The Los Angeles Times, with an assist from CBS News, once again earns the prize for most imaginative leftist political rationalization. Alert readers will remember the vicious attempts of the LAT to slander Governor Schwartzenegger as a groper prior to his election in the recall campaign, passed off as public—spirited "journalism."

According the thrust of their story today on Rathergate, it is all Bush's fault, because, you see, when they interviewed spokesman Dan Bartlett, he neither confirmed nor denied the documents. And besides, they were in a rush to get a "scoop." Coordination of allegations about a missed physical examination with Kitty Kelly's book alleging drug use had nothing at all to do with the timing of the story, you see. And the LAT is more interested int he identity of Buckhead, the Freeper who started the exposure of CBS than int he identity of the purveyor of forged documents.

No agenda there at all. Just good journalism. Yeah, that's the ticket.

"If we had gotten back from the White House any kind of red flag, raised eyebrow, anything that said, 'Are you sure about this stuff?' we would have gone back to square one," Josh Howard, the program's executive producer, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview Friday. "The White House said they were authentic, and that carried a lot of weight with us."

Howard is lying, of course. Consider where he works. Nobody at the White House said they were authentic. The WH simply declined to take responsibility for verifying what CBS showed them. That's a big difference. Buried much deeper in the story, we see:

Friday evening, the White House denied that it ever confirmed the documents as authentic. "For them to suggest that [the interview was] an endorsement or ratification of the documents is a terrible stretch of reality," Bartlett said in an interview.

I consider this article a pathetic attempt to peddle a desperate storyline: that CBS is the victim of a hoax hatched in the White House. The extreme dereliction of basic journalistic responsibility at CBS is one thing. The stonewalling, slandering of critics, and continuing failure to admit the truth, while protecting the sources is much, much worse. But now, The Los Angeles Times is willingly jumping aboard a sinking ship, by attempting to blame those who were the objects of a campaign based on forgeries for the campaign against them.

That is despicable. And paranoid.

The LAT is so far off the rails that it is dragging down the waning credibility of the entire legacy media.