Egg, Meet Face

For a few weeks now, the wingnutosphere has being going gaga over the GOP "Talking Points" memo released by ABC News in the wake of the Schiavo mess, which claimed the issue was "a great political issue" and all that. Powerline, Rush, and all the rest were shrieking that it was fake, that Democrats wrote it to set up the GOP, that there was no way any Republican possibly wrote that. Their proof seemed to be entirely based on the fact that Schiavo was misspelled in the memo. Because you know, no Republican has ever made a typo.

Well, egg, meet wingnut faces, because a Senator's senior staffer wrote it. And now he's resigned for it.

The legal counsel to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) admitted yesterday that he was the author of a memo citing the political advantage to Republicans of intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, the senator said in an interview last night.

Brian H. Darling, 39, a former lobbyist for the Alexander Strategy Group on gun rights and other issues, offered his resignation and it was immediately accepted, Martinez said.

Martinez, the GOP's Senate point man on the issue, said he earlier had been assured by aides that his office had nothing to do with producing the memo. "I never did an investigation, as such," he said. "I just took it for granted that we wouldn't be that stupid. It was never my intention to in any way politicize this issue."

I don't expect apologies. In fact, the "Blog of the Year" Powerline skirts the issue and muddies the waters, moving on to other quibbles with the WaPo's reporting, ducking their claim that there was "no way a Republican wrote this." But we shouldn't expect apologies from those that have no shame.