NamedPipe

Since this topic made the top of memeorandum today, I’ll add my two cents worth with two points I haven’t seen elsewhere.

• Many people have been critical of Mike Allen of the Washington Post for claiming the memo was distributed to Republicans. People have said that no Republican saw the memo. But Tom Harkin, said today:
  

  “Evidently there were copies of this all over the place. Republicans had it on the floor. Others had it. It wasn’t just one copy that was there.”

  So, it seems Mike Allen may not have made a mistake if what Harkin said was true. Perhaps they are both wrong.

• Bloggers congratulated themselves for keeping this story alive, and claiming the press was not doing it’s job by finding the true source of the memo. I hate to break it to you, but Brian Darling could have stepped forward at any time in the last 2 weeks and said he wrote the memo and that it should not have been distributed to anyone, it was an accident. He could have even contacted Mike Allen to tell him this and the whole issue might have been over.

While it’s easy to apply the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle here, thinking the press got too close thus influenced the outcome. But that excludes that Brian Darling did write the memo. I don’t think Brian Darling had Mike Allen sitting next to him telling him what to write so Allen could file a good story with his editors. Darling could have owned up to this at any time.

UPDATE: Along the same lines, Harkin could have owned up to where he got the memo at any time. Or gave it back to Martinez telling him he must have given him the paper by accident.