Markos appeared on "Reliable Sources," today and explained the impact bloggers are having in politics today. He also talked about the Republican nois
March 25, 2006

Markos appeared on "Reliable Sources," today and explained the impact bloggers are having in politics today. He also talked about the Republican noise machine and James Brady's lack of googling capabilities regarding the hiring of Ben at the WashingtonPost's blog.

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transcript

KURTZ: Washingtonpost.com this week hired a conservative blogger, as you know, Ben Domenech. He quit three days later after your site and other liberal sites not only criticized his hiring, but found numerous instances of plagiarism going back to when he was on a college paper. But you criticized his hiring even before some of that came out. Why?

MOULITSAS: Well, there was two things that we saw. And we're putting this all on Jim Brady, who is the -- who runs...

MOULITSAS: Right. One, they claim that the hire was to balance out a liberal blogger already writing on washingtonpost.com. This liberal blogger does not exist. There is a journalist who has been very critical of the administration who is somehow being accused of being a liberal blogger. He's just very critical of this administration.

MOULITSAS: ... that's fine. Then have a liberal blogger, have a conservative blogger, activist partisan liberal and activist partisan conservative blogger. That would have been fine. But what we saw was that not only did Jim Brady not understand the nature of partisanship online, but he doesn't know how to use Google. He runs washingtonpost.com, couldn't simply Google Domenech's previous writings and realize that the guy was a serial plagiarist.

The guy has no clue how the Internet works and he runs "The Washington Post" online operations. It's startling.

KURTZ: Well, I think no clue is a little harsh. And also, to go back to somebody's college newspaper writings to find out they did plagiarize is not usually part of a typical background check when somebody is hired. Let me move...

MOULITSAS: ... it wasn't just a college paper. It was actually "The National Review." He plagiarized work that he did in "The National Review."

KURTZ: Right. He has denied plagiarizing, but there are certainly a lot of instances that you and others have dug up.

Howard, the NRO has responded here and here.

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