Jack Abramoff's associates take a shot at yours truly …

The National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) is among the most insidious of the many organs of corporate propaganda posing as "non-partisan' think tanks. According to Mediatransparency, it was formed in the 1980s to support Reagan's military interventions in Central America. In the 1990s, NCPPR got into the business of denying climate change -- ExxonMobil's a big donor. Jack abramoff was an active board member until … uh, recently. Abramoff, you'll remember, used the NCPPR to funnel lobbying money through non-profits. They paid for his infamous Scotland golf trip with Tom DeLay. And despite the fact that they're all lily-white right-wingers, they're also behind much of the infrastructure of the "black conservative movement," as I pointed out to their chagrin over a year ago.

They're ideologues who have their answers in advance, and work backwards from there -- the antithesis of public policy analysis.

And they have a blog, written by NCPPR's president, Amy Ridenour, a former bigwig among the College Chickenhawks Republicans and knee-deep in Abramoff's hanky-panky (the WaPo reported: "E-mails suggest Ridenour was well aware that Abramoff viewed her organization as a convenient pass-through").

On it, after a brief introduction by Ridenour, David Hogberg, a "senior policy analyst" (and American Spectator and NRO contributor), takes me to task for a recent post about making Medicare available to all:

Over at AlterNet, Joshua Holland argues that the way to universal coverage - which he inexplicably supports -- is to open Medicare to all of those who want to join, not just those age 65 and older.

Holland's article is so riddled with ignorance that it is going to require more than one blog post to set it straight.