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The more links you post, the harder it is to keep them all straight.

Nov 27, 2007
By .
Politics & Current Events

Instapundit, the law professor who has no time to teach, posts this uninformative link:

JOURNALISTIC MALPRACTICE at The Christian Science Monitor. They're usually better than that.

I quote in full. The link in question leads to another blogger discussing allegations that Mitt Romney, who has about as much chance of winning the Republican nomination as Ron Paul, recently told a fundraiser audience that he wouldn't allow a Muslim to serve in his cabinet. If true, that's an odd statement coming from a man whose religion has been mentioned by some as a disqualifying factor.

The source for the allegation was one Mansoor Ijaz, apparently a big fundraiser for various Democratic candidates who happened to attend a Romney event. As I read this, I wondered: Mansoor Ijaz? Where have I heard that name before?

Oh, that Mansoor Ijaz! The same Mansoor who's been cited for years as a source for the rumor that Bill Clinton turned down an offer of extradition for Bin Laden from Sudan, a rumor that Instapndit used to hawk relentlessly, and who's been cited for years by similarly inclined bloggers for the assertion that the September 11 murders occurred because of intelligence failures under the Clinton administration.

I try to limit myself to a post here every other day, and so far I've been pretty successful. Even so, if I ever get to the point where I can post dozens of times a day, I promise you this: I will never, ever, post so many times that I forget the name Mansoor Ijaz, and what it means.

Last 5 posts by Patrick

3 Comments
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3 Comments

  1. Ken  •  Nov 27, 2007 @4:29 pm

    Glenn Reynolds has mastered the art of maintaining plausible deniability through the miracle of minimal added content. No doubt he'd say that there is no contradiction here because all he did was link to the article, and that his banal link-statement cannot be taken as an endorsement.

    As to the substance, I'm suspicious of Ijaz's description of Romney's statement because (1) Ijaz was the only witness and (2) it contradicts Romney's earlier perfectly sensible statements that he wouldn't pick cabinet members based on group identity. I carry no water for Romney, and I suppose it could have been a brain fart on his part, but I'd like to see it sourced better.

  2. Patrick  •  Nov 27, 2007 @4:36 pm

    Oh I'm utterly suspicious of the alleged statement, because Romney's a frickin' genius, far too smart, and too controlled, to say something so stupid. I also suspect, for obvious reasons you've pointed out, that he does understand what it means to be judged on the basis of belonging to an unpopular religion. He could have become a Mormon for Jesus ages ago.

    As to Instapundit, I'm mildly astonished that he didn't make the connection and left it with such a paltry blurb. Ijaz reminds me in some ways of Chalabi before the war, always popping up at the oddest times and with the oddest people. But he's a Chalabi for the left, so I'm surprised Reynolds didn't go for it,

  3. David  •  Nov 27, 2007 @8:46 pm

    I'm a bit puzzled. The proposition in play is that Instapundit didn't connect Ijaz as Democratic moneyman (so described in the Instapundit-linked source, Captain's Quarters) to Ijaz as critic of Clinton's Usamalacrity.

    The puzzle is this: Captain's Quarters links to Ijaz's article in CSMonitor, where Ijaz himself refers to the Sudan/Clinton matter. So in what sense is that detail hidden or forgotten, requiring research and a link to a 2002 WaPo article?

    Captain's Quarters can hardly be accused of obscuring this detail by linking to an article where Ijaz emphasizes this detail.