mitch_mcconnell_head_shot1.jpgGreg Sargeant spotted a doozy of a piece in the Courier-Journal:

A week ago yesterday, Stewart said, he sent an e-mail to reporters covering the insurance issue, alerting them that “bloggers have done a little digging and turned up that the Dad owns his own business (and the building it’s in), seems to have some commercial rental income and Graeme and a sister go to a private school that, according to its Web site, costs about $20k a year — for each kid — despite the news profiles reporting a family income of only $45k for the Frosts.”

“Could the Dems really have done that bad of a job vetting this family?” Stewart asked in the e-mail.

He explained yesterday that such e-mails are “part of regular conversation with reporters.”…

Hours later, he said, he sent two follow-up e-mails waving reporters off.

“Forgive me if I already told you this, but a blogger that I trust (and who hadn’t written anything on this issue yet) tells me that after spending a lot of time on this, they now believe there’s no story there, that the family is legit,” Stewart wrote in one e-mail, according to the text he provided to The Courier-Journal. “So I’m passing that along to the folks I wrote to this morning. Fair is fair.”

In the other follow-up e-mail, Stewart wrote, according to the text he provided: “I just heard from a blogger I know who did some research. Says it’s not a story, they’re the real deal.”

Stewart said McConnell did not know about any of his e-mails until he told the senator about them sometime around last Thursday.

So, let’s see. We have a senior aide to the Senate Minority Leader fronting out information about a 12 year old and his family that he failed to independently verify in order to smear the family in a political ends justifies the means effort to spike the legislation on SCHIP? Nice operation you have there, Mitch. Classy.

What I’m hearing through the rumor grapevine:  There is some substantial anger among conservative bloggers at being left to hold this festering turd of a strategy for McConnell’s office — so much so that I heard yesterday that a couple of the bigger bloggers are considering actively working against McConnell’s re-election.   This could get interesting.

Although, as C&L points out, and so does SadlyNo! and MediaMatters (H/T brendan) and mahablog, some of them didn’t bother to learn a thing…

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