DRUDGE 1, SID 0

I must be the only person alive who’s a friend of both Matt Drudge and Sid Blumenthal. (That may end when I post this item). But I have to say that, however awful Matt’s mistake in making unfounded allegations about Sid several years ago, he corrected them swiftly, apologized, and did all he could do to rectify the damage. Sid’s subsequent lawsuit was therefore nothing but over-kill and intimidation – backed by the Clinton White House and its many loathsome cronies. When Sid started deposing journalist after journalist in a surreal paranoid fantasy, intimidation became lunacy. He did the wrong thing in getting in, but the right thing in getting out. It seems to me that his settlement of the lawsuit is a clear vindication for Matt – and good news for everyone else trying to forge good, risk-taking journalism on the web. Mistakes, which we all make, should be broadcast and corrected swiftly and openly. The human beings who make them should not be hounded through the courts, when they have done all they can to correct the error. When the person doing the hounding is a journalist himself, he owes the profession something of an apology.