The best defense

Brian Maloney has put our New Haven correspondent’s notes on the Dean’s Lecture Al Franken gave at Yale Law School on Friday evening to good use: “Rolling over.” Franken has been crowing about having caught Taranto up in what Taranto believed was a factual mistake he’d made in referring to President Bush’s poll numbers in an appearance on Hannity & Colmes. In response, Taranto frankly conceded to Franken that he may have been mistaken. (Maloney notes that in his Thursday Best of the Web Today column on OpinionJournal, Taranto returns to the subject with evidence showing that he was “right after all.”)
Maloney chides the Journal for its noncoverage of Air Ameriscam, and further chides Taranto for not counterattacking Franken on events related to Air Ameriscam. Maloney appears to believe that the best defense is a good offense. Taranto appears to believe that two wrongs don’t make a right. I’m an advocate of the Taranto school of corrections. (I also doubt Maloney’s attribution of motives to Taranto’s noncoverage of Air Ameriscam.) I would hope, however, that Franken’s continuing gibes at Taranto even after Taranto has posted the evidence supporting his original claim might give Taranto an occasion to check in on Air Ameriscam and even perhaps to take a look at Al Franken’s own standards as a public personality and controversialist.

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