Lies, Lies and More Lies

Want to be a journalist? Apparently all you have to do is make shit up.

Alexis Debat, a consultant to ABC News and, until yesterday, a senior fellow at the Nixon Center (counterterrorism is his specialty), has been found to have fabricated a whole host of interviews he claimed to have done with esteemed public figures like Bill Clinton, Kofi Annan, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and Alan Greenspan. Though his veracity was challenged before, none of the publications printing his work seemed to take it too seriously until Barack Obama came out swinging over a faked interview that ran in the esteemed French mag, Politique Internationale.

Looks like Jason Blair's bench is getting deeper by the minute.

The High Cost of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

Thanks to Maureen Dowd's column of yesterday, I was alerted to an op-ed piece that ran in the Times last Friday, written by one Stephen Benjamin. Benjamin was formerly a petty officer in the United States Navy, serving as an Arabic translation specialist--a post in which, in case you hadn't heard, our military is severely understaffed.

About a year ago, Benjamin was expelled from service under the "Don't ask, Don't tell" rule, which bars gays from serving openly in the military. His op-ed portrays as well as any other I've ever read just how hypocritical and dangerous the policy is, and why, for all of our safety, we would do well to be rid of it.

And this one we can't even blame on the Republicans alone. Dammit, Bill...