Good Analysis then....

This morning's ABC political note.

"I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services. And it was a speech that detailed to the American people the dangers posed by the Saddam Hussein regime. And my government took the appropriate response to those dangers. And as a result, the world is going to be more secure and more peaceful."

We could spend the rest of The Note parsing that, but our general view is that if you read us regularly, you are probably the type of person who can parse it yourself.

The Niger story has been around (for what seems like) forever, but started to build to a hotter political boil after the Joseph Wilson op-ed over the weekend.

Yesterday, the moon and stars alligned, and in short order we had:

(1) the Democratic National Committee trying to raise money on the web AND get some free/unearned media for a hard-hitting video press release on Niger that they emailed to many many people;

(2) Howard Dean putting out a statement suggesting that anyone who lied should resign from the administration;

(3) John Kerry sauntering into the Senate electronic media gallery to make a stong (The Kerry campaign loves that word … ) argument criticizing the president's handling of post-war Iraq; and

(4) RNC Chairman-in-Waiting Ed Gillespie putting out a boffo statement we like so much that we produce it here in full:

"Democrats are tripping over themselves to get to the left of Howard Dean when it comes to Iraq in order to appeal to the anti-war activists in their party, but nothing changes the fact that the international community was in universal agreement that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and he was willing to use them before. What is their policy when it comes to handling evidence that a dictator with a history of using weapons of mass destruction against his own people is developing more? Their politics may appeal to their anti-war base, but their lack of policy won't make our country more secure."

We printed Eddie's money statement in toto because it is a classic of the genre, but also because this cycle's press coverage is by any objective standard tilted completely towards the Democrat(ic) point of view.

Tilted completely toward the Democrat(ic) point of view! Because of my high blood pressure I decided for health reasons to stop reading there. I'll try to get to the rest this afternoon.