Decision ‘08

Q: When Is A Feingold Censure Supporter Not A Feingold Censure Supporter?

A: When he’s identified as such by Jane Hamsher!

We revisit a point we raised briefly on 3/16, namely that primarily lefty bloggers mistakenly believe, and keep repeating the claim that Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has already come out in support of Feingold’s censure resolution. Problem is, Hotline hasn’t seen a single press release or news report to back this up. Meanwhile, the Bergen Record today quotes Menendez saying: “I think we’ve got to get the facts first. One of the challenges is getting the oversight necessary so the facts can become public. … If the facts rise to that the president has violated the law, then [censure] may be an appropriate action of the Congress.” Considering there are Dem sens. who have expressed more confidence in the notion that Bush’s actions violated the law but still don’t back censure, Menendez is clearly not one of the chief backers of censure — not yet, at any rate.

The erroneous claim originated with the Jane Hamsher post, where she mentioned (with link citations) that Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) are behind the censure resolution, then added (without a link citation) “and so has Menendez.” But we could find no press releases or news reports to buttress this claim. As we noted yesterday, Blue Jersey expressed some skepticism, but hasn’t addressed it since, and as yet remain the only blog to do so.

Yet numerous bloggers, including some influential ones, still attaching Menendez’s name to the list of censure supporters. Among them: Chris Bowers at MyDD, Blue Mass. Group, Booman Tribune, State of the Day, Preemptive Karma, Dependable Renegade, and probably others Technorati hasn’t picked up.

As Glenn Greenwald asked in Feb. when conservative bloggers kept repeating an erroneous report claiming Cindy Sheehan broke the law when she was removed from the SOTU, “when does the ’self-correcting’ blogosphere start to self-correct?” If it happens, we’ll be sure note that in an update.

Ouch!…