Oh, Please, Please, Please!!!

Mary of Freedom Eden takes time from her usual TV talk and to give us this interesting premise:

Belling noted that the Republicans need to find a truly viable candidate to challenge Feingold. He said that he can't run because he just signed a contract. Sure. However, he did toss out the idea that WTMJ's Charlie Sykes should run.

Belling said Sykes has great name recognition. He has intellectual weight, thanks to the books he's written. Belling wasn't being flip about Sykes running. He was being completely serious. I think.

It's not going to happen, but I'd vote for Sykes.

That would be like shooting fish in a barrel, but it would also be a heckuva lotta fun.

McFly And The "No-Snitch" Policy

Most of the right wing bloggers, when publicly discussing l'Affaire de McFly, if they choose to discuss it at all, are either willing to throw McBride under the bus, or are just saying "to err is human."

However, there are a small number of people that are going to bat to defend McFly, especially the Mc part of it. Their approach appears to be two-fold.

One is to attack the messenger. Mary from Freedom Eden, who is even more obsessed with the story that the average Whallah follower/reader/author. She really lays into Dan Bice, who broke the story, in this post. She starts out like this:

I get the feeling Dan Bice likes the spotlight. It's heady stuff. In the past two days, he's made TV appearances, given radio interveiws[sic], received lots of reaction and feedback from the public.

It seems he enjoys being a star reporter, sort of like a composite of Woodward and Bernstein.

Naturally, Bice continues to milk the story he chose to spill, the affair between Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn and Jessica McBride.

And then she just keeps trying to belittle Bice in any way she can think of.

The same author wrote another post which highlights the rising "no-snitch policy":

Speaking of ethics, one aspect of this story that's not receiving appropriate attention is the anonymous source, the one with access to the smoking gun communications between Flynn and McBride.

[...]

I want to know how someone gets their hands on such personal communications.

I question if it was done legally. Does Bice know?

I want to know why this anonymous source would choose to take that information to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Certainly, people are aware of less than flattering happenings in the lives of public figures and they don't run to the media with the details.

I want to know who wanted to trash Ed Flynn and Jessica McBride. Was someone out to damage Paul Bucher?

Are these politically motivated dirty tricks?

Bice claims he has no clue about his source. I wonder if he's at all curious.

Jay Bullock encountered the same phenomenon with Dad29. He expounds much better than I could here:

This is dumb for two reasons: One, it suggests that somehow evidence of a transgression (and a Class E felony!) is somehow more important than the transgression itself.

Two, and this is the key, the statement perfectly encapsulates everything that went wrong with the treatment of (alleged) lawbreaking by the Bush administration in the last decade. Wiretaps being done without a warrant in violation of the law? Who told you that? CIA black sites scattered across Eastern Europe? Let's get that reporter's notes! There are photographs out there showing detainee abuse? Stop their release!

Don't worry, gentle readers, we won't let such inane attempts of diversion distract us from our mission.