Wright, Wrong, and Rove

About the only thing I can say with any certainty regarding Plamegate is that any lies told by Republicans on the topic have been met and possibly exceeded by the media and their allies in the Democratic Party.

No finer demonstration of that fact can be found than former Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright's claim in his Forth Worth Star-Telegram editorial (registration or BugMeNot required) today that Karl Rove "initiated a call to Time magazine" to start an assault against Plame and Wilson.

It is established that Matthew Cooper of Time called Karl Rove. This is recorded extensively by Editor & Publisher, National Review, CNN and other news organizations.

But Jim Wright takes the dishonest step of changing the circumstances of the call in an attempt to establish a sinister motive for Rove. Cooper called Rove ostensibly to talk about welfare reform, and then after discussing that subject briefly, Cooper changed the subject to discuss Joe Wilson.

But that bit of documented history fails to firmly establish Rove as a villain, and so former Speaker Wright turns to fiction, and attempts to present it as fact.

This is irresponsible of course, but not more so than the Star-Telegram's decision to run a Sunday-edition editorial with such a major fact error in the second paragraph. Jim Wright (who knows something about ethics violations) and the Star-Telegram seem to have made the conscious decision to run an editorial based at least in part upon fabricated evidence.

The New York Times just ran a major correction for fabricating parts of an editorial. It remains to be seen if the Star-Telegram will have that kind of class.

Of course, you can ask them that yourself.

Update: Cooper further discredits Wright with the very first sentence in this article in Time.