Douglas Joo, a trusted friend of Mr. Moon and a former chairman of the paper who was dismissed by Mr. Moon's son, is handling the deal to buy the paper back. Mr. Joo will pay a dollar to acquire the paper for News World Media Development LLC, a company he registered in Delaware.

"These are exactly the same terms on which Newsweek was sold by the Washington Post Company at the beginning of August," wrote Washington Times adviser Michael Marshall in a memo to the paper's staff that was leaked to the press.

Mr. Marshall also wrote that he couldn't understand why there were rumors that the paper was preparing to close as Mr. Joo was moving close to a deal. He also cleared the name of Preston Moon, who was accused of driving the paper into the ground. Donations intended for The Washington Times gathered from Japanese supporters of Mr. Moon's Unification Church, according to Mr. Marshall, were sort of lost in the mail.

"What happened to the money remains a mystery at this point and a source of speculation," he wrote.

The Washington Times' weekday circulation has fallen below 50,000, and the news staff has withered to just 70, down from 225 in 2002. The budget is so thin that there are snakes in the newsroom because there isn't enough money to perform necessary maintenence.

"There was a three-foot-long black snake in the main conference room the other day. We have snakes in the newsroom -- the real live variety, at least. One of the security people gallantly removed it."

After Rev. Moon passed the reins of his empire to one daughter and three sons last year, The Unification Church has cut off its annual $35 million subsidy to the Times' and existing problems at the paper have gotten worse.

Former executive editor John Solomon is reportedly gathering investors to purchase the Times from Moon's News World Communications and launch a multimedia news company called The Washington Guardian.

Politico's Ben Smith confirms the news (without the extra bit of race-baiting), reporting:

Surprisingly, the story doesn't mention the episode that's become the locus classicus of the Hillary-vs-the-media storyline: when, as The Politico first reported, her camp got GQ to spike an unflattering story about the inner workings of the campaign.

The paper says it requested a list of press availabilities from Hillary's campaign, but never received one.

UPDATE:  As we should have mentioned, The Observer planted its flag on this same turf almost ten months ago.  The spate of recent stories echoing the point kind of makes us wonder: Hasn't anything changed since then?

Kerry gaffe loses independents for his party

Here's the problem with this story, a one-note GOP talking point turgidly dressed up as a formal unveiling of news:

First, it is written off of a Pew survey that has the distinct look of an outlier - easily the closest (i.e. most GOP-friendly) generic ballot poll available on the market. To mention, for instance, that a Gallup poll (also conducted post-Kerry) actually has the Democrats ahead by 20 points would undercut the already flimsy legs of this story.

But that's not all.

From the Pew poll, one statistic of nebulous value is then- that 18 percent of independent voters had "serious doubts" about voting Democratic because of Kerry - and the story then proceeds to beat us over the head with its earth-shattering relevance, cluing in the brain dead among us that independents "are considered pivotal in today's congressional elections."

In a related development, it is considered likely that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning before setting, sometime later in the day, in the west.

The statistic about independents tells us little because - much in the way prosecutors are supposedly able to get juries to indict ham sandwiches - pollsters can always find 18 percent of independents troubled by just about any development in any campaign. And, if you read the fine print in the Pew poll itself (which the Times, of course, ignores) you will see that the 18 percent figure includes anyone who said the Kerry comment raised only "a little" doubt about his or her willingness to vote for the Democrats.

But a good Washington Times political story is never about facts or details. It's about a headline that hews to the GOP's message of the day, which in the run-up to the Election has been that Republicans are surging thanks to last-minute doubts about the Democrats. Hence the Times' assertion that this data - one broadly-worded question from one of the 62,000 or so polls now in circulation" - represents "a potentially significant shift of 'voting intentions' and raising speculation of further erosion among independents for the Democrats." Oh, and bonus points for tying it all to Kerry, a top-5 GOP bogeyman.

Also,

Hey, if it's in the paper, it must be true.

All of this makes us wonder how the paper will handle what will probably be very bad news for the GOP today. Suppose the Democrats win, say, 35 seats in the House and take back the Senate - essentially the doomsday scenario for the GOP. What will the headline read on tomorrow's Washington Times front page? Some suggestions:

Lugar, Hatch cruise in Indiana and Utah; Hastert easily re-elected to Illinois seat

or maybe:

Democrats take control of Congress - Pelosi yet to rule changing flag design to hammer and sickle.

Kerry gaffe loses independents for his party

It makes us wonder how the paper will handle what will probably be very bad news for the GOP today. Suppose the Democrats win, say, 35 seats in the House and take back the Senate - essentially the doomsday scenario for the GOP. What will the headline read on tomorrow's Washington Times front page? Some suggestions:

Lugar, Hatch cruise in Indiana and Utah; Hastert easily re-elected to Illinois seat

or maybe:

Democrats take control of Congress - Pelosi yet to rule changing flag design to hammer and sickle.

How high is the Foley scandal reaching? The Washington Times , usually a safe haven for all things conservative, has a not-so-subtle editorial saying Dennis Hastert should resign as Speaker of the House.

I wonder what the city's only Republican congressman, Vito Fossella of the 13th District, thinks Hastert should stay or go? I'll ask him...when I get him on the phone for that interview.

-- Azi Paybarah

This analysis is encumbered by few actual details of where she stands, but it does have this quote, apparently from a 2003 WABC Radio interview with John Gambling:

"I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants."

If the Times has this right -- and that's always a big if -- this is a model of, well, Clintonian positioning. It's something we've been seeing for a while from New York's ambitious junior Senator. And there does seem to be some conservative buzz to support the argument.

The Times quotes from a piece on the conservative website NewsMax.com.

"More than any other leader of either political party, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton has been focusing on immigration reform and border security — taking hard-line positions that appeal to frustrated Republicans in a move that could guarantee her enough support in red states to win the White House in 2008." (The full NewsMax piece, I hate to admit, is worth reading.)

The Times also has a spokesman for Rep. Tom Tancredo, leader of the immigration-restriction crowd, saying mildly positive things about Clinton.

"The media is kind of weird these days on politics, and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party," said Mr. Gore in an interview with The Observer. "Fox News Network, The Washington Times , Rush Limbaugh-there's a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media …. Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks-that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what's objective as stated by the news media as a whole."

Mr. Gore has been airing his views during a nationwide promotional book tour that marks his re-emergence in public life after a self-imposed exile following his loss in the 2000 Presidential election. Now, as Mr. Gore considers another Presidential campaign, he's determined to confound his ponderous image by unveiling a new Al Gore-one who doesn't hesitate, as he puts it, to "let 'er rip."

Hence his controversial criticisms of President Bush's foreign policy, and his surprise announcement in favor of a government-run universal health-care system. And hence, in a phone interview with The Observer , his extensive criticism of the media, which is hardly a conventional way of launching a national political campaign.

Actually, Mr. Gore may have little reason to hide his views about the media, for his re-emergence, while generating a massive amount of attention, has also inspired ridicule from commentators of all ideological persuasions. Conservatives seemed delighted by his return, remembering his awkward candidacy in 2000, and many liberals have been quite frank in wishing that he would simply disappear.

But Mr. Gore has a bone to pick with his critics: namely, he says, that a systematically orchestrated bias in the media makes it impossible for him and his fellow Democrats to get a fair shake. "Something will start at the Republican National Committee, inside the building, and it will explode the next day on the right-wing talk-show network and on Fox News and in the newspapers that play this game, The Washington Times and the others. And then they'll create a little echo chamber, and pretty soon they'll start baiting the mainstream media for allegedly ignoring the story they've pushed into the zeitgeist . And then pretty soon the mainstream media goes out and disingenuously takes a so-called objective sampling, and lo and behold, these R.N.C. talking points are woven into the fabric of the zeitgeist ."

And during a lengthy discourse on the history of political journalism in America, Mr. Gore said he believed that evolving technologies and market forces have combined to lower the media's standards of objectivity. "The introduction of cable-television news and Internet news made news a commodity, available from an unlimited number of sellers at a steadily decreasing cost, so the established news organizations became the high-cost producers of a low-cost commodity," said Mr. Gore. "They're selling a hybrid product now that's news plus news-helper; whether it's entertainment or attitude or news that's marbled with opinion, it's different. Now, especially in the cable-TV market, it has become good economics once again to go back to a party-oriented approach to attract a hard-core following that appreciates the predictability of a right-wing point of view, but then to make aggressive and constant efforts to deny that's what they're doing in order to avoid offending the broader audience that mass advertisers want. Thus the Fox slogan 'We Report, You Decide,' or whatever the current version of their ritual denial is."

"We understand that Gore is frustrated," said R.N.C. spokesman Kevin Sheridan. "He's the leader of a party without a message. But if he thinks that the Republican National Committee can control the American media, then perhaps he needs a break from the book tour."

Fox spokesman Rob Zimmerman said, "We won't dignify this with a response."

A spokesman for The Washington Times didn't return calls for comment. Rush Limbaugh was traveling and not available for comment.

A Left Hook

Of course, some of the harshest criticisms of Mr. Gore have come from distinctly non-conservative quarters. Mr. Gore seemed particularly stung, for example, by an op-ed written by Frank Rich of The New York Times , suggesting that his new spontaneity was a charade. "When people write a line like one that I read this morning-quote, 'People do not change,' period, end quote-well, there's a difference between learning from experience and self-reinvention," Mr. Gore said. "People do change, particularly in America. If you don't learn from the experiences you have in life, then you're not trying very hard, and if you don't make mistakes, you're not human …. If people who make their living criticizing anybody and everybody want to add me to their list, that's all right. Hell, they've got to make a living."

Democrats sympathetic to Mr. Gore frequently maintain that "political insiders"-the media, big donors, professional politicians-paint an overly pessimistic picture of his viability as a candidate and suggest that his position has been strengthened by the party's poor showing in the midterm elections several weeks ago. "There are all these people in the party who have been adamant that we need a fresh face," said Joe Andrew, who headed the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton administration. "I think a lot of those people are taking another look at Al Gore now, saying that, 'Well, at least there's someone out there with big ideas, who looks good on TV, who looks more comfortable with himself.' I think it's simply a fundamental reaction to the sense that he is a serious candidate with serious ideas."

But while Mr. Gore has a solid core of support, many Democrats do want a fresh face to take on George W. Bush in 2004. The same formal and informal polls that show Mr. Gore with substantially larger backing than any other Democratic hopeful also show that a great many donors, opinion makers and party leaders are uncommitted-and leaning toward Anyone But Gore.

It's possible that no amount of criticism will keep Mr. Gore out of the race, but there's little question that "Gore fatigue" already has become a rallying point for his potential opponents. "At this point, people are uniformly looking for a different face and a different agenda, an agenda that requires a backbone," Vermont Governor Howard Dean, a potential Democratic contender, told The Observer.

Asked about Mr. Gore's efforts to make a fresh start as a straight-talking, independent-minded Democrat, Mr. Dean said, "I think it will be kind of a tough job for someone who was a sitting Vice President to call himself an outsider."

Mr. Gore acknowledged his image problem among powerful Democrats, and that the onus will be upon him to recapture the loyalties of those who supported him in 2000. "Maybe I bear the blame for some of it," he said. "I haven't been very good about calling all of the insiders over the last two years, and maybe some of them have a beef with me because of that. I know they have been courted assiduously by some of the others who are considering a run for the White House, and it may be that some of them have already signed up with other people. If I do decide to run again, I think there's a lot of support, but I'd also have to work really hard to get a bunch of them committed back to me."

Mr. Gore also reckoned that he would have to prove himself all over again to key political and media players. "I'm well aware that the political insiders and political-journalism community have a considerable amount of influence, and even though I'm stronger at the grassroots level, I think that if I did run again, I would have to convince those two groups that I've learned enough in the last couple of years to run a better campaign than I did last time. I don't think that there's a thing that I could say and no words I could choose that could accomplish that-the way to convince them would be in actually doing it."

For now, Mr. Gore can only attempt to explain what motivates the ceaseless lampooning he continues to face from America's columnists and commentators. "That's postmodernism," he offered. "It's the combination of narcissism and nihilism that really defines postmodernism, and that's another interview for another time, if you're interested in it.

I'm afraid you really are going to have to read this book just to see what you think of it. "This is a terrible book," David Brock begins. "It is about lies told and reputations ruined. It is about what the conservative movement did, and what I did, as we plotted together in the shadows, disregarded the law, and abused power to win even greater power."

He continues: "My story is about those familiar corrupting influences of ambition, greed and ego …. It is also about the dangers of extremism in a political cause, and about how one can be blinded to the ethics of one's own actions."

I believe Blinded by the Right lives up to Mr. Brock's billing, but I recommend you make your own judgment. Passionate partisans of both right and left particularly need to read the book.

In some ways, it's a moral version of The Perils of Pauline : Our hungry young protagonist set out from Berkeley, Calif., slipped, fell, went from bad to worse to unspeakable, and then found some dimensions beyond that. All in the blithe assumption he was serving the Greater Good. Well after he started questioning his own motives, Mr. Brock nastily tried to blackmail a woman who was someone else's source into backing down on a story (the blackmail evidence was provided, according to Mr. Brock, by Justice Clarence Thomas). At this point, even if you're sympathetic toward David Brock, you can't help but be amazed by what a shit he was. And I'm not sure he hasn't done it yet again in this book.

He keeps gamely trying to explain it all, with heavy emphasis on the inherent falsity of being a closeted gay. Even granted the moral quandaries of that dilemma, there's too much closeted-gay angst in Blinded by the Right . Another recurring theme is how Mr. Brock and his fellow "Third Generation" conservatives were just reacting to the dread excesses of political correctness he says dominated campuses in the 1970's. He could have saved himself a lot of trouble by going to Texas A&M.

At Berkeley he watched as then–U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick was shouted down by a group of leftist protesters-to the point where she could not speak at all. Mr. Brock, then a reporter for the college paper, quite rightly reacted against this offensive stupidity. He reports that the only support for free speech on the campus came from conservatives. As a longtime American Civil Liberties Union liberal who has been through innumerable battles on behalf of every damn body's right to speak, my reaction is, What are we, chopped liver? You have to admit, the ACLU will go to bat for anybody-Nazis, Kluckers, Ollie North.

Our man went off to Washington where he fell into the big, fat middle not of a right-wing conspiracy, but a vast agglomeration of like-minded people possessed by both seething anger and stupefying self-righteousness. I find Mr. Brock's hindsight comments on the nature of conspiracy quite sensible. What a web it is, with several peculiar foundations at the center of it, and the perfectly astonishing Richard Mellon Scaife at the heart of it.

Mr. Brock started at what has to be one of the most peculiar newspapers in America, The Washington Times , funded by the Rev. Sung Myung Moon. Here begins a third strain of self-exculpation: No one ever taught our man how to be a journalist. I think this theme deserves serious consideration. Poor Mr. Brock actually thought himself a reporter, as though he and Danny Pearl were of the same species. I don't like the idea of credentializing journalism, which is more a craft than a profession. But someone has to teach you a craft, too. It seems to me there's a real problem with letting loose to attack a President someone who has never had to report accurately a five-car pileup or a county commissioners' meeting.

As though The Washington Times weren't bad enough, Mr. Brock then moved on to The American Spectator , a publication whose practices left me blinking like an owl. I worked for a small political magazine myself for six years: The Spectator is from another planet. Here Mr. Brock had free rein to attack Anita Hill ("a little nutty and a little slutty"), not to mention the infamous Troopergate story, using sources that wouldn't pass muster if you were writing "Elvis Lives!" for a tabloid. How this crap got into the mainstream media is one of the most fascinating parts of the book.

A lot of it, however, is not new. In the late 90's, Mr. Brock wrote a series of articles for Esquire in which he explained much of what he'd done, and he turns out to have been a major source for Joe Conason and Gene Lyons in their excellent book The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton . The reason this material is still interesting is that mainstream journalism has yet to back off and look at the Clinton scandals with any perspective. As an occasional visitor to Washington during the final standoff, I never saw anything politically odder. Two great power centers, the White House and the Starr investigation, stood blazing hatred at one another across the city; I couldn't find anyone who hadn't taken sides. Mr. Brock tells a big piece of the story of how we got there.

Blinded by the Right has several weaknesses. David Brock still hasn't learned how to attribute everything he needs to, and the writing is sometimes clunky-he has a tendency to start sentences with information about how someone looks and dresses before inserting a comma and moving on to the news. And fairly often Mr. Brock uses the wrong word, off by a shade or two. Perhaps I should be even more wary of his book: Remember that his Anita Hill hatchet job got respectful views from The New York Times , among others, for its supposedly damning accretion of fact.

I do have one major qualm: During his years in Washington, Mr. Brock's "surrogate parents," the couple that fed him dinners, cheered for him in victory, rooted for him in defeat and advised him (badly) in peril, were Judge Lawrence Silberman of the D.C. Court of Appeals and his wife, Ricky. If what I read in this book is true, Judge Silberman should be impeached as quickly as possible. Having known jurists of the ethical caliber of William Wayne Justice, who will not even voice his political opinions much less conspire for them, I almost vomited on reading of the Silbermans' tawdry role in this cabal. (Journalists may need to examine their consciences over Clinton scandals, but by God there are a lot of lawyers and judges who deserve some dark nights of the soul.) So here's David Brock, once again, this time stabbing in the back not someone whom he never met or even bothered to do an honest job of reporting on, but two people who were apparently endlessly kind to him. God help him.

I had forgotten about it until I saw it mentioned in his new book, but many years ago I wrote a column about Mr. Brock's The Real Anita Hill headlined "Save Yourself $24.95." This time around-not, I hope, for partisan reasons, but because I think everyone needs to gnaw through this one to reach his own conclusions-I'd say spend the $25.95.

Molly Ivins' next book, Shrub II , will follow up on her best-seller, Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush (Vintage).