Howard Kurtz covers CNN's use of Democratic plants in the YouTube Republican candidates forum on Wednesday. CNN stands by its misconduct:

[Washington bureau chief David] Bohrman said network staffers, struck by Kerr's "very powerful" question, verified his military service and determined from federal records that he had made no campaign contributions. He said CNN never spoke to Kerr and had Google, which owns YouTube, bring the retired general and about a dozen other questioners to the debate because their videos were likely to be used, although no decision had been made....

Bohrman said he had no problem using questioners who have voiced support for other candidates as long as they are not donors or formally affiliated with any campaign. "We bent over backwards to be fair," he said. "We're not perfect. But we tried extremely hard."

CNN had Google fly Kerr to the forum in St. Petersburg so he could take a follow-up shot at the candidates. Glenn Reynolds provides the definitive comment: "Using Google for plane tickets is okay. But next time, try using them for . . . Googling." This morning Glenn quotes the background and recap by John Fund from OpinionJournal's Political Diary:

Last week, CNN's Anderson Cooper quipped in an interview with Townhall.com that “campaign operatives are people too” and that CNN wasn’t worried if political partisans posed questions at the upcoming GOP debate he was moderating. “We don’t investigate the background of people asking questions (by submitting video clips). It’s not our job,” is how he put it.

But now CNN’s logo has egg splattered all over it, as it scrambles to explain how a co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s veterans’ committee was allowed to ask a video question on gays in the military at Wednesday’s debate and was also flown by the network from California to the debate site in Florida so he could repeat his question to the candidates in person. CNN claims it verified retired Brig. Gen. Ketih Kerr’s military status and checked his campaign contribution records, contradicting Mr. Cooper’s blasé attitudes. Still, they somehow missed his obvious connection to the Hillary campaign which any Google search would have turned up. CNN later airbrushed Mr. Kerr’s question out of its rebroadcast of the debate, indicating that it apparently doesn’t think “campaign operatives” are legitimate questioners at the network’s debates.

Now it appears that an amazing number of partisan figures posed many of the 30 questions at the GOP debate all the while pretending to be CNN’s advertised “undecided voters.” Yasmin from Huntsville, Alabama turns out to be a former intern with the Council on American Islamic Relations, a group highly critical of Republicans. Blogger Michelle Malkin has identified other plants, including declared Obama supporter David Cercone, who asked a question about the pro-gay Log Cabin Republicans. A questioner who asked a hostile question about the pro-life views of GOP candidates turned out to be a diehard John Edwards supporter (and a slobbering online fan of Mr. Cooper). Yet another “plant” was LeeAnn Anderson, an activist with a union that has endorsed Mr. Edwards.

It seems more “plants” are being uprooted with each passing day. Almost a third of the questioners seem to have some ties to Democratic causes or candidates. Another questioner worked with Democratic Senator Dick Durbin’s staff. A former intern with Democratic Rep. Jane Harman asked a question about farm subsidies. A questioner who purported to be a Ron Paul supporter turns out to be a Bill Richardson volunteer. David McMillan, a TV writer from Los Angeles, turns out to have several paens to John Edwards on his YouTube page and has attended Barack Obama fundraisers.

Given CNN’s professed goal to have “ordinary Americans” ask questions at their GOP debate, how likely is that it was purely by accident that so many of the videos CNN selected for use were not just from partisans, but people actively hostile to the GOP’s messages and candidates?

Michelle Malkin dubs CNN's stage management of the event its "don't ask, don't tell policy." CNN's obtuse response to the fiasco it made of the event is as galling as the event itself. CNN has disgraced itself and it is time for management responsible for the fiasco to go.

PAUL demurs: I watched the debate last night and frankly didn't have a serious problem with CNN except with respect to Gen. Kerr. The fact that a questioner once interned for Rep. Harman or for CAIR seems immaterial. The questions reflected a cross section of points of view, some liberal and some conservative, and it was helpful for Republican voters to see how the candidates dealt with them (I thought they did well).

SCOTT adds: The CNN/YouTube Republican candidates forum was an intraparty debate geared to help potential Republican voters or caucus goers make up their minds among the Republican presidential candidates. Through negligence or malfeasance, CNN allowed numerous interrogators who support Democratic presidential candidates or left-wing causes -- Clinton, Richardson, Obama, Edwards, the unions, and CAIR -- to appear in the guise of undecided Republican or independent voters. The Republican candidates did well. CNN wittingly or unwittingly perpetrated a fraud.

PAUL adds: I guess it depends on what representations CNN made about who would be allowed to ask questions. I don't recall any, nor do I see how CNN could have vouched for the political allegiance of the questioners, but then I didn't pay much attention to the debate before hand. I figured there would be unfriendly questions, just as there are when Chris Matthews formulates them, and I think it's healthy that there were.

I didn't feel defrauded when "Journey" and Yasmin from Huntsville asked their questions. It was plain that they were liberals and their prior internships (if any) and their preferences among Democratic contenders were a matter of indifference to me. But, again, if CNN promised that no leftists or supporters of Democratic candidates would ask questions, then CNN broke that promise.

In general, though, I'd rather leave post-debate whining to the Democrats except when Republicans truly are victimized. That wasn't the case on Wednesday night, and we'd be in sad shape if questions by the likes of Journey and Yasmin could victimize serious Republican candidates for president.

JOHN weighs in: I wasn't able to watch the debate, so my thoughts may not be worth much, but I can see merit on both sides. What strikes me most is that we can hardly imagine a world in which the deck isn't stacked against conservatives. Is there any network that would put on a Democratic Presidential debate and load up the audience with conservatives asking about why our taxes are so high, what they propose to do about government waste, whether the Democratic candidates advocate partial-birth abortion, why they think judges should manufacture "rights," and so on. CNN's debate may not have been much worse than the norm, but that seems to me to identify the problem pretty clearly.

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