately, his bosses at CBS were so enamored with being #1, they failed to hold him ethically responsible for his actions. Result? An incompetent, bias driven, failing media, pretty much nation/world wide.

V/R
Clyde

"...the aspirants to tyranny are either the...men of the state, who in democracies are demagogues,... or those who hold great offices, and have a long tenure.." - Aristotle, Politics, c350BC

Result? An incompetent,

Result? An incompetent, bias driven, failing media, pretty much nation/world wide.

Oh.. and don't forget the massive expansion of "Journalism" schools.

Vote 4 change. Vote 4 anything. See Jack & Mr Shy's first campaign ad for the ONLY viable 3rd party candidate.

Not a group I would feel comfortable flying with

Here's the Think Progress "research" staff:

http://thinkprogress.org/about/

www.sinsofthehusband.com

Good Post

Great post, Tim. From now on, if I do a search about a rumor on Google and find nothing, I'll assume it is true. I just searched for "Obama and Hillary are having an affair", and, although I now know that Hillary is having an affair with Huma Abedin, there is nothing that refutes the Obama-Hillary affair. Therefore it must be true! </sarc off>

I just had to post this. I was searching for something else, and came across an article from May 9th, 2000 on the day McCain endorsed Bush for President. This is a sweet section and the irony is beautiful!

"I asked that I not be considered for vice president of the United States," McCain told reporters. McCain added that Bush had a long list of qualified Republican candidates to choose from, including Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee and Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson.

Later Tuesday on CNN's "Larry King Live," Bush said he had not "seen the list" of possible vice president nominees being compiled for him by former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. "We're still in the 'adding names' process. I haven't even seen the list yet."

The remaining voters should

The remaining voters should keep this in mind:

While the Clinton campaign steps up its efforts to ratify the sham elections in Michigan and Florida -- their lone lifeline in a campaign they have otherwise thoroughly lost on the merits -- they seek to disenfranchise actual voters in a real contest -- that in Texas.

On Wednesday:

Garry Mauro, Clinton's state campaign chairman, said Wednesday he is satisfied that the process is working well. Mauro said Clinton is planning no challenge to the process.

Birnberg said he is not expecting many challenges to convention delegates because too many delegates would have to be rejected to change the mix for either Obama or Clinton.

"If you're talking about Senate District 13, which has 4,000 delegates, you cannot imagine how many credential disputes you'd have to have to change" the outcome, he said. "That probably takes 1,000 successful challenges mathematically."

Then on Thursday:

Hillary Rodham Clinton's Texas campaign is challenging the seating of delegates from numerous precincts for Saturday’s Democratic county conventions, particularly in Barack Obama's strongholds.

State Senate District 23, which includes much of southern Dallas County, was a central target of the Clinton campaign.

Just before Wednesday’s deadline to file complaints before the county convention credentials committee, Clinton campaign officials delivered a large packet of challenges.

"There are numerous challenges," said Dallas County District Clerk Gary Fitzsimmons, who is temporary chairman of the District 23 credentials committee. The district went solidly for Mr. Obama in the primary, and there’s a question over whether Mrs. Clinton will reach the 15 percent threshold needed to receive delegates.

The committee meets Thursday night to deal with minor challenges. The rest will be handled on Saturday, the day of the county conventions.

On a conference call Wednesday, Clinton campaign officials said they would not try to influence the county conventions with mass challenges before the credentials committee [...]

"Apparently the promise that the Clinton campaign made less than 24 hours ago not to challenge the seating of delegates at Saturday's district conventions was just another made-up story," [Obama spokesperson Josh] Earnest said. "The Clinton campaign's politically-motivated outrage over disenfranchising voters apparently doesn't extend to the 1.1 million Texans who participated in the precinct conventions earlier this month."

Of course it doesn't. Clinton originally agreed to the sanctions against Michigan and Florida. Yet now, even after the states have admitted they don't have the money, time, or political will to get new sanctioned contests, the Clinton campaign clings to the states in an effort to spread enough uncertainty to keep her failed campaign alive.

Note that in Texas, SD-23 in Dallas is little different than SD-13 in Houston -- Clinton got only about 27 percent of the vote, and only about 18 percent in the caucus. She's in danger of failing to reach viability there and in Houston's SD-13, and those are huge districts. Note also that the district, which the Clinton campaign is trying to disenfranchise, is essentially half African American, half Latino. But every delegate counts, and SD-23 has six of them. They'll fight for every single one of them no matter how many people and communities they disenfranchise.

There are also reports that several south Texas counties, Clinton territory, are refusing to publish the location of the conventions. In the old day, no one showed up to these things, delegate slates were just filled in without hassle by some local party honcho. These people would like nothing else than to fill in a full slate of Clinton delegates without the hassles of "democracy" and all. So between credential challenges and other subterfuge designed to depress Obama's performance and cast the caucus results in doubt, we'll see that once again, Camp Clinton will do and say anything in its mad pursuit of power.

We need Change from the MSM.

We need Change from the MSM.