As a reminder, the Washington Post's Ezra Klein was the founder of the secretive JournoList group late last decade. Their objective was to put left-wing writers, perhaps with input from the Democratic Party itself and certain of its candidates for national office, on the same page in their coverage of the news.

That's useful to know, as on Saturday Klein published a column which might as well have been called "Obama administration talking points meant to convince readers that the President's 'If you like your health insurance plan, you can keep your health insurance plan, PERIOD' promise really wasn't that important" (Alternative title: "As the Goalposts Move"). Almost four weeks after Barack Obama owned up to the fact that his guarantee wasn't true for millions of private individual health insurance policyholders (he has yet to acknowledge the current impact on certain small employer group plans or the impending impact on large employer-sponsored plans), and given the fact that his broken guarantee is already an established fact in the historical record — no less than the Associated Press acknowledged this on September 30 — Klein's topic choice is odd indeed. Excerpts follow the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post; numbered tags are mine):

Since April 8 of this year, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann has called former Governor Sarah Palin an "idiot" 22 times on his Countdown show, usually by uttering the words, "That woman is an idiot." But in August 2004, the MSNBC host claimed to be too "naive and old-fashioned" to call a woman an "idiot," as he attacked conservative commentator Michelle Malkin for misquoting him as having called her an "idiot," when, in reality, he had charged that she had "made a fool out of herself" instead. In fact, Olbermann contended that if he had in reality called Malkin an "idiot," it would have been grounds for him to apologize:

We at Countdown were preparing an apology for my choice of language last night after the writer Michelle Malkin went on Rush Limbaugh's radio entertainment program and wrote in her Web blog that I had called her a, quote, "idiot." It was Ms. Malkin, who on Hardball last night, raised the accusation that John Kerry's Vietnam wounds may have been self-inflicted. It's naive and old-fashioned, but I feel you should reserve those terms like "idiot" exclusively for men. Political differences, fault or innocence are all secondary. There are codes. There's also a problem. I never called her an idiot.

But since April, the words, "That woman is an idiot," referring to Palin, have become a near regular part of the show, as the Countdown host has called the former governor an "idiot" during 20 episodes of his show between April 8 and July 8, including once when he used the label three times in one show as he also called her "idiot woman" and "that idiot."

Don't hold your breath they'll do either.

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, the most disgraceful example of journalism on cable was challenged to a debate by a woman he disparaged on his program last Thursday.

As Olbermann has not shown the strength of character to accept Betsy McCaughey's challenge, the former Lt. Governor of New York has requested he and MSNBC issue an apology for his factless claims as well as a correction (h/t Johnny Dollar):