Investigative Reporting

Josh Marshall reminds us once again why bloggers have a use when it comes to the right of Americans to be informed. Keep in mind that the internet and blogging enable us to go back and forth holding the politicians and the media accountable. One of Talking Points Memo new writers, Paul Kiel, quotes the San Diego Union Tribune, a conservative but honest newspaper that doesn't mind going after stories other news outlets ignore. Here's part of Paul's post from Talking Points Memo:

Wilkes convinced Doolittle with $85,000 (from himself, his employees, his lobbyists) in contributions over three years. In return, PerfectWave won Doolittle’s support for $37M in earmarked appropriations. In a Washington Post story on this last week, Doolittle responded with a statement that "he frequently supports 'well deserving projects throughout the state.'" And "his support of PerfectWave Technology ‘was no exception and based completely on the project's merits and the written support of the military.'"

Now, forget for the moment about the "project’s [alleged] merits" (see the Daily Muck for more on that) – let's focus in for a moment on Doolittle's claim about "written support of the military."

The Post apparently just took Doolittle's word for it. In any case, they didn’t follow up on his claim about having written support from the military. But the San Diego Union-Tribune did.

The Bush, DeLay, Rumsfeld, Cunningham, Rove crowd are good at technical statements that turn out to be lies on close examination. Written support that comes more than two years after funding for a military project does not qualify as legitimate at the time the decision was made.