Wait a minute . . . Ezra Klein is upset about the treatment of Scott Beauchamp?

Um, does Klein think it is wrong to expose a complete fraud, just because the guy is liberal?

I guess the new standard is that liberals can never do anything wrong, ever, and if you even suggest they are less than dishonest, even when they clearly are dishonest, you are guilty of 'hate'.

That liberal Koolaid must be delicious.

This is coming from a person that obviously wants socialized medicine. That means that his good intentions are to take away all of our freedoms and subjects everyone to the worst that medicine has to offer.

Ken, that is just part of the story.

Klein links favorably to Jim Henley, who claims that conservative bloggers wanted to get Jamil Hussein "arrested or killed."

The fact of the matter, of course, is that Jamil Hussein is just a pseudonym, and therefore, can't be killed any more than could be Mark Twain or Lemony Snicket.

The bigger irony?

No less than a half dozen bloggers, including Michelle Malkin, have known the real identity of the man hiding behind the pseudonym since February, and yet, we've purposefully not published that information on our blogs in order to keep him from getting "arrested or killed."

To add further irony, the comment about fragging Scott Beauchamp was created by the liberal blogger Henley linked, not the conservative bloggers he discusses.

Details, details...

I agree that there are extremists on both sides of the political spectrum, but I also think it's curious in the extreme that Mr. Klein would include Scott Beauchamp as a victim, and posits that Michelle Malkin has engaged in extremist behavior. From what I have seen, all that Ms. Malkin and others have done is ask perfectly reasonable questions about this family's financial circumstances. They learned that the family has a lot of assets, are paying for expensive private schools for their children, and that they could afford to purchase insurance on their own, but have chosen not to do so. In this situation, where the family and the Democrats have chosen to make the child's situation public and a justification for enlarging the existing program, these are all reasonable questions that deserve answers. What specifically, is Ms. Malkin's misconduct supposed to have been?

"This is not politics. This is, in symbolism and emotion, a violent group ritual. It is savages tearing at the body of a captured enemy."

Lighten up, Francis!

This is all too typical of the left. Michelle simply did some footwork and makes an argument that perhaps the Frost's aren't exactly incapable of providing their own health insurance, which ironically is irrelevant because the Frosts' are already eligible for SCHIP as it stands.

Conservatives are making a reasoned argument against the expansion of an entitlement program, whereas the liberals are decrying character assassination all the while practicing it. Good grief.

So the left is allowed to trot out a CHILD to push socialized health care? Then, when their background is found to be moderately wealthy, and it's shown to be a money choice by the parents and not some diabolical plan by BushCo, the liberals get indignant?

Just when I think the left has no capacity left to amaze me with their hypocrisy, they come up with a whole new level.

"It would never, not in a million years, occur to me to drive to the home of a Republican small business owner to see if he "really" needed that tax cut. It would never, not in a million years, occur to me to call his family and demand their personal information. It would never occur to me to interrogate his neighbors. "

Proving that Klein is not a journalist.

I don't this Klein hysteric, but he's either underdosing or needs to switch medications.

As with most of the Left when they get on their high horse, you can sum it up in one word: Projection.

The real problem is, no one on the left can wrap their minds around the concept that someone can be intelligent and yet disagree with them (to be honest, there are some on the right with the same problem, but not in the numbers we see on the left).

Therefore, anyone that disagrees with a lefty is prima facie defective in some way--according to them--be it morally, intellectually, or some other form of defect.

"It would never, not in a million years, occur to me to drive to the home of a Republican small business owner to see if he "really" needed that tax cut. It would never, not in a million years, occur to me to call his family and demand their personal information. It would never occur to me to interrogate his neighbors. "

Proving that Klein is not a journalist.

Exactly, what if he got the wrong answer; better to follow the golden rule when pushing a story -- "don't ask, don't tell."

Hmmm...this comment has me baffled:

"Proving that Klein is not a journalist."

I'm assuming this is meant to highlight Malkin's bonafides as an investigative journalist, considering she went all Philip Marlowe on the Frost family. Yet it seems to me that any journalist worth the title would go after the actual SCHIP program itself, and NOT the family shilling for it.

As it is, the Dems laid a trap and you guys fell for it. You have been goaded into actually criticizing and investigating an American family and for what? To score a political point.

When will you guys realize that ruining people's lives to score political points is not admirable, and it's not conservative either?

If by Phillip Marlowe you mean Bob Woodward, and if by "laid a trap" you mean tried to insulate an issue from criticism like trotting out Max Clelland whenever it's a veteran's issue, and if by criticizing an American family, you mean doing the investigation the original Baltimore Sun reporter should have done, you're getting close.

On the other hand if by all this you mean to lay a liberal guilt trip on us, I think you're peddling your fish in the wrong market.

Since SCHIP already exists, expansion necessarily involves analyzing who qualifies now and who would qualify under the expansion. This can be done hypothetically or by anecdote (as with the Frosts). It's not our fault that the Baltimore Sun reporter is so partisan or naive that he failed to anticipate obvious questions regarding the Frosts.

Ruining peoples' lives? Please. Al Sharpton ruined peoples lives in the Tawana Brawley fiasco; Nifong ruined peoples lives in Durham; asking a few questions of people who have voluntarily thrust themselves in the national spotlight hardly qualifies.

Capitano, Sorry for the trolling, but as Samuel L Jackson once said, "Allow me to retort."

First...I'd like to remind you that the Frost family had already been investigated, not by Malkin, not by the Baltimore Sun, but by the state agency overseeing the SCHIP program...and as we know the Frost family not only qualified for benefits but they have already received them.

If you think that decision was wrong, perhaps it might be more appropriate to direct your wrath towards the administrators of the program rather than the Frost family themselves.

(It also makes Malkin's "investigative reporting" moot, more an exercise in mudslinging than actual newsgathering.)

What has the Frost family done that's wrong? Shilled for the Democrats? Hey...that's unfortunate, but it's not WRONG. Last I checked, that used to be perfectly legitimate.

The Frosts have committed no crime. They have defrauded no one. They have spoken their minds, and though I may disagree, I WILL NOT CONDEMN THEM FOR IT.

Nor will I invade their privacy so I can second-guess all the SCHIP eligibility requirements they have already met.

Nor will I fall into the trap of being so blinded by idealogical hatred that I will stoop so low as to pick a fight with a couple of brain damaged kids or their unfortunate parents.

Yes, the Dems thought the Frost kids would be trump cards making it impossible to argue against SCHIP. But that's not true, and we know it. And so what? Let's not forget, the right is not without their own trump cards... (9-11 anyone?)

Surely if SCHIP was a bad program, it would STILL be a bad program if no one had ever heard the name Graeme Frost, right?

Argue the issue. Forget the sideshow. And don't pretend that Michelle Malkin is, you know, an actual journalist.

Also, I propose that the "Al Sharpton does it too" argument never be used by serious people...

Hey, Al Sharpton is a racist snake who has been demonstrably wrong several times too many. Let's not use him as the standard for our own behavior, huh?

Hmmm.

@ James

Allow me to retort

Since the Frost family *already* is qualified for the SCHIP program under it's older eligibility rules then there's actually no rationale for using the Frost family to argue for the *expansion* of those eligibility rules.

Agreed!

Troll away, James. My complaint has never been with the Frosts. I fault the Baltimore Sun reporter's mediocre reporting.

I think most serious people unfamiliar with SCHIP were understandably surprised to find out these folks had kids in private schools, lived in a 3000 s.f. house, and owned commercial properties. So the natural reaction was a.) this program is already too lenient, or b.) this family is under-reporting its income/assets and gaming the system.

Unlike you, since it's Federal money many of us do not share your confidence in Maryland's ability or motivation to fully investigate whether applicants comply with the program's guidelines. In fact, for the past several months President Bush has been pressuring States to conduct outreach to actual uninsured poor kids and to quit doling out SCHIP funds to adults. (Did you know that was going on? I didn't.) So when these facts surface about the Frosts, the next question is did the reporter not care or was he just so invested in pushing propaganda that he purposely glossed over these red flags.

What Michelle Malkin did was visit with one of Frost's neighbors who confirmed that they were "struggling" and her own assessment was that their home was on the low end of the appraisal range. In other words, she argued against the notion that the Frosts were scam artists. So yes, I would call that journalism -- far more informative than the puff piece Baltimore Sun, which raised more questions than it answered.

And I didn't say "Al Sharpton does it too." Read what I said; I was responding to your notion that investigating the Frosts had ruined their lives. Al Sharpton's hyperbole in the Tawanna Brawley case led to arson and death -- that's ruining someone's life. To a similar but lesser extent, Nifong ruined 3 young men's lives. Unless the Frosts are trolling the web or reading the New York Times, they have been barely inconvenienced.

I stand by what I wrote but you're welcome to continue spinning away.

James - Throw some water on that burning straw. Who exactly has been been attacking the kid that shilled for the Dems? Who has accused the family or kids of committing crimes? Do you have citations for the points you raise and then knock down or did you raise them just as red herrings.

As capitano pointed out, passing journalism 101 would have obligated most reporters to investigate the family to some degree rather than acting as stenographers for the democrats. How exactly did examining public records and driving by a house after the Frost family put themselves in the public eye destroy their lives? Ann Coulter had a great riff on Democrats and their use of Absolute Moral Authority figures in her book last year. Is this along the lines of progressive fantasies about Bush shredding the constitution without being able to point to examples of the victims of the shredding? The hysteria on left seems about the same and when they are discovered trying to slip a fast one by the American public they scream like stuck pigs. I believe the point that the right is making is that with a little more thorough research, better absolute moral authority figures could have been found to support the march toward socialized medicine.

does Klein think it is wrong to expose a complete fraud, just because the guy is liberal?

Ummmm, yes.

I wouldn't take Ezra Klein too seriously. He's a 23 year old recent college grad who has never had a real job other than writing his opinion in magazines and blogs. In other words, he's never been out in the real world. If you want, you can read more about him here.

In that thread, Ezra and others repeatedly said that right-wingers had stooped to "smearing" and "attacking" the Frost's 12 year old son. Funny thing though, every time I asked them to produce an actual quote to back that up, I got plenty of insults in return, but they couldn't do it. Not once. No quote. No reference.

Eventually some of them tried to claim that attacking the credibility of the family's finances is the same as attacking the 12 year old son. Can you believe that?

James, allow me to retort in kind.

Was it a conservative reporter, perhaps for FoxNews, that first brought the Frosts to the public eye?

Nay, it was a lefty reporter for the Baltimore Sun.

If there is opprobrium for exposing this family to public scrutiny, surely it belongs to those who first did so.

"From what I have seen, all that Ms. Malkin and others have done is ask perfectly reasonable questions about this family's financial circumstances."

When a family starts receiving threatening emails and phone calls and has strangers stalking around their neighborhood looking at their house and place of employment and digging into their financial records and harrasing their neighbors, it's not called "asking questions," it's called being a total frickin PSYCHOPATH!

If a leftie did this to someone on the right, you people would be LIVID! Absolutely livid.

I'm surprised Malkin wasn't digging through their garbage or installing hidden cameras in their bathroom. It truly seems there is nothing she would NOT do to carry out a character assassination.

notforsalethanks - Where do you get you information?

When a family starts receiving threatening emails and phone calls and has strangers stalking around their neighborhood looking at their house and place of employment and digging into their financial records and harrasing their neighbors, it's not called "asking questions," it's called being a total frickin PSYCHOPATH!

threatening emails - Have they released any of the e-mails? I haven't looked. Who gave out their e-mail addy?

phone calls - Have they released any tapes of threatening calls? I haven't looked. Caller ID should help them track who is harrassing them and law enforcement may be able to help.

stalking around their neighborhood looking at their house - You mean driving by on public property don't you?

digging into their financial records - reviewing public financial records - Fixed that for you.

It's called reporting. Take off your blinders.

Again, notforsale, I ask who first exposed this family to public scrutiny?

As demonstated by some of the posts in this comment section, isn't it fascinating how unreasonable the defenders of the left are?