The Daily Caller, the site he launched with a promise to offer a new model for conservative journalism, is primarily a catalog of sleazy traffic-baiting aggregated Web garbage ("Top 10: Most beautiful ‘most beautiful’ women [SLIDESHOW]"), ancient relics of online commentary with nowhere else left to publish (Ann Coulter, Mickey Kaus), and overblown scandal-mongering headlines that promise much more than they can deliver. In other words it is like a mean-spirited parody of a conservative version of the pre-AOL Huffington Post, with a healthy dose, recently, of attention-grabbing race baiting. This is not the sort of thing Carlson used to be known for.

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Pat Caddell (Last year: Number 27.)

The fake Democratic pollster is repeating himself, and somehow it just gets dumber every time.

Jonah Goldberg (Last year: Number 7.)

In March Jonah Goldberg literally wrote "meh" instead of rebutting an argument, in his nationally syndicated political column.

Thomas Friedman (Last year: Number 3.)

Thomas Friedman continued to, domestically, demand a centrist third party that acted exactly like our current centrist Democratic party. But his best work, as always, concerned foreign lands. What other columnist would have the balls to go to the scene of a popular revolution and "quote" a native pleading with the wise American columnist to explain what he thinks is going on in her country?

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The Caller claimed to have learned that the EPA was planning to hire "230,000 new bureaucrats — at a cost of $21 billion" to implement new greenhouse gas regulations. That was the scoop. $21 billion and 230,000 new EPA bureaucrats! That is false. It's based on a misreading of a Justice Department brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals DC circuit, which presents the "$21 billion" figure as an example of what the EPA would need to regulate emissions if the rule they're going to court to defend is blocked.

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Here's the story: Michele Bachmann suffers from migraines. Here's the way the Caller played it: Michele Bachmann is constantly incapacitated by debilitating and mysterious "headaches" and she pops pills like candy!

The headline is, "Stress-related condition 'incapacitates' Bachmann; heavy pill use alleged." Again, the "condition" is generally called "migraines." And "heavy pill use" certainly sounds like an allegation of a prescription painkiller addiction, though the article does not once name any of the specific medications Bachmann supposedly takes.

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The DMs are not that outrageous or shocking, because we already all know that Palin and her inner-circle are paranoid and petty. It's news that they hate Mitt Romney? The fact that Palin's operation is an unprofessional cult of personality is public knowledge. But they're still entertaining for anyone fascinated by Palin and her camp.

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While that video -- a supposed exposé of NPR's fundraising practices -- was produced by a regular Breitbart associate, it was first published and promoted by Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller, for reasons unknown (perhaps because it was shoddier than some of O'Keefe's other work, and the Caller, being more desperate for traffic, had slightly lower standards).

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The Caller was writing up the story of how Sarah Palin's reality show received a generous tax credit thanks to legislation signed into law by Sarah Palin. (That was strike one!) After explaining where the story came from and quoting some critics (strike two!), the story goes on to quote -- for three full paragraphs -- Palin's responses to the criticism and her defense of the program that subsidizes filming in Alaska. I think, if I'm reading Sarah Palin's ferocious Facebook response to the story correctly, that was strike three.

The Caller's Chris Moody, author of the story, is obviously a sexist Palin-hater. Look at how he ended his article:

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She has been hired by Tucker Carlson's "The Daily Caller," a web magazine that seeks to answer the question, "will people read literally any bullshit at all if we call it 'conservative' and occasionally throw in some sexism and homophobia?" Thomas will be a "special correspondent" for the Caller, which means she will "interview key political and community leaders -- from high-profile politicians to grassroots activists -- with a focus on listening to those outside the Beltway."

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At the 2009 CPAC, Carlson was actually booed for saying that the journalists at the New York Times care about accuracy, because everyone knows that the MSM is full of lying liberals, and also because activist conservatives are basically hostile to the idea that facts exist.

Since then, Carlson has launched his own news website, and he learned that in order to get attention, "accuracy" must sometimes take a backseat to "telling people that what they wish to be true is true," and also "stupid stunts." (Don't get me wrong -- I love stupid stunts.) Here is a Daily Caller headline that I just saw two minutes ago: "UFO drops flare-like objects over Utah [VIDEO]." (Again, don't get me wrong -- I also love UFO news.)

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What we don't know: Who sent Strong the story? Why did the Caller spend a week trying to confirm it when a cursory reading of the stories in question would've disproved the plagiarism accusation, and the authors who were reportedly borrowed from both agreed that their work wasn't improperly used? Who then sent the story to the New York Post's Keith Kelly, and did his reporting lead Tucker Carlson to spike the piece, which was apparently ready to go up?

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Someone -- I won't speculate as to who, though Kelly surely knows -- handed Strong a story: Mayer plagiarized blogger Lee Fang for her Koch piece! Except Fang himself said: "Jane Mayer properly credited me in her story. She clearly did a ton of her own research. I have nothing but admiration for her integrity as a journalist." But there was more! A 2002 Mayer piece on the SEC had stolen from a 2000 BusinessWeek story! Except the author of that piece said, "I remember reading her story at the time, and I think she did a good job."

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Rehyansky also said he was fine with lesbians serving, because they're less diseased than the gay men and he wants to give "straight male GIs a fair shot at converting lesbians and bringing them into the mainstream."

That line, about converting lesbians, was removed from the column by Daily Caller editors after people began talking about how awful it was.

Today, Daily Caller editor Peter Tucci defends Rehyansky from those awful liberal bloggers and their horrible liberal readers. They are disrespecting a veteran! A bigoted, crazy old veteran!

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Full disclosure: Carlson has promised to destroy me. (In those words!) (He also said "I will destroy you" to a video store clerk he got fired for blogging about how Tucker Carlson had opened an account at his video store.)

Carlson is a thin-skinned mess of hypocrisy. He's obsessively protective of his privacy (no crime!) despite coming up as a TV pundit by fixating on Bill Clinton's sexual exploits. He sued to win control of TuckerCarlson.com and then registered KeithOlbermann.com as a stunt. And it's sometimes apparent that he has no clue just how much of a dick he is. He proudly admitted to gay-bashing a dude (Carlson is terribly sensitive about his masculinity), and he's generally a fratty sexist.

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Philly gossip site Phawker published the exchange between Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky and whomever is currently using the e-mail address keith@keitholbermann.com. Olbermann explained on Twitter that that's not him. That address, as you may remember, belongs to former MSNBC employee and current internet entrepreneur Tucker Carlson.

Way back in June, Carlson bought the domain name KeithOlbermann.com, for a laugh. It was a silly stunt and the entire world promptly forgot about it as soon as there was another Sarah Palin Facebook post to look at. Carlson still owns the URL, which goes to the Olbermann tag page of his adorable little web startup, "The Daily Caller." And at the time of the stunt, Tucker announced that his email address was now "keith@keitholbermann.com."

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Or, I guess it died when people invented the Internet and became angry and partisan. Anger and partisanship are so bad, for America:

Somewhere along the way, things have gone terribly wrong. Journalism has become a toy, an electronic plaything. I do not blame technology. The giant megaphone of technology has been coupled with a new, angrier, more destructive age. (Yes, you can find extremely angry, extremely partisan times in our past, but I always thought the goal was to progress over the centuries, not regress.)

And a list of people who e-mailed each other their opinions and argued about politics somehow contributed to this age of anger. Simon never once actually makes an argument against Journolist, that I can find. But he quotes some people to make arguments for him, sort of:

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The "scandal" is that these liberal journalists, commentators and academics apparently spent some time trying to figure out who Palin was, and some of them thought the Palin selection would prove to be a mistake, because of her inexperience.

Do you remember 2008? At the end of August, during the Democratic convention, John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. Hardly anyone not named Bill Kristol knew anything about her. All I knew was that she was the governor of Alaska and that she had a reputation for being not corrupt.

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It really says it all – though more will no doubt be revealed in the future, no doubt covering the lamestream media’s coverage of other issues and people. May the light keep shining!

I think that means that, not only does Palin know there's more to come, but she also specifically knows there's going to be material about her. She's licking her chops at the chance to play aggrieved victim of media bias again.

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