I'm told Fox News is supposed to biased towards the right. Perhaps that's true with some of their editorialists, but some of their reports certainly show a bit of left-leaning bias from time to time.

Consider the closing paragraph of this article regarding Kerry's lies regarding Cambodia:

But while the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have been hammering Kerry's record, every living soldier who served under Kerry's command is backing their former commander. Additionally, Vietnam hero Sen. John McCain (search), R-Ariz., has decried the tactics of this group and urged President Bush to distance himself from it; the Bush campaign has refused to do so thus far.

First note: The statement "every living soldier ... is backing their former commander" is factually untrue. I don't know the whole list, but Steve Gardner, who served on the same boat with Kerry, was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, calling Kerry a "self-serving opportunist" and testifying to the effect that Kerry's story about Cambodia and the CIA is a fabrication.

So Fox's reporter is quite wrong here.

Second note: The article ends by putting Bush on the defensive, when Bush is, frankly, as far as we can tell, otherwise uninvolved in this.

It's not clear to me why Bush needs to "distance" himself from this group. They're not radical activists, racists, or bigots. There's nothing wrong with challenging a man's claims about his own heroism. Consider the precedent established by Gary Hart's request that reporters follow him: His sexual mores weren't being attacked first by his opponents. Instead, he himself had offered them up as fair game for challenge. I fail to see the distinction.

Nor is this the kind of sleazy last-minute allegations we sometimes see unleashed in the last two days before the vote (as we saw done to Schwartzenegger in California) -- a smear levelled with no way for the candidate to respond in time. Instead, there's plenty of time for Kerry to discredit these veterans by releasing his records, if indeed they are lying, and come out looking stronger than before.

The appropriate stance for all parties -- except Kerry and the vets, that is -- is to simply look into what these folks are saying, attempt to refute or confirm it, and then let the evidence and court of public opinion sort things out. Bush has got no business saying these people are wrong and liars, nor is it is job to back them publicly.

This is now between the public and Kerry, and a lot of the commentators fail to notice that, just as they did during the "foreign leaders love me" flap, about which I wrote:

Kerry keeps trying to dismiss this ruckus as an evil Bush machination. But it was Kerry who fired the first shot, while campaigning publicly, and it was first printed in the Boston Globe, a newspaper not generally sympathetic to conservative views.

Even if we do merely think of this as a chess game with only two players, Bush and Kerry (and I don't -- that analysis reflects a profound contempt for the intelligence and importance of the American voter), it reflects poorly on a player to blame his opponent for his own uncoerced missteps.

Further, his charges about the current administration's reaction seem spurious and distractionary: I, as a voter, want to know if Kerry's statements are true. Any interest expressed by the current administration doesn't somehow mitigate my legitimate concern, as voter, in this matter.

As it was then, so it is also now.

Lastly, the statement "Bush has refused to do so" sounds wrong to me. Most likely Bush simply hasn't commented. That's different than a "refusal" to distance: If Bush had come out and said: "I will not distance myself from these people" that would be a refusal. The more accurate turn of phrase would thus be "Bush has failed to do so..."

So it's interesting that more damning, and yet strangely less accurate words were chosen.

A major factual error, and an inaccurate turn of phrase, a closing attack on Bush. All three in Kerry's favor.

That's either an interesting set of coincidences or evidence of leftist bias.

If I were a hard-core leftist, though, apparently I would think the very fact this was reported at all would prove a right-leaning bias. The implication being that a balanced or left-leaning publication would never air any charge against a Democratic candidate, no matter how well documented.

Which is, of course, an unintentional admission that leftists are dishonest, censorious, and afraid of letting you have all the facts.