Projection

Ladies and gents, if this blurb doesn't epitomize the American Left circa 2005, nothing does (via NRO Media Blog):

Last week, the Democrat-controlled Maryland general assembly launched a probe into Governor Bob Ehrlich’s hiring and firing practices. Sunday, Washington Post writers Lena Sun and Matthew Mosk tried to give them a hand with this front-page story....

Most irksome is the Post’s repetition of the charge that Ehrlich appointee Joseph Steffen had been “spreading rumors about Mayor Martin O'Malley's personal life” until Steffen was forced to resign when the Post ran a series of stories about him. As [Stephen Spruiell] reported earlier this month, Steffen was almost certainly the victim of a set-up.

In a series of private e-mails through a conservative discussion forum, he was asked again and again by someone using the screen name MD4Bush to comment on the rumors about O’Malley, a potential candidate for governor in 2006. Steffen was reluctant, and at one point actually wrote, “I cannot and will not offer suggestions that may be considered unethical concerning what you should do, campaign-wise. This is especially true concerning [Mayor O’Malley’s] personal life.” Eventually he did comment on the things that MD4Bush was writing. These e-mails were immediately turned over to the Post, which took Steffen’s comments out of context and has used them ever since to insinuate that Ehrlich was running a smear campaign. [emphasis added]

It takes one to know one, right?

It does, indeed.