Say What? The John Harris edition

Posted by Lakshmi Chaudhry at 10:26 AM on December 14, 2005.

If you're not already up to speed on the Froomkin saga -- for a saga it has undeniably become -- the details and links are here.

The latest development falls in the realm of pure comedy as political editor John Harris -- the man most unhappy with Froomkin for tainting the Post's White House reporters with his ugly partisanship -- tries to justify his claim that Froomkin's column suffers from a liberal bias. In his interview with Rosen yesterday, Harris couldn't come up with a single shred of evidence of Froomkin's liberal bias other than citing a "conservative blogger" named Patrick Ruffini.

Turns out Ruffini isn't just any old rightwing blogger but the E-campaign director for the RNC. Here's Brad deLong asking Harris to clarify his statement:

Q: Can you give any examples--other than Republican National Committee eCampaign Director Patrick Ruffini --of people who are seriously confused about Dan Froomkin's role at WPNI?

A: I cannot comment for the record because I've promised I won't comment on this.

Q: Did you, when you sent your answers to Jay Rosen yesterday, know that your "grassroots conservative weblogger" Patrickk Ruffini had been a Republican campaign operative in 2004?

A: I cannot comment for the record because I've promised that I won't comment on this.

Q: Did you, when you sent your answers to Jay Rosen yesterday, know that your "grassroots conservative weblogger" Patrick Ruffini was now eCampaign Director for the Republican National Committee?

A: I cannot comment for the record because I've promised that I won't comment on this. [Brad DeLong]

Somewhere in the White House, Scott Mclellan is laughing very, very hard.

Brad has his own theories about Harris' tap-dancing here.

Lakshmi Chaudhry is a senior editor at In These Times, and the former senior editor of AlterNet. You can write to her at lakshmi@alternet.org.