Cross-posted at Eschaton

Ridiculous White House sourcing of the day at the New York Times:

"Seventy-two hours into this, to be openly posturing about this, to be attacking the president, is not only despicable and wrong, it's not politically smart," said one White House official who asked not to be named because he did not want to be seen as talking about the crisis in political terms. "Normal people at home understand that it's not the president who's responsible for this, it's the hurricane. This will get better, hour by hour and day by day."

New rule for anonymous sourcing: if you don't want to be seen as partisan, but want to say something partisan, you don't have to give your name. If you want to politicize an event (by deflecting criticism of Bush's Iraq war underfunding the levees, say) but you don't want to be seen as politicizing the event, you also get a free pass.

Time for a blogger ethics conference, because heaven knows they don't have the same standards as the mainstream media.