The opinion journalism of Dana Milbank: otherwise, the Washington Post's White House correspondent

But how's this for direct evidence? "It is time to end the era of John Ashcroft. That starts with replacing the Patriot Act with a new law." That's what Kerry said at Iowa State University in December--as Mehlman pointed out to reporters in a conference call nearly a week before the Milbank-VandeHei story appeared.

Curiously, Milbank used to think that negativity in politics was downright positive. At least that was the central premise of Smashmouth, his campaign-trail book on the 2000 presidential race. "There's reason to believe that tough, negative campaigning helps strengthen our leaders, boost creativity in policymaking, and bring reform to government," he wrote. "There's nothing wrong with candidates going negative--but it's a bit rich for the press to dwell on the negative and then scold the candidates for doing the same."

Yes, a bit rich--especially for a reporter who has gone relentlessly negative on Bush. It's not a new problem, either. Since at least 2002, when Milbank wrote a front-page article headlined "For Bush, Facts are Malleable," the claim that Bush is a liar has been a theme in his reporting. In one of his stories on the 9/11 commission, Milbank practically begged Kerry to use its findings to "raise doubts about Bush's credibility."

Dick Cheney often discovers himself in Milbank's crosshairs as well. When the vice president cursed at Democratic senator Pat Leahy, Milbank (with Helen Dewar) filed a whole news story, which included the sanctimonious observation that Bush had promised to "change the tone in Washington." Comparatively little space was given to the substance of what prompted Cheney's remark: Leahy's overheated criticism of the vice president's ties to his former company, Halliburton. Moreover, when Kerry used the same expletive in a Rolling Stone interview late last year, neither Milbank nor the other members of the Post's propriety police considered it newsworthy.

Milbank, in fact, seems to have accepted Leahy's contentions about Cheney long ago. For a 2002 story on Cheney's sale of Halliburton stock, Milbank suggested that the vice president had shown "shrewdness" in selling his shares before their price dropped. The implication was that Cheney had fattened his bank account on the basis of inside information--i.e., "... he sold his shares in August 2000 knowing the company was likely headed for a fall."

But perhaps he was just following the advice of editorialists at Milbank's own newspaper, which had urged Cheney to sever all ties to Halliburton when he became Bush's running mate. Milbank breezed right past this inconvenient detail and simply noted that "conflict of interest laws did not require the sale"--as if he would have defended a decision by Cheney to cling to his investments.

Milbank gets one thing right when it comes to officials in the Bush administration. "They don't particularly like me," he said on CNN in January. He has turned this observation into a complaint: "I feel like it is a great achievement when at the end of the day I've gotten the communications director or the press secretary on the telephone." Yet he also seems to take strange pleasure in his unpopularity. "Nobody's ever told me what my nickname is with the president," he has said, "but we suspect it can't be repeated in polite company."