Ace Digs Up Some Serious Dirt On TNR

If the Ace is correct, he has uncovered a real can of worms over at The New Republic. It would appear that "Scott Thomas" Beauchamp is enagaged to a TNR staffer. It would also appear that a TRN staff member was leaking some of the sordid details of all this to bloggers. TNR has fired that staff member. It's getting messy, folks.

It's all so Plame-ish. As Gracie wrote to me, of all the embeds and milbloggers and real journalists they could have picked for the job, they instead chose to go with a very partisan, very inexperienced blogger just out of "laziness." Just because they knew him. Just because it was easy.

I actually think part of the reason was that they knew Beauchamp's politics — he having put them on display on his goofy blog — and so, just like with Valerie Plame, they knew the report was going to come back the way they wanted it when they sent him. But Gracie says it's just Occam's razor: Laziness.

Still, he's just speculating on the reason (as am I).

More coming.

Fired: I knew this, but wasn't sure if I was supposed to say anything about it.

TNR fired Gracie at 7:25 this morning with the non-explanation, "Your services are no longer required." This information is offered up by one of Gracie's psuedonyms ("near certainty" on that) at discarded lies.

I was holding that back because, other than Gracie sending me an email early AM telling me of this nasty wake-up call, I haven't been able to make contact and determine if I could run this information, or if a protest was planned, etc. In other words, my stating "my source was fired" sort of tells them they were right, eh? But it's been announced on the site they're busily checking (when they should be checking stuff in Iraq, no?).

That's why I had "near certainty" the person searching for Gracie's posts was from TNR, btw.

Ace has a long-running update on all of it.