"At Long Last, Have You Left no Sense of Decency?"

So asked Boston lawyer Joseph Welch of the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy at the legendary Army-McCarthy hearings, setting in motion that senator's trajectory to his political demise.

We might ask the same of the New York Times, whose hyping of the "Cheney outed Valerie Plame as an act of political revenge" has turned out to be a crock. The details here, in necessary but tedious detail. It wasn't Cheney, it was Colin Powell protegé Richard Armitage, who also kept quiet about the whole thing for two years while those falsely suspected spent millons on legal representation and Scooter Libby got indicted when there was really nothing to investigate.

I must confess that my eyes glazed over at this particular issue from the beginning. But the unraveling of the accustation shows the Bush-haters have no shame and will grasp at every straw just to see a Bushie "frog marched" out of the White House.

There's plenty to criticize in this Administration without resorting to cockamamie conspiracy theories. Normally I'd say they discredit those who peddle them. The Times in the Pinch era, however, is beyond shame and beyond caricature.

NOTE: The photo above is a photoshopped fantasy.