ERIC MULLER continues his unrelenting critique of Michelle Malkin. Frankly, I might find Muller more persuasive if he didn’t rely so heavily on David Neiwert, whose tendency to hurl unsubstantiated charges of racism at anyone he doesn’t like has cost him rather a lot of credibility in my eyes.

UPDATE: Malkin responds!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Neiwert takes exception to this post and says that if I can find an unsubstantiated accusation of racism on his blog he’ll apologize. Well, there’s this one: ” the root of all evil in Reynoldsland are the twin threads of dark-skinned Muslims and left-wing antiwar liberals.”

Leaving aside the subject-verb disagreement, Neiwert’s use of “dark-skinned” seems like an imputation of racism to me. He’s smart enough to know that Muslims aren’t all dark-skinned, and that I don’t exactly obsess over skin color, or say negative things about Islam, beyond the wacky terror-inspiring varieties (see, for example, this post). Nor does he offer any substantiation in terms of links, or examples that might buttress his case. It’s a cheap shot, and he repeats it in this interview. That’s why I don’t find him especially credible when he’s charging people with racism.

But I await the promised apology.

In a related development (unsubstantiated charges) Oliver Willis says that Ed Cone caught me in a “fabrication” — when the real problem is that Ed didn’t scroll down to see the update. Ed’s noted that, but Oliver hasn’t. David Brock isn’t getting his money’s worth there.

Yeah, I usually ignore this kind of stuff. But “usually” isn’t “always.”

MORE: Neiwert emails that he doesn’t think that’s an accusation of racism, and he’s not apologizing. Sure seems like one to me.

APOLOGY UPDATE: No, not to Neiwert, who doesn’t deserve it in the least, but to Eric Muller, who got caught in the crossfire. I didn’t mean by the above that I don’t trust Muller — I think he’s careful and accurate and trustworthy, though I confess that I haven’t followed the latter stages of the ongoing Muller/Malkin debate very closely. But I meant my remarks as criticism of Neiwert, rather than Muller, and I didn’t phrase them properly to reflect that. My apologies.

SIMON RIGHTLY CHASTISES ME for not paying proper attention to the Jakarta bombing. I’ve been ill, and distracted, but I should’ve thrown some links. He’s got a roundup, though. Where I drop the ball, the blogosphere picks it up!

Also check out this post for a roundup of asian blogs — something I’ve tried to pay attention to in the past, but have neglected recently.

MATTHEW YGLESIAS DEFLATES assault-weapon silliness.

UPDATE: When Tim Lambert agrees with John Lott, you know that the assault weapons ban was a silly law. Funny that so many in the media act like it matters. And it’s not just leftist bias — I heard a Fox News Radio story breathlessly declare that “some of the world’s heaviest military weapons” would now be legal for civilians to own. Sheesh.

JOHN FUND thinks that CBS will come to regret Jonathan Klein’s unfortunate pajamas remark. But I don’t! It’s provided a weekend of amusement for the blogosphere. Fund hits the nail on the head:

A defensive Dan Rather went on the air Friday to complain of what he called a “counterattack” from “partisan political operatives.” In reality, traditional journalism now has a new set of watchdogs in the “blogosphere.” In the words of blogger Mickey Kaus, they can trade information and publicize it “fast enough to have real-world consequences.” Sure, blogs can be transmission belts for errors, vicious gossip and last-minute disinformation efforts. But they can also correct themselves almost instantaneously–in sharp contrast with CBS’s stonewalling.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Heh: “Welcome to Jammie Nation, where Dan Ra^ther gets his ass kicked by guys in pajamas.” Which just makes the whole thing more embarrassing for him, really.

WILLIAM SAFIRE IS ALL OVER DAN RATHER:

Alert bloggers who knew the difference between the product of old typewriters and new word processors immediately suspected a hoax: the “documents” presented by CBS News suggesting preferential treatment in Lt. George W. Bush’s National Guard service have all the earmarks of forgeries. . . .

It may be that CBS is the victim of a whopping journalistic hoax, besmearing a president to bring him down. What should a responsible news organization do?

To shut up sources and impugn the motives of serious critics – from opinionated bloggers to straight journalists – demeans the Murrow tradition. Nor is any angry demand that others prove them wrong acceptable, especially when no original documents are available to prove anything. . . .

Hey, Dan: On this, recognize the preponderance of doubt. Call for a panel of old CBS hands and independent editors to re-examine sources and papers. Courage.

“Preponderance of doubt.” I like that.

UPDATE: USA Today has had its own experts look at the documents, and it looks like a “preponderance of doubt” there, too.

I spoke to a big-paper reporter who interviewed me about this story over the weekend. He was amazed that CBS went with the story given the obvious flaws with the documents. And that’s right. I suppose it’s still barely possible that they might be genuine — but it was gravely and recklessly irresponsible for CBS to insist on the documents’ genuineness when there were so many reasons for doubt, and when CBS, by all appearances, had made no real effort to resolve those questions. I mean, why didn’t they get somebody like this to look at the documents?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tim Blair wonders why they didn’t get one of those “editor” people to look at Amanda Ripley’s piece in Time.

Sadly, they probably did. They should have asked Professor Bainbridge to provide some adult supervision. Send those guys some pajamas!

MORE: Here’s an observation from Terry Oglesby that only someone who has used a typewriter will appreciate: the documents are bogus because they show no strikeovers or corrections, even though they were memos to the file. Oglesby writes: “No corrections–erasures, overstrikes, fluid, tape–on that CYA memo. I’m not a document expert, but I have used a typewriter before. Sorry, Mr. Rather, but no matter what your host of ‘experts’ have told you, the memo you keep waving in the air was done on a computer.”

Though as far as we can tell, Rather’s “host” of experts consists of one handwriting analyst.

LAST WEEK, I PRAISED THE SIMS. This week, Doug Kern takes a dissenting view.