I haven’t written yet about the Washington Post’s decision to hire Ben Domenech to be their “conservative blogger”. I have followed the story very close but feel there are numerous other bloggers out there getting the message out. Atrios has taken the lead on this and done a great job as usual. Hunter at Daily Kos also revealed some troubling news about the newest hire at WaPo. Turns out he is a plagiarist.

In a way, I feel the decision is going to do nothing but hurt the Washington Post in the end. The neo-con movement is dead. Get over it. Even the original neo-cons have admitted it. They blame Bush and this Republican controlled congress for killing the movement they worked so hard to start.

The views of Domenech will also provide us with even a greater return fire when pundits like Coulter try to “blame the liberal media”. We now have proof the media is biased and they lean highly to the right. Of course newspapers are becoming a thing of the past and the top new site on the internet when it comes to number of viewers is MSNBC.

Anyways, I decided to do a NewsBank (must be subscriber) search on Ben today and came up with something interesting. The following appeared in the May 7, 2000 edition of the Washington Post:

At 18, Benjamin Domenech, of Round Hill, has landed himself a plum assignment in the world of inside-the-Beltway journalism. He writes a column, “Any Given Sunday,” recapping the political talk television programs for the World Wide Web site of the conservative National Review magazine.

If there was a Top 10 list of young Loudoun County people to watch, he’d be on it. And agree with him or not, you would be hard pressed to deny that Domenech is a sharp writer with an obvious command of his national politics beat–especially considering that this is the first year he is eligible to vote.

“He really shows maturity beyond his years,” said Richard Lowry, editor of the National Review.

Lowry said he runs into a lot of George Will-wannabes trying to break into national journalism circles at a very young age, but “few of them can actually pull it off. [Domenech] just seems to be just a couple steps in front of everyone else.”

So six years ago, the Washington Post was pimping themselves to get Domenech into their inner circle. This wasn’t a spur of the moment decision. It has been planned.

Now considering the fact that the Washington Post has been eyeing him for six years, then certainly they have also been following his work. They most definitely knew that Domenech called Coretta Scott King a “communist” on the day of her funeral. They also had to know that old Ben has been plagiarizing himself in his article. So what do they do with someone showing such a lack of journalistic integrity? They hire him. (Hey WaPo – Jayson Blair needs a job also)

So there is my little finding on Domenech. To get the rest of the juicy stuff on him check out Atrios, Crooks and Liars, Open Letter to The Washington Post, Firedoglake and Daily Kos.