Mark Salter

Shortly after reporting on her Web site that GOP presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain did not vote for George W. Bush in 2000, Arianna Huffington continued to denigrate the presumptive Republican nominee before a Washington, D.C., audience.

"Actually, you know what I think - the more I think of it, John McCain should not be allowed to hold sharp scissors," Huffington said. "[Y]ou know he wants to make the tax cuts permanent. He wants bigger corporate tax cuts. You know, it's an endless process. You know it's basically, exactly what this country does not need. It's expanding and deepening the last eight years."

Earlier, Huffington had charged that the media are playing "Pontius Pilate" when dealing with the issue of global warming.

Hit and run reporting on John McCain

Well, maybe not. But still, ... .

The New York Times on Wednesday evening went to the web with "For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk", an innuendo-filled and fact-deprived 3,000 word ramble on the 1999 professional interactions between now virtually certain Republican Presidential nominee John McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman. They then extrapolated the unproven impropriety of this alleged "relationship" into a broader questioning of McCain's ethics.

Both McCain and Iseman flatly deny the affair. Their refutation, and the Times' protracted inability to gather any evidence to the contrary, should in no way have served to prevent them from levying the accusation in long form print, apparently.