Until Talk Miramax Books canceled Connolly's contract just over a week ago, there was a deep sense of foreboding reflected in Drudge's dispatches about the unfinished manuscript he had somehow obtained. How desperate were Drudge and company to stop Connolly from publishing his still-unfinished work? Evidently desperate enough to willingly embarrass Kenneth Starr, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and author Christopher Buckley by posting canards about them that allegedly appear in the manuscript.

Not having examined that purloined document, I have no way of judging whether it should be published. Nor can I say whether the information Connolly was pursuing deserves to be publicized, or represents instead an unwarranted inquisition into matters that ought to remain private. But what remains striking about this episode is how quickly the freewheeling 'wingers mutated into defenders of absolute privacy when their own peccadilloes faced exposure.

What did stand exposed were the flexible ethics of a few conservative activists and commentators. Even Drudge's own rather nihilistic notion of press freedom gave way to his urge to protect his cronies. Not since Larry Flynt offered a $1 million reward for proof of adultery by Republican lawmakers have we seen such deep yearning on the right for a return to old-fashioned civility and journalistic responsibility. (That mood quickly passed, of course, and we were back to dirty business as usual.)

Coincidentally, just a few days before Drudge posted his first item about the Connolly book, I listened to Lucianne Goldberg express her own very casual attitude toward truth and consequences. We were discussing the question of privacy and journalistic standards in the Internet era on a panel at the annual convention of the Association of Alternative Newspapers, where I insisted that Net media ought to be held to the strict reporting and libel standards of print and broadcast journalism.

Goldberg demurred at any such strictures, cheerfully admitting that she had quite recently published an unchecked, damaging and, as it turned out, wholly false rumor on her Web site about someone she dislikes. She wanted it to be true, so she posted it. After all, she explained, her false item had been based on a "true rumor," meaning that someone had said it somewhere at some time. In short, she had perpetrated a gross smear, which later showed up in the pages of the New York Post.

Such are the moral habits acquired by the hard-bitten literary agent over the years, ever since her brief employment in 1972 as a snitch for the Nixon White House, spying on reporters, Secret Service agents and others aboard George McGovern's campaign plane and turning in daily reports about alleged sexual affairs and drug use. If she honors any limits whatsoever in political warfare, it isn't obvious what those limits might be.

Flash forward to the blitz against Connolly, who apparently was tracking down dozens of "true rumors" (and perhaps even some true facts) about Goldberg, Drudge, Ann Coulter and others of the same anti-Clinton ilk. Although he hadn't published anything yet, they were all outraged that he dared to research or even discuss their private behavior -- rumored, alleged or possibly true.

Somehow the subjects of Connolly's scrutiny regarded his project as different from their own assaults on the president, his family and friends during the past eight years. That was patriotic duty while this was "slash and trash," a "sex witch hunt" and "defamatory slander" reeking of "scorched earth." They were especially enraged about Connolly's employment of a private detective to assist him in his research.

Scorched-earth tactics and sexual witch hunts are always deplorable, of course. Yet this time it wasn't easy to sympathize with the scandal-singed complainants, if only because they've all been spreading inflammatory material and playing with matches themselves for so many years.

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