HEY, THIS IS KIND OF COOL: If you go to the Popular Mechanics 9/11 rumor-debunking article that I mentioned earlier, it says: “Welcome InstaPundit, Austin Bay, and Tim Blair readers.”

Reader Clay Ranck, who pointed this out to me, observes: “I’ve seen these things a million times on blogs, but I don’t recall ever seeing one on a ‘mainstream media’ article.” I don’t, either.

INCONSISTENT STANDARDS? Reader James Lennon sends this:

I read your comments about the Gannon story, and I couldn’t agree more- bringing up personal issues is sooo sleazy… the link below, though, is really interesting because it details on myriad occassions when you, Glenn Reynolds, did exactly that. Which I thought you should review before you poo poo the liberal bloggers WHO ARE BRINGING DOWN A MAN WHO COMMITTED TREASON BY OUTING PLAME (And you think anti-war liberals hate America… This gy outed an undercover CIA agent for political retirbution. If Wolf Blitzer did that you’d call it treason, you hack- so let’s call a spade a spade).

Here’s a quick fact check regarding your history. SINCE THE CONSERVATIVE BLOGOSPHERE IS SO AMAZING AT SELF-CORRECTING, I BREATHLESSLY AWAIT YOUR RETRACTIONS…

My, how swift these lefty guys are to level charges of treason. However, the claim that Gannon “outed” Plame — which I think is what he’s referring to — seems rather weak, as Tom Maguire has noted in this post.

Lennon also sends a link to this blog post, which collects some InstaPundit references to the Kerry intern scandal by way of attempting to demonstrate my hypocrisy. Of course, for these to be comparable, several things would have to be true. First, you’d have to believe that anyone who asks a question in a White House press conference is opening himself up to the kind of scrutiny that Presidential candidates face. I doubt that the press corps believes that, nor do I. (Ironically, some of my links are to Democratic speculation that other Democrats were behind the intern scandal story,and to expressions of glee at it on the Dean and Edwards campaign blogs — but follow them all, as there’s nothing there I’m ashamed of, and I think my tone, and substance, is light-years from the lefty Gannon stuff I’ve seen).

Second, you’d have to believe that my references are the equivalent of digging up unpublished dirt and publishing pictures of a man in his underwear while engaging in tacky homophobic remarks, all in the process of writing about an unrelated topic.

Strangely, however, this post of mine is omitted from the list: “MY SO-FAR RATHER UNDERWHELMED TAKE on the Kerry scandal is now up over at GlennReynolds.com. Excerpt: ‘I have to say that, to me, how Kerry would do on the war is a lot more important than what (er, or who) he’s doing in the sack.'” I haven’t noticed a similar take on the Jeff Gannon story from the lefties. Maybe there’s something bigger there — though as I noted the other day, people like David Gergen and Howard Kurtz don’t seem to think so — but so far I haven’t seen it, and stuff like this isn’t doing anything to impress me with the seriousness of the people pushing it.

Neither is the excess capitalization. For a more serious take on these issues, you might want to read this post. Bottom line: “If Jeff Gannon is a hack who shouldn’t have been given press credentials, that can be proven by quoting his questions and questioning his qualifications. What the hell does his personal life have to do with the issue?”

Yeah. Why, that’s kind of like what I said about Kerry . . . .

UPDATE: Actually, it’s worse than that, as the lefty attacks seem to be conflicting with each other. As Mickey Kaus notes: “I’m trying to get up to speed on Gannongate, but I keep getting confused. If ‘Gannon’ did get a leak of classified documents, would that make him more of a fake reporter or more of a real reporter?” Kaus also accuses me of being too “decorous” about Eason Jordan’s personal life. But that’s not the story, so I don’t care.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.

And Ed Morrissey has some worthwhile thoughts.

MORE: Reader Joseph Fulvio emails:

Reading your lefty critic’s faux-outrage over Gannon’s ‘treason’ (in all caps, no less) was a lot like watching hipsters trying to be traditional during the holidays. They can’t quite stifle enough of their post-modern ironic tics to make it real. So, too, with concerns about treason and ‘support-the-troops’ head fakes coming from the Left; too calculated, contrived and, ultimately, phony.

Yeah. It’s not quite like watching Jerry Falwell fulminate about women losing access to abortion, but still . . . .

I’LL BE ON HUGH HEWITT’S SHOW in a few minutes. You can listen live here.

CONGRATULATIONS to Ed Morrissey and his wife after her successful transplant operation. Send them your prayers and good wishes.

EUGENE VOLOKH: The blogosphere isn’t made up of “lynch mobs,” but rather of “persuasion bunches:”

Now I realize that “lynch mob” is figurative, and hyperbole at that. Still, figurative references and analogies (even hyperbolic ones) only make sense to the extent that the analogy is apt — to the extent that the figurative usage, while literally false, reflects a deeper truth.

The trouble is that here the analogy is extremely weak. What’s wrong with lynch mobs? It’s that the mob itself has the power to kill. They could be completely wrong, and entirely unpersuasive to reasonable people or to the rest of the public. Yet by their physical power, they can impose their will without regard to the law.

But bloggers, or critics generally, have power only to the extent that they are persuasive. Jordan’s resignation didn’t come because he was afraid that bloggers will fire him. They can’t fire him. I assume that to the extent the bloggers’ speech led him to resign, it did so by persuading the public that he wasn’t trustworthy.

So Jordan’s critics (bloggers or not) aren’t a lynch mob: If they’re a mob, they’re at most a “persuasion mob.” What’s more, since they’re generally a very small group, they’re really a “persuasion bunch.”

Maybe if a persuasion bunch tries to persuade people by using factual falsehoods, they could be faulted on those grounds (though that too has little to do with lynch mobs). But I’ve seen no evidence that their criticisms were factually unfounded, or that Jordan quit because of any factual errors in the criticisms. (Plus presumably releasing the video of the panel would have been the best way to fight the factual errors.)

We should love persuasion bunches, who operate through peaceful persuasion, while hating lynch mobs, who operate through violence and coercion. What’s more, journalists — to the extent that they love the First Amendment’s premise that broad public debate helps discover the truth, and improve society — ought to love persuasion bunches, too. When the only power you wield is the power to speak, and persuade others through the force of your arguments (and not through the force of your guns, clubs, or fists), that’s just fine. Come to think of it, isn’t that the power that opinion journalists themselves wield?

Why yes, it is.

UPDATE: Read this post by Jay Rosen, which I mentioned on Kudlow earlier, too.

I’M GOING TO BE ON CNBC’S Kudlow & Company (formerly Kudlow & Cramer) today at about 5:45 Eastern. Hugh Hewitt and John Hinderaker are supposed to be there, too, and we’ll be talking about — what else — Eason Jordan.

I’d still like to see the Davos video. So would Rand Simberg, who wonders why we’re not.

UPDATE: Roger Simon, who’s back from the hospital, has thoughts.

IN THE MAIL: The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a little) Craziness and (a lot of) Success in America, by John Gartner. It looks like an interesting thesis: America, a place just crazy enough to work!

SOME VALENTINE’S DAY THOUGHTS ON MARRIAGE:

As we approach the anniversary of Valentine’s own rebellion and denial, shouldn’t the nation that pioneered a popular government of the people, by the people, and for the people” be the one that finally stands to assert the pre-governmental primacy of matrimonial privacy?

It is time to privatize marriage. If the institution is really so sacred, it should lie beyond the withering hands of politicians and policy makers in Washington D.C. There should be no federal or state license that grants validity to love. There should be no state-run office that peers into our bedrooms and honeymoon suites. If the church thinks divorce and homosexuality are problematic, it should initiate the real dialogue to address these problems in-house rather than relying on state-sponsored coercion to affirm doctrinal beliefs. And if tax-codes and guardianships need some classification for couples, let’s revise civil union standards to reflect those needs.

Yes, the creepiest line in the Goodridge case is the one about there being three parties to every marriage — the couple being married, and the state.

POPULAR MECHANICS is debunking popular 9/11 conspiracy myths. (Via Austin Bay).

JEFF JARVIS:

The New York Times media beat reporters got beaten badly on the Eason Jordan story — by [gasp] weblogs and cable news — and so how do they react? By catching up their readers on what they missed? Of course not. They react by lashing out at weblogs.

This morning’s story by Katharine Q. Seelye, Jacques Steinberg, and David F. Gallagher — under the headline, “Bloggers as News Media Trophy Hunters” — is another example of the disdain in which many quarters of The Times — not all — hold citizens’ media.

There’s much more, including an observation that the Times reporters cherry-picked quotes from his blog to give a misleading impression of his views, and an open invitation to the Times’ Bill Keller.

UPDATE: Greg Scoblete offers a response to the “salivating morons” line:

Lovelady and the rest of the CJR-set are taking the wrong lesson from Jordan’s demise. The lesson is that many heads are better than one. Distributed intelligence and distributed research trump presumed authority every time. Arguments from authority are no longer enough. “This is CNN” is no longer sufficient. Now you need facts to back up your assertions (and not made up ones, either). . . .

The nasty, ad-hominem push back from Mr. Lovelady simply demonstrates just how out of step he is. This is the argument of an insular clergy: “you do not govern us, we govern ourselves.”

Well, no longer.

I think that’s why they’re so unhappy. Meanwhile, in response to the charge that blogs are “trophy hunters,” Chuck Simmins emails: “We’ve never seen this sort of behavior from Old Media, now, have we?”

Perhaps we should call it Earl Butz’s revenge . . . . But like most bloggers I would have rather seen the videotape made public than see Eason Jordan resign. CNN apparently felt differently.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Don’t miss Tim Blair’s take on the Times article.

MORE: Ed Morrissey has much more, including — as the result of emails back and forth with CJR’s Steve Lovelady — the conclusion that the “salivating morons” quote doesn’t really reflect Lovelady’s view of the blogosphere. Morrissey also observes: “Read the entire New York Times piece. It tends towards a warning to the blogosphere to take care not to go off half-cocked, and that may not be a bad message.”

That’s a good message for everyone, of course, and it’s a message that Eason Jordan should have heeded, too.

STILL MORE: Tom Maguire looks at who’s missing from the Times story:

In the course of emphasizing that the Eason Jordan lynching was engineered by a right wing mob, the Times somehow drops from this story (a) Howard Kurtz of the WaPo, who offers some relatively real coverage here; Rep. Barney Frank, D, MA, who made a cameo appearance in the audience in the Times’ Saturday story (yes, of course he was on the panel); and Sen. Chris Dodd, D, CT, who has now failed to appear in both of the stories offered by the Times, despite his expressions of outrage and calls for the release of the videotape. What does a Democrat from neighboring Connecticut need to do to break into the Times?

Read the whole thing for many other useful insights.

I CAN’T BE ALL THINGS TO ALL PEOPLE: But with the miracle of the blogosphere, I don’t have to be! If you want economics or business blogging, check out the Carnival of the Capitalists, featuring lots of posts from people addressing a topic that I don’t spend much time on.

EASON JORDAN, MCCARTHYISM, AND PULLING PUNCHES: All discussed over at GlennReynolds.com.

And here’s an amusing summary of the reaction in some quarters:

Steve Lovelady, managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review Daily Web site, blasted Jordan’s Internet critics in an e-mail to New York University professor Jay Rosen’s blog PressThink: “The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail.”

Also on Rosen’s site, reader William Boykin fumed: “Jordan has just been tire-necklaced by a bloodthirsty group of utopian, bible-thumping knuckledraggers that believe themselves to be bloggers but are really just a street gang.” And these unhinged heavy-breathers accuse bloggers of being a lynch mob?

The ad hominem hysterics of Jordan’s defenders stand in stark contrast to the way the vast majority of bloggers approached the search for truth in this matter. Veteran journalist and blogger Jeff Jarvis (buzzmachine.com) got it right when he said on CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday: “We didn’t want his head — most of us didn’t. We wanted the truth.” We’re still waiting.

It was Jordan who tossed out reckless remarks about American troops deliberately targeting journalists. It was bloggers, starting with American businessman and Davos eyewitness Rony Abovitz, who asked that Jordan back up his bombshell assertion with facts.

Demanding facts — the most unforgivable act of all . . . . (Emph. added)

MICKEY KAUS says that I’m too decorous. That’s me! (What’s more, I lack fire. Well, there are plenty of other places you can go if you want less decorum . . . .)

THE PINTO PROPHECY: Reader David Gerstman emails:

Remember this?

Doesn’t it seem prophetic now?

Why, yes, yes it does.