Tom DeLay is a crook. Similarly, Fred Barnes' hackery knows no bounds:

Finally, there's the media, more aptly called the Republican-hating media. We've already seen what they are willing to do to protect Hillary Clinton. They trashed a perfectly respectable, though highly critical, biography of Hillary by veteran newsman Ed Klein. It got so bad that conservatives, too, began attacking his book. If this is happening in 2005, imagine what lengths the press will be willing to go to in 2008 on Hillary's, or another Democrat's, behalf.

Come now. Isn't it possible that conservatives, like most of the press, attacked the book because it was so egregious. Let's recall:

Not, it should be noted, because conservatives are wrong about the book. The Truth About Hillary proceeds, as they have hinted, at a relentlessly puerile pace. Here, for instance, is Klein on Hillary's college-era physiognomy:

Though Hillary was never a standout beauty, she had had a nice figure in high school and college. Indeed, several of her Wellesley College classmates, who played sports with Hillary, described how she looked in a T-shirt and shorts. They said she had a tiny waist, slim legs and ankles, and small buttocks.

This paragraph offends on so many levels that it's hard to know where to begin. There's the sheer irrelevance of Hillary's appearance circa 1967. There's the vague attribution to "several of her ... classmates," which, if you consult the endnote, appears to have been one "Wellesley College classmate who requested anonymity." And then there's the slow and subtle accumulation of winks at what Klein elsewhere calls "the culture of lesbianism." Hillary, ever a failure at femininity, "played sports." What's more, the other girls were totally checking her out.

"Perfectly respectable." Sure.