Just a quick post to some of the buzzing on this story about Congressman Maurice Hinchey’s (D-NY) accusations that Rove masterminded the fake guard documents.

LGF is the big one that appears to have broken it. There is audio and a transcript. Here’s a partial below, provided by Zombie:

Congressman Hinchey: Now, I mean, I have my own beliefs about how that happened: it originated with Karl Rove, in my belief, in the White House. They set that up with those false papers. Why did they do it? They knew that Bush was a draft dodger. They knew that he had run away from his responsibilties in the Air National Guard in Texas, gone out of the state intentionally for a long period of time. They knew that he had no defense for that period in his life. And so what they did was, expecting that that was going to come up, they accentuated it: they produced papers that made it look even worse. And they — and they distributed those out to elements of the media. And it was only — what, like was it CBS? Or whatever, whatever which one Rather works for. They — the people there — they finally bought into it, and they, and they aired it. And when they did, they had ’em. They didn’t care who did it! All they had to do is to get some element of the media to advance that issue. Based upon the false papers that they produced.

Audience Member: Do you have any evidence for that?

Congressman Hinchey: Yes I do. Once they did that —

Audience: [Murmuring]

Congressman Hinchey: …once they did that, then it undermined everything else about Bush’s draft dodging. Once they were able to say, ‘This is false! These papers are not accurate, they’re, they’re, they’re false, they’ve been falsified.’ That had the effect of taking the whole issue away.

Audience Member: So you have evidence that the papers came from the Bush administration?

Congressman Hinchey: No. I — that’s my belief.

Audience Member: OK.

Epoch3 has some commentary.

The gnawing question in my mind is why the average ‘leftie’ is so quick to leap on these theories. Why is it that when such crazieness is fielded that it goes mostly unchallenged? Why is it that no one is ‘processing’ these statements?

I think the problem is that there is considerable intellectual laziness at work here.

Such theories play to the predisposition of the mass of the left who have been fed a steady diet of conspiracy theories for the past four years. Fueled by their hatred, ravings such as the Congressman’s strike a resonant note.

Carpe Bonum thinks the presence of a tape will help Hinchey.

Once the audio makes the mainstream media, I believe there will be a quick retraction and apology, and there will be zero lasting consequences. Alternately, Hinchey will revel in his moonbattiness, his constituents will love it, and he will be set for life.

Wizbang adds:

Liberals keep whining that all these nut cases don’t represent the party… This guy’s a Congressman. The nut cases clearly do represent the party.

INDC is asking for instances of other looney comments from both sides of the aisle:

The Democratic Party’s far left elected officials in the lower chamber are consistent sources of embarrassing soundbites and proposals. From unpunished racist comments, to obsequious letters to Fidel Castro, to routine conspiracy theories, they’ve got all the paranoia and zesty panache of the DKos message boards - and a vote on legislation.

UPDATE: As counterbalance, what about wacky soundbites from Republican elected officials? While I can dig up a treasure trove on the left’s elected officials, off the top of my head, I can only name Trent Lott’s comments regarding Thurmond (a sentiment ironically mirrored by Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd), Santorum’s wild leap of logic from incest and bigamy to homosexuality, and just about anything that’s come out of Alan Keyes’ mouth in the past year.

Powerline says:

It’s easy to write off this kind of thing as limited to the moonbat wing of the Democratic Party, but here’s the thing: when is the last time you heard any Democrat criticize this kind of nonsense, or try to distance himself from it?

Others blogging about this include Way Off Bass, The Truth According to Mark, Right Wing News, Power Pundit, The Gantelope, Ninme and lots of others.

UPDATE (2/22): More ink on this today. Carpe Bonum has an extensive background post on Maurice Hinchey. Michelle Malkin has splashed it. Here’s the audio of his comments, from MSNBC. Confederate Yankee looks all over the regional MSM and can’t find anything. Others blogging today include the Buffalog, Pearly Gates, Logical Meme, and others referencing Tin Foil hats and Kool-Aid.

UPDATE 2: Hinchey ought to buy one of these!