Women of Mass Deception

Who believes MoDo's explanation that she lifted the following sentence from Josh Marshall innocently, via a friend who just happened to quote Josh verbatim, and who Ol' Dowdy then quoted verbatim with attributing the quote to the friend, and with one minor change?

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

As Dowdy works for The New York Times, shouldn't the management there be gearing up for an investigation like the one involving Jayson Blair? A peek into Dowd's computers at her palatial D.C. estate is in order, to search for evidence as to whether Dowd did visit TPM when she was on deadline. The paper should also check Dowd's phone records for urgent calls to the sacrificial friend minutes after she learned she had been nailed. And exactly who is the schmuck who's willing to take a fall for the biggest embarassment to the times since Bill Kristol and Judy Miller fouled the roost?

MoDo has friends in high places at the paper and the Beltway incest crowd, so she'll likely get the same level of protection as Miller got before the stench became unbearable. But I'd love to see Judy back in the Times once more, blasting Dowd in the same way Dowd blasted Judy before it was revealed they're a geriatric version of Patty and Cathy Lane.

Further proof of Dowd's guilty mind is that (with apologies to Josh) the sentence is not one of Josh's finest prose efforts. If Dowd was borrowing the idea from a friend, wouldn't she rewrite the sentence so it sounded better?

I hope someone steps up on this and doesn't let Dowd slide with her bullshit once again.

Update: One suggestion for the friend is Leon Weasel-tee-yay, friend of Scooter Libby. Maybe a stint in rehab will save Dowd.