The kerning, the kerning... In what may well be the silliest claim in the history of the blogosphere, we now have an assertion that the Downing Street Memo and related documents are forgeries. Why? Because the reporter in question (an employee of that infamous leftist America-basher, Rupert Murdoch) transcribed the copies of the originals he received, by way of an "old-fashioned typewriter", then destroyed the source documents to protect his source. Like Captain Queeg and his strawberries, the Bushies and their shills keep returning to the same meme, oblivious to the fact (as with the Rathergate docs) that the principals involved did not challenge their authenticity.

So is it a big deal? According to the blogger who "broke" this story, Captain's Quarters,

...a lack of protest from Downing Street after being asked to authenticate retyped copies of alleged minutes of secret meetings does NOT constitute verification. The same exact argument came up with the Killian memos in Rathergate and the Newsweek Qu'ran-flushing report last month. In both cases, the documents or sources turned out to be fakes. It's the reporters' job to provide verification, not simply a demurral by officials to opine on their authenticity. If that isn't obvious, then centuries of evidentiary procedure in American and English common law have gone for naught, as well as traditions of journalistic responsibility and professionalism. After all, this argument just means that reporters can type out anything they like and the burden of proof shifts from the accuser to the accused in proving them false -- hardly the process endorsed in libel and slander cases in the US, at least. [emphasis added]

It should be obvious why that argument doesn't hold water. The legal standards in a civil or criminal case must necessarily be more stringent than the standards the rest of society uses in its daily life. To hold someone liable for a tort such as defamation, or to convict a person of a crime, we require that the rules of evidence be more strict and exacting. Such things as the Hearsay Rule, the Best Evidence Rule, and the presumption of innocence burden trial attorneys in order to lessen the possibility that the wrong person gets convicted.

But those aren't the standards the rest of us live by. Michael Jackson should be presumed innocent by his jurors when he's being tried by the state for pedophilia, but that's not the standard a mother of a twelve-year old should use when deciding whether to let her son attend a sleepover at the Neverland Ranch. If Tony Blair ever is indicted for war crimes, or if Congress moves to impeach Bush based on the DSM, than of course the originals must be introduced as evidence (that is, if Bush or his English bitch ever decide to challenge their authenticity), and any hearsay issues will have to be dealt with by the prosecution. But that doesn't mean the rest of us have to give them a free pass in the meantime. [link via Kevin Drum]