Kerry redux

The other thing I wanted to say about Kerry and the Swift Boat vets was that, with each passing day, it gets harder to justify media silence on this. Even the Kerry campaign has deigned to acknowledge problems in Kerry's account of his alleged journey into Cambodia. But enter "Kerry Cambodia" into Google News and almost nothing turns up outside right-leaning websites, the Washington Times, the Telegraph and the New York Post.

A bit of caution is in order before trashing a candidate's biography. The blogosphere operates in an entirely different mode than the mainstream media: Among bloggers, the value of a story is determined by its volume. The more comments, the more links, the more buzz, the bigger the story. Reporters are restrained by their inability to opine endlessly. They have to find a way to move the story forward before they can write a daily story. And they are held accountable for what they write in ways that rarely exist in the bloggers' world.

But this story, whatever the facts, is taking on a political life of its own. Somebody, somewhere in the national press, had better be doing some hard digging.