"WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's spokesman acknowledged yesterday that he alerted reporters last week to questions bloggers raised about the financial circumstances of a 12-year-old boy Democrats had used to urge passage of an expanded children's health insurance program."
What makes this particular feces-flinging fracas remarkable is that McConnell's office didn't do any fact-checking prior to releasing their "information" to the media. Because a few hours and a little fact-checking later, McConnell's office sent out a couple of follow-up emails:
"Forgive me if I already told you this, but a blogger that I trust (and who hadn't written anything on this issue yet) tells me that after spending a lot of time on this, they now believe there's no story there, that the family is legit," Stewart wrote in one e-mail, according to the text he provided to The Courier-Journal. "So I'm passing that along to the folks I wrote to this morning. Fair is fair."
If fair is fair, then an official apology from the GOP for contributing to the vicious, vindictive and unwarranted sliming of this family would also be fair. But I won't hold my breath.
Oh-oh. Looks like the Rethugs can't blame the screeching smear campaign against the Frost family entirely on Teh Wingnut Bloggers... an aide to GOP senator Mitch McConnell admits that, as suspected, he helped grease the wheels of this train wreck:
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