PRESTOPUNDIT -- "An intense brain-buzz, guaranteed" (2blowhards)

The question of the day: where are The New York Times, The LA Times and The Washington Post on this story? Have they deserted to Canada?

UPDATE: Some dead on analysis: "Now two of New York's dailies have written on this story; can the Grey Lady avoid it much longer? Byron York nailed that on Hugh's program yesterday; the Times will bury an offhand mention of the story in the 27th paragraph of a 39-paragraph story on Kerry's medals so that they can say they covered it. If you remember, this is how they handled Kerry's attendance at a VVAW meeting where the assassination of US Senators was discussed."

UPDATE II: Hugh Hewitt challenges the big city newsrooms.

UPDATE III: They also serve. John Kerry's 5th column shipmates. Quotable:

"On NBC, the swift-boat-vet ad isn't a new frontier for investigative journalism, but an undesirable outbreak of free speech that should have been prevented by law. Tom Brokaw asked Friday night: "Up next, NBC News 'In Depth' tonight: The latest campaign ad from an independent political group. Harsh attacks. Are these ads totally out of control?" Could he telegraph any more blatantly that he wished this ad did not exist, or that he would have liked to control it right into the dumpster? He later explained: "NBC's Andrea Mitchell tells us tonight, the campaign-finance law supposed to fix the system left this very big loophole." The network stars have discovered that "527" groups, which the Democrats have built willy-nilly to defeat President Bush, have suddenly become undesirable. So we should ask: Is Tom Brokaw out of control? Aren't he and his fellow reporters one giant "loophole" in our campaign speech system?

The mere fact that we're at this embryonic stage of Kerry's biography in August shows the lack of media vigilance about Kerry's resume. If anyone would question the timing of the current Swift Boat vets campaign, they are correct. They could have started in May at the National Press Club. They could have started in February, when Terry McAuliffe and the Democrats drew two weeks of meticulous network pounding of George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard .. But they should have been exploring this story on their own in January, when Kerry broke out of the Democratic pack through powerful and repeated war heroism stories. Since Sen. Kerry began putting his Vietnam experience into biographical overdrive before the Iowa caucuses, it might have seemed like an obvious task for reporters to assess Kerry's service in greater detail. But they did not. They are more interested in electing Kerry than telling us about him."