VALERIE PLAME BREACHES SECURITY? Tom Maguire notes a rather odd defense of Joe Wilson. (Read this post from Maguire, too.) They seem to be getting more and more strained.

Add that to Peter Beinart’s on-air crackup over Sandy Berger and this stuff isn’t a very auspicious sign for the Democrats.

Perhaps they need to take a hint from this poll.

The Kerry Campaign seems to have figured things out, though — the Joe Wilson “RestoreHonesty.com” website is gone from the Kerry page. And — as Nick Queen notes — searches for Wilson on the Kerry site now turn up nothing.

Wilson’s been airbrushed, which seems like an admission that those who have been defending him were wasting their time. (For those interested in history, here’s a preserved copy. Reportedly, they’ve even cleared the Google cache on this one! [LATER: Google cache found here.])

UPDATE: Rand Simberg observes: “Somehow, I suspect that, even after getting rid of Berger and Wilson, he’s still got a lot of ballast to dump if he wants to win this fall, and he won’t be able to do it without alienating the base. And his judgement (or lack thereof) in embracing them in the first place is one of the reasons that I’ll have to hold my nose and vote for Bush this fall.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Wow, there’s lots of airbrushing going on over at the Kerry site.

But Wilson’s still speaking at the Democratic convention!

And he’s still signed on for the Salon cruise!

You know, for the people who don’t care about credibility. But for those who do, you can always search the web for RestoreHonesty.com and find the truth right at the top.. . . .