Birds of a feather

Today's New York Times, in the course of a story explaining yet another Iraq connection in the Paul Wolfowitz ethics imbroglio at the World Bank, includes the detail --

Victoria Toensing, a lawyer representing Ms. Riza, said this evening that Ms. Riza went to Iraq as a volunteer and took a leave of absence from the World Bank, paying for her own benefits while she was on leave.

That would be long-time Republican party operative Victoria Toensing, who most recently had been doing the lead blocking, despite all available evidence, on the claim that the White House had deliberately leaked classified information about CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity in revenge for her husband's weakening of the Saddam WMD evidence.

There is also a potential media ethics issue presented by Toensing's presence on the legal team. In the last few days, the Wall Street Journal has published two vitriolic editorials defending Wolfowitz (1st, 2nd), even though the information already in the public domain already far exceeds the standard they applied for their Clinton scandal-mongering in the 1990s [Chris at Crooked Timber also notes their peculiar interest]. Among the sentences in the later editorial --

Paul Wolfowitz, meet the Duke lacrosse team.

An equivalence (based on a false accusation of rape in an investigation that never went to trial) that could only exist in the minds of regulars on the right-wing cable news circuit. Such as that occupied by occasional Wall Street Journal op-ed contributor, Victoria Toensing.

The Journal editorials, relying heavily on carefully selected sentences* from the Bank's weekend document dump on the Wolfowitz matter, even read like a advocacy brief that, say, one's lawyer might prepare. Given the incestuous connections in this whole business, the Journal really should make clear to its readers whether its editorials reflect the input of Ms Toensing.

UPDATE: Interestingly, this later editorial, drawing from what was presumably a private communication to Shaha Riza, specifically rebuts any presumption that they might have gotten the material from her lawyer.

FINAL UPDATE 8 MAY: The 2nd WSJ editorial mentioned above turns out to have relied on an off-the-record briefing by Wolfowitz's aides, a briefing that has now become a source of controversy in itself, since the information was false.

[*Further explanation of the carefully selected sentences, such as those being used by Christopher Hitchens also to defend Wolfowitz]