The Wall Street Journal Discovers Election Fraud

Of course, this term only applies when Republicans lose. As John Fund opines in the increasingly non-reality-based OpinionJournal:

The new media--talk radio, bloggers and independent watchdog groups--have followed up their success in exposing Dan Rather's use of phony memos by showcasing another scandal: Washington state's bizarre race for governor, which features a vote count so close and compromised it allows Florida to retire the crown for electoral incompetence.

He then goes on to note...

In Washington state, the errors by election officials have been compared to the antics of Inspector Clouseau, only clumsier. At least 1,200 more votes were counted in Seattle's King County than the number of individual voters who can be accounted for. Other counties saw similar, albeit smaller, excess vote totals. More than 300 military personnel who were sent their absentee ballots too late to return them have signed affidavits saying they intended to vote for Mr. Rossi. Some 1 out of 20 ballots in King County that officials felt were marked unclearly were "enhanced" with Wite-Out or pens so that some had their original markings obliterated.

Gee, does any of this sound eerily familiar? But when progressive critics raise this hew and cry, we're all conspiracy theorists, sore losers, and tinfoil-hat paranoids. When the right wing flaps its jaws, they're Noble Bloggers Out to Save the Nation.

Here's what Fund had to say in a speech shortly after the November election in a story posted by Cybercast News Service:

John Fund, the author of "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy" and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, told CNSNews.com that "you can always tell a losing party by the number of people in the fever swamps who come up with elaborate conspiracy theories to explain the fact that the real problem is they lost an election."

"The real story is what do we need do to clean up the system to make it both easier to vote and harder to cheat -- we don't have that discussion right now. What we have are Internet conspiracy theorists," Fund added. His remarks followed a speech at The Federalist Society's 2004 National Lawyers Convention in Washington, D.C.

I didn't think it was possible to be more disgusted with the media. I was wrong.