As I noted a couple weeks ago, Powerline helped spread the nonsensical claim that Terri Schiavo had never been given the sort of tests that people would normally be given to determine if they were in a persistent vegetative state. Now, Powerline’s John Hinderaker is simply lying about what his blog said about the controversial Terri Schiavo memo.
This was a memo that the Washington Post obtained that were talking points put out by the Republican leadership about the Schiavo case. Among other things, the memo said that being out front and center on the Schiaveo issue would have political benefits.
After the Post story appeared, Powerline questioned the memo’s authenticity. In fact they said it was a fake. Hinderaker wants to deny that now. He says here (emphasis added),
We were “wrong” in the sense that we laid out the evidence and said that based on the available evidence, we thought that the memo was a fake. We did not report as a fact that the memo was a fake, and we did not purport to have any information that was not publicly available.
That’s a lie. Powerline’s Scott Johnson made a post that can be read here about a Washington Times story that was titled, “Was the Schiavo memo a fake?” The title of the Powerline post was clearly a response to that question and reads:
ANSWER: YES
I guess if you just ignore the post where they came out and said the memo was a fake, then maybe they didn’t really say the memo as a fake. Maybe it depends on the definition of “answer”. . .
At this point I actually have more trust in Daily Kos than I do in the folks at Powerline (i.e., next to nothing)