I have a confession to make. When I see comments here on my blog saying “a liberal this” or “a conservative that”… as magazine editors used to say–MEGO… Mine Eyes Glazeth Over. For team rooting, I’ll stick to the sports pages, thank you. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy Christopher Hitchens. Even though I sometimes disagree with him, he is capable of surprising me. He thinks for himself.

Of course in his new Slate piece, Plame’s Lame Game – What Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife forgot to tell us about the yellow-cake scandal, there are few surprises. How could there be at this point?

Two recent reports allow us to revisit one of the great non-stories, and one of the great missed stories, of the Iraq war argument. The non-story is the alleged martyrdom of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wilson, supposed by many to have suffered cruel exposure for their commitment to the truth. The missed story is the increasing evidence that Niger, in West Africa, was indeed the locus of an illegal trade in uranium ore for rogue states including Iraq.

What’s interesting about both these stories is how under-reported they are by the mainstream media. They don’t fit their narrative. (And don’t call that “liberal.” It’s not to me. It has nothing to do with the liberalism I grew up with. Find another word or… better yet… don’t find a word at all. Deal with the facts–or the absence therof, as the case may be.) A couple of days ago the Washington Post had a story on page nine about Mr. Wilson’s serial prevarications. I asked at the time how many stories supporting him had appeared on the front page of that another papers when his initial (now bogus) allegations occurred–and what their response will be now. Patterico has some of the answers, at least as far as the LAT is concerned. It would be interesting to compare them to the WaPo and the NYT.

I notice some on here have claimed that some media are not biased. I wonder how, in the light of this nonsense, they can believe that. [They can believe whatever they want. Didn't your shrink tell you? -ed. Yeah, he did and she did.]

UPDATE: The Patterico link above is as of July 11. Patterico assures me via email that the LAT has had nothing on the Plame Wilson Affair in the last two days either. What a disgrace.