Markos has already commented on the ridiculousness that's supposed to pass for a Time correction on the story Joe Klein has been forced to update five times.

(Five times!)

But I want to raise another point or two on this.

The first is that this is a perfect illustration of the chronic inability of the traditional media to play this game seriously, a point raised earlier today by SusanG, in her review of Ron Brownstein's book.

Here's the what Time was willing to squeeze out, once they were caught with their pants down:

In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets. Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don't.

Now, before we even get into the rest of this, let's look at what Joe Klein has said about his article:

Democrats say that I was wrong to report that the bill includes a FISA court review of individual foreign terrorist targets who might communicate with U.S. persons, although it does include an annual "basket" review of procedures used by U.S. intelligence agencies to target foreign suspects. The Republican Committee staff disagrees and says my reporting is correct. I have to side with the Democrats.

Bam!

STFU, Time editors.

Why, at the very, rock-bottom minimum, does this "correction" not say:

"Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don't. And upon reflection, neither does Joe Klein."?

I mean, it's true, right? And accurate. And, you know, kind of informative.

But Time won't say it. Even though Joe Klein himself already has.

You tell me why Time won't stand by its own writers now, and prefers to try to stick it to the Democrats by pretending there's a valid he-said/she-said storyline here.

No, better yet, don't you tell me. Why doesn't Time tell all of us?

Yes, once again the traditional media goes out of its way to find "balance," even if they have to make it up, which is just what SusanG told us earlier today was a chronic problem for the media generally, and a trap that Brownstein falls into in particular.

No, folks, Republicans do not believe this bill can be interpreted this way. They are merely willing to say that they do, so that it will be repeated by Very Serious People like Joe Klein, who isn't even one of the Very Serious People who believe Republicans very often to begin with. So you just know it'll get worse when it gets into the hands of the conscious shills and water carriers. That's just what a spin like this is designed to do. Klein helped them do it, but had the presence of mind at least to back away from it with sufficient pummeling. No such luck with the Very Serious Editors of Time magazine.

But no, Republicans do not believe this. They are saying it so that reporters will have to print it, 1) because it offers them their precious "equivalence," and; 2) because you can't prove someone doesn't believe something if they're willing to say they do.

How do we know they don't really believe this? Because seven years' experience has shown us how Republicans really believe that this and every other law on the books can be interpreted as the president prefers, or even be ignored outright by the president if he says "national security" demands it.

There is no way on God's green Earth that George W. Bush would obey this law anyway, much less interpret it the way Republicans want reporters to believe that they believe Democrats mean for it to be interpreted. Why would he? If there's any reason at all that he would, it would be to game an outcome so that some poor suckers somewhere could be endangered or killed (or just have their endangerment or deaths lied about) so that he could blame Democrats for it. The previously existing FISA law was perfectly clear, but restrictive, so he demanded a change. But in the meantime, you don't think he was obeying it, do you? Of course not. And he has admitted as much, because Dick Cheney and his Svengali, David Addington, have convinced him -- insofar as you can convince the congenitally incurious -- that the presidency has "inherent powers" to make the illegal legal with the snap of the presidential fingers.

No, Republicans do not believe the law can be interpreted this way, nor would they care if it was. And their president certainly won't be handicapping himself with such an interpretation ever, at any point, from drafting to enactment to "enforcement."

And that's the story -- and a pretty damned big one at that, I'd say -- that Time's readers and the nation at large are missing out on, all for the sake of the egos of the petty tyrants at Time, who'd rather stick it to some bloggers than tell the country their Constitution is going down the toilet.