In The Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes reports on the latest Republican-bashing mystery memo promoted by the establishment press:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist never saw it. Neither did the Senate Republican whip, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The number three Republican in the Senate, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, didn’t get a copy. Nor did the senator with the closest relationship with President Bush, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. And the senator with the familiar Republican last name, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, didn’t see it or read it. The same is true of Senator Mel Martinez, the rookie Republican from Florida.

Yet the infamous memo that argued Republicans stood to gain politically by saving the life of Terri Schiavo was characterized by ABC News as consisting of “GOP Talking Points.” True, a few paragraphs were of Republican origin. They had been lifted, word for word, from a Martinez press release outlining the provisions of his legislative proposal, “The Incapacitated Person’s Legal Protection Act.” This was the inoffensive part of the memo. The offensive part—it didn’t come from Martinez—left the strong impression that Republicans are callous and cynical in their attempt to save Schiavo’s life, ill-motivated in the extreme.

Despite the fact that nobody could authenticate the memo or determine its source, both ABC News and The Washington Post described it using language that implied it came from the Republican Party itself:

Supposedly the memo was distributed only to Republicans on the Senate floor. Ergo, it was a Republican document. ABC correspondent Linda Douglass first reported its existence on March 18, saying the network “has obtained talking points circulated among Republican senators, explaining why they should vote to intervene in the Schiavo case.” She mentioned the two offensive passages, and the memo was shown on the screen. The ABC website was explicit about the source of the memo: These were “GOP talking points on Terri Schiavo.” Two days later, the Washington Post referred to it as “an unsigned one-page memo, distributed to Republican senators.”

There wasn’t a hint in these reports the memo could have any other source but Republicans. Yet there was no evidence it had come from Republicans. It was unsigned and had no letterhead or date. Nothing indicated it came from the Republican leadership or the House or Senate campaign committee or from the Republican National Committee or even from a stray Republican staffer.

[...]

How did ABC and others get wind of the memo in the first place? It came from “Democratic aides,” according to the New York Times, who “said it had been distributed to Senate Republicans.” Not exactly a disinterested source.

How curious that such sloppy reporting just so happens to work against Republicans yet again. But it gives the Republicans an opportunity to strike back: simply author an “incriminating” but unsigned memo with no letterhead, get some GOP staffers to pass it out, claiming that it came from Democrats, and wait for the establishment media to report the “story.” Think you might be waiting a long time? Then I guess you understand the game by now.

Update: The memo’s author has come forward.