Back in December, the staff here at the shebeen pointed out that The New York Times had a serious source-pollution problem when it came to the ongoing nothingburger flap about Hillary Rodham Clinton's emails, which is itself the ugly stepchild of the nothingburger known as Benghazi, Benghazi!, BENGHAZI! This involved someone who peddled bad information to the Times on the San Bernardino shooters, which followed hard upon the episode in which someone peddled bad information to the Times about how the FBI "has launched a criminal inquiry" into HRC's alleged mishandling of classified material. (That is true now, but it wasn't last July, when the story ran.) It was the opinion hereabouts that whoever these sources were, their intentions were far from honorable, and that it was the responsibility of the reporters to out them in order that the public might better judge the motives of the people investigating a former Secretary of State and the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president.

Alas for us all, it seems to be happening again, this time at another pillar of the journalism establishment. After this bombshell—147 agents! Holy Efrem Zimbalist, Junior!—got thrown across the entire media landscape, the Post dropped a My Bad that everyone may or may not have seen.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that Clinton used two different email addresses, sometimes interchangeably, as secretary of state. She used only hdr22@clintonemail.com as secretary of state. Also, an earlier version of this article reported that 147 FBI agents had been detailed to the investigation, according to a lawmaker briefed by FBI Director James B. Comey. Two U.S. law enforcement officials have since told The Washington Post that figure is too high. The FBI will not provide an exact figure, but the officials say the number of FBI personnel involved is fewer than 50.

(Ari Melber of MSNBC has a source that says it might be as few as 12. Obviously, this is the Rosenbergs all over again.)

Look, folks. That "lawmaker briefed by FBI director James Comey" is obviously a ratfcker with an agenda that has nothing to do with anything except political sabotage. That, by the way, is a helluva story.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io