Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has a deep well of fraternal affection for his good friend the Smallholder. But you know, he is glad that we don’t have to rely on the Smallholder to make judgements concerning matters of justice.

The case in point are two recent posts. In the first, your Maximum Leader expressed his lack of understanding about the whole newsworthiness of the Paul Wolfowitz girlfriend bruhaha. The second is the Smallholder’s post explaining the newsworthiness of the Paul Wolfowitz girlfriend bruhaha.

Apparently, the Smallholder has drawn a conclusion here that your Maximum Leader has not. The Smallholder concludes that because the (now former) head of the World Bank Ethics Committee is calling Wolfowitz a liar; that in fact Wolfowitz is a liar. Your Maximum Leader hasn’t drawn that conclusion yet.

If we are judging this story on the relative truth-telling abilities of the two men (and apparently we are) then we don’t have much of a story right now. Of course, there is a salacious aspect to this story that makes it sort of newsworthy - perhaps. But right now we don’t have anything to base a decision upon other than two conflicting stories. Unlike the on-going US attorney firing story, we don’t have other evidence (yet at least) to support either side. A key point in this dispute seems to be who was told to do what. According to the article the Smallholder linked, the Ethics Committee advised Wolfowitz that his girlfriend needed to be transferred out of his supervision and compensated for the move. According to Wolfowitz he asked someone else to affect this change, and the Ethics Committee advised Wolfowitz to do it himself. If in fact the Ethics Committee acted as Wolfowitz claims they did, then your Maximum Leader would be inclinded to find that the World Bank Ethics Committee is responsible for this bruhaha. If Wolfowitz did lie (something we don’t know now) then there is a story here and Wolfowitz should be dealt with appropriately.

So, yes, at this point there really isn’t anything to see here and we should move along while the appropriate bodies are investigating further. But we aren’t going to move along are we? Because cronyism in the Bush Administration is a good story to push - regardless of what we know. Perhaps reporters ought to exercise a degree of discretion until more is known. One would think that after other high-profile accusations that didn’t pan out in the end, the media might want to hold on for a moment.

And because he wants to get one more jab in… One wonders if Smallholder remembers that the burden of proof in a case like this would be with the accuser and the accused should be presumed innocent until we know otherwise… Then again, it has been warm here lately and it is likely that the sun (which is reddening the Smallholders neck as we speak) is affecting the Smallholder’s memory in these matters.

Carry on.