Actually, this is not the truth about Jonathan Taplin.  Everything I'm going to write is factual, but it's not really the truth.  I'm just going to subject Taplin to the kind of innuendo that Taplin subjects his political opponents to in his posts.

This is Taplin, Taplinized:

Jonathan Taplin is a corrupt businessman who has absurdly claimed in court that his company, Intertainer, has a patent on the technologies that Apple, Google and Napster use to distribute digital media content on the Web.

Though Taplin started Intertainer in 1996, other companies like Real Networks were distributing digital content online way before Taplin filed for a patent in 2001.

In 2002, Intertainer flamed out and 80 people lost their jobs.  Taplin blamed the film industry and sued the five studios behind rival Movielink, claiming that they were colluding on prices to put him out of business.  The studios settled the lawsuit but a subsequent investigation by the Justice Department in 2004 found nothing amiss.  Did Taplin try to hide his failure with a nuisance lawsuit?

In 2005, the US government granted Taplin's company a broad patent for distributing digital content on line.  Two years later Taplin sued Apple, Google and Napster.  Amazing, earlier this year, Apple settled, but neither side will say for how much.  They probably just wanted Taplin to go away.  The only question that remains is whether or not Google and Napster will cave and pay Taplin some token "walk away" settlement.

So that's Jonathan Taplin, a failed businessman who bothers big companies with baseless lawsuits and who then profits when those companies settle.  Has he even thought to share his lawsuit winnings with the 80 people who lost their jobs because he mismanaged Intertainer?

***

Like I said, all of that is true.  I just put the least charitable spin on it that  I could.  I don't believe that Taplin is really corrupt or a failure or dishonest.  But he has proven himself willing to insinuate that the Clintons are corrupt, rather than just people who have run a misguided campaign so I figured I'd turn his own odd mirror on him.

The debate about Fareed Zarakia's book, "The Post-American World," has  resurrected one of the very worst ideas hatched by Anne Marie Slaughter -- a "concert of democracies" that will be empowered to act when the United Nations can't or won't.

Anne Marie Slaughter would like a job advising the next Democratic president.  Many of us have argued that Slaughter, who supports pre-emptive military action, supported the invasion of Iraq (but not the execution of it) and opposes withdrawing our forces from Iraq now, is actually too conservative a foreign policy thinker to serve in a Democratic administration.

Well, here's proof, including a blunder by John McCain, age 847 that Anne Marie Slaughter is to the right of the Democratic mainstream.  John McCain wants to have a "League of Nations," but what he meant was a "League of Democracies."  It's the Republicans, who have caused so many foreign policy disasters in 8 years, who are the first to take up Slaughter's cause.

Let's all keep that in mind as the debate around Fareed Zakaria's book continues.