Let’s not take anything for granted, okay: Does anyone do it better (almost every day) than James Taranto? Just today:

In order to win her case, Vaughn would at least have to convince a jury that one could reasonably construe the comment as a factual claim.

This depends on context, and Imus has a strong defense inasmuch as he is a jerk. That is, his shock-jock idiom is heavy with insults, which, although obnoxious, have little if any factual content. The damage that Imus’s own reputation suffered as a result of the Rutgers episode–damage that, we hasten to add, he fully deserved–further diminishes the likelihood that anyone mistook his statement for a fact.

And:

Pelosi rejects the notion that she must be careful where she treads. “There aren’t enough days in the month to go to all the districts I’m invited to,” she said in New Hampshire.

Which means, this being August, that she has been invited to at least 32 of the nation’s 435 congressional districts.

And:

I am the one who convinced him that it would be a great idea to put him in a dress, soften him up, and help him get the gay vote,” Cuker says. “And, ultimately, it was his biggest bonus, because he got the gay vote–and the conservatives…. It was a home run for him, and he got national attention. It showed that he had a sense of humor.”

And, as we noted above, Giuliani carried Queens by a wide margin.

Taranto does what no one else does, and very well, by quite a wide margin.

Bryan from HotAir writes about the Beauchamp controversy:

[T]ruth matters. “Fake but accurate” amounts to a lie, TNR. And in a post-modern war such as the one we’re fighting, and especially as we place more emphasis on the morality of our actions in war than on actually winning it by defeating the enemy, Beauchamp represents an informational attack on our ability to wage war. Words are weapons.

All true, as I have been saying. I think he is missing a key point, however: The New Republic, like its former editor, Andrew Sullivan, supported the Iraq war. And now it has huge regrets over that, especially considering how a thin layer of financial and social support is all that ever props up even a very good opinion magazine, as that one once was.

TNR has made a lot of mistakes — under the long ownership of Marty Peretz, for example, it was (as were many of us) a big supporter of the pre-crackup Al Gore; it brought Andrew Sullivan (also pre-crackup, actually) to the big time; and it gave us, of course, Steven Glass, who established the journalistic standards the magazine seemed to be following in vetting Beauchamp.

All these errors were forgivable on the Upper West Side and among the Hollywood no-nothing political elite. Indeed, Gore is truly beloved of the left now in a way he could not have been during the Peretz days; Sullivan has become the reliable emblem of the relentless single-issue left-wing banshee, deciding all policy questions through the prism of same-sex marriage; and just plain making stuff up in national publications to further the Cause has been a left-wing publishing tradition since at least Walter Duranty. (Monkeyfishing, also akin, was a gift from Slate, which replaced TNR as the relevant, and free online, moderately liberal periodical of choice.)

But supporting the Iraq war? Priceless. It is going to be the issue that dogs Hillary Clinton from her supposed liberal base. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, TNR, however, is not set for life, win, lose or draw. If its readers don’t get enough anti-war red meat, on a regular basis, it will never overcome their suspicions. Under its new ownership, more than vanity will be required to keep it afloat. Ironically, however, this Beauchamp adventure is more likely to help than hinder its seaworthiness — for there is no more compelling mark of liberal dependability to live and promote “fake but accurate,” is there?

Thus TNR is the Judge Robert Kaufman of journalism. He is the one, as you remember, who sentenced the Rosenbergs to death for their espionage, and spent the ensuing decades on the bench issuing predictably liberal opinions in attempted penance. He never got it, of course, and meanwhile the harm kept on giving. For all its trouble, TNR is not likely to do much better, by itself or by the commonweal.

UPDATE:  The Monkeyfish come home to roost.

The Stout Republican quotes Cindy Sheehan:

The Democrats are the party of slavery and were the party that started every war in the 20th century, except the other Bush debacle. The Federal Reserve, permanent federal income taxes, not one but two World Wars, Japanese concentration camps, and not one but two atom bombs dropped on the innocent citizens of Japan — all brought to us via the Democrats.

Yes…we know this, but nut butter Cindy Sheehan is attracting the ire of Democrats everywhere, because she doesn’t like them anymore. Now she’s a crazy. I assert that she always was a crazy, but as Maureen Dowd said about Miss Sheehan:

“The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.”

So…I suppose that Maureen Down is going to applaud at the sidelines as Sheehan speaks truth to power.

Yes, that will be interesting. I trust this tough question will be asked of all the Dem candidates at the next You Tube debate.