That doesn’t even take into account the furious spinning over one short e-mail purported to be from Gilliard, one whose sentiments Gilliard acknowledged having, and one whose sentiments were identical to the sentiments Glenn expressed himself in his own much longer e-mail, which he has acknowledged is accurate – namely, that ignoring the story in the hopes it would go away probably wouldn’t work.

When you add to that the fact that Glenn can hyperventilate to Mark about his integrity, while at the same time casually calling this TNR writer a “new Stephen Glass,” and railing about one-party rule and previously saying that those who support the president simply can’t be doing so in good faith, I’m left thinking Mark’s main failing is in being too considerate of a guy who has shown no compunction about throwing elbows and then screaming “Foul!” when someone brushes against him.

And of course, none of this gets into the real heart of the story, namely that Kos, the champion of the people-power movement, has a long habit of supporting whoever pays his buddy. Even without the pump-and-dump stock fraud, that would still be disturbing, or at least it should be, to the true believers that Kos claims to support. I can’t help but think that if people have discovered starving this story of oxygen is not an option, misdirecting the hell out of it clearly is.

When you list all the logical possibilities, including the most sensational one, that’s not at all the same thing as endorsing the most sensational possibility.

And the “lie” that Glenn was referring to was Zengerle’s attribution of the email to three sources, not his making the email up.

Zengerle owes his readers and The New Republic an explanation, and soon. Did Zengerle really have three sources for these e-mails (as he claimed), or did he simply receive things from an anonymous source and then blindly rely on the veracity of what he was sent, only to claim that it was from “three sources” in order (a la Jason Leopold) to enhance the credibility of his claims? Or, a la Stephen Glass, did Zengerle simply fabricate e-mails in order to bolster his “story”?

It is one thing for a journalist to make a mistake; like everyone, they all do that at some point. But to expressly lie about your sources in order to make your assertions seem more substantial is as serious a journalistic breach as can be committed. Is this what Zengerle did?

In any event, Glenn got what he wanted, I would think; Zengerle apologized for not properly sourcing the email…hardly the journalistic mortal sin that Glenn claims, but nevertheless…

Mark, just to clear the record, Glenn never accused Zengerle of fabricating the email. Reread his original post if you don’t believe me. Yes, he suggested that the email was fabricated, but not by Zengerle. He suggested that Zengerle passed off a fake email without adequately authenticating it. That’s apparently exactly what happened.