Shades of Rathergate:

The eight memos — all labeled “secret” or “confidential” — were first obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.

Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.

I've heard that one before; I wonder if he'll also claim he found them in a wastebasket?

I admit I'm caught off-guard by this development: I honestly hadn't expected another hoax from the media this month. I fear if I ratchet my media-distrust filter any higher to compensate, I'll end up like the moonbats on the left who think OBL was made up by the "Neocons" and filmed in a Hollywood studio.

Sadly, that kind of paranoia seems to be actually appropriate to contemporary mainstream media. I guess it's much easier to accumulate power if you're willing to just make things up on the way there. It certainly isn't a tactic most ordinary people typically expect.

If this keeps up, I'm going to have to change that "Media Bias" category to a more extreme-sounding "Media Lies" -- bias is subtle spin; what we've been seeing is nothing short of repeated wholesale fabrication.