Last night, "Hindrocket" over at Powerline gave a heads up on a story potentially damaging to John Kerry's credibility on foreign policy, scheduled for a Monday morning release.

Jeff Goldstein has the first link to the scoop. (Note: like much of Jeff's stuff, while hilarious, it's not necessarily family friendly).

This is the 2nd time today I ended up with Shiner Bock up my nose. The 1st time was hearing Katie Couric say John Kerry was where he is every Sunday, in church. That was as real as this but a lot less funny.

Urg. Don't they have to have a story first before you link to it?

Nevermind, it that Security Council story.

U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

An investigation by The Washington Times reveals that while the candidate did talk for an unspecified period to at least a few members of the panel, no such meeting, as described by Mr. Kerry on a number of occasions over the past year, ever occurred.

The best thing about Jeff G.'s parody is that some people couldn't tell it was a parody.

I thought the byline -- Anne D. Kaufmann -- should've been a dead giveaway, if nothing else.

Ach, I think all this buzz was a mistake. The story itself is underwhelming. Essentially Kerry bullshitted during the debate somewhat, in that he said he met with "the entire" Security Council and he only actually met with the more important members.

So he's a bullshitter. We knew that. But it is harmful to the President's cause, I think, to focus on this particular incident, to give the impression that this is one of the biggest faults of Mr. Kerry, because, really, no one gives a hoot if he met with the whole Security Council or not. And, that politicians bullshit a little during a campaign is about as revelatory as that car salesman do so when selling a car.

That's why I think the President's campaign was wise to stay away from the Christmas in Cambodia story and let the Swifties make the point as well as they could.

The American people do not really value honesty as highly as some think. They rather expect lawyers, hobos, and other riff-raff to lie at least a little bit. What they care about is when (1) the lie concerns something of significant importance (which is why the "lie" about WMD has legs), and when (2) the lying goes completely out of control (see Nixon, Richard M. and Clinton, William J.)