Atrios (link bloggered, see 5/12, 6:11 p.m.) has throughly destroyed Barbara Bradley Hagerty's response to the apt criticism of her "Kerry is a bad Catholic" piece on NPR.

One additional point worth mentioning: Hagerty apparently* e-mailed the following response to one person who complained about her story:

"....And I must say that [Atrios] misrepresented one person who works at the Ethics and Public Policy Center as 'right wing' -- the Center is highly respected and follows policy issues from a Catholic, Protestant and Jewish standpoint [sic]."

Presumably, Hagerty means that Atrios "misrepresented the EPPC" rather than its employee, since she claims she never met or saw the EPPC employee before. And note the bogus assumption of Hagerty's claim, namely, that a center which follows policy issues from "a Catholic, Protestant and Jewish standpoint" can't be right-wing.

To me, this is the assertion that destroys Hagerty's credibility. As others have pointed out, EPPC's major funders are wingnut foundations. And the Center's Catholic Studies Project boasts of its ties with right-wing "world-renowned Catholic scholars and writers like William J. Bennett, Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Robert P. George, Mary Ann Glendon, Russell Hittinger, Richard John Neuhaus, and Michael Novak." The Queen of Coincidence's claim the EPPC is not right-wing reveals an intentional bias, and demonstrates that Hagerty is not an objective observer of the groups that she is charged with covering.

You'd also think that if someone identified herself to Hagerty as a "policy analyst," due diligence would require that she confirm the woman wasn't a policy analyst for, say, the Bush Administration or the RNC. Which would lead to the disclosure that the woman was an EPPC employee.

* I do not know for a fact that the e-mail is legitimate, but it certainly reads like the later-published response by Hagerty on the NPR website.