Soros

In Alterman's column about Soros, he fails to inform his readers that the PATRIOT Act forbids people from donating money to liberal causes.

Regarding Soros, the editors ask Democrats "thrilled with the Soros millions" to "imagine conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife opening his bank account on behalf of Mr. Bush." Actually it's not so hard. Post editors might wish to check out a terrifically reported two-part front-page 1999 Post story by former managing editor Robert Kaiser and Ira Chinoy, which clearly demonstrates that Scaife's giving to archconservative Washington organizations dwarfs anything Soros is even contemplating. And many of these Scaife-funded groups, like those alleging the murder of Vince Foster and Bill Clinton's involvement in drug-running out of an Arkansas airport, are a great deal less healthy for the quality of public discourse than anything to which Soros has contributed (although they may have provided sources for both the Post and the Journal in their frenzied reporting on Clinton's sex life).

Perhaps the strangest sentence is the Post's demand: "Who is he [Soros] to determine the public interest?" Are these people really so wedded to the idea of themselves as the permanent governing establishment that it didn't occur to them to ask themselves, "And for that matter, who the heck are we?"