“Now I begin to understand the intimidation I have been subjected to for simply asking questions,” says the man whose “questions” led off with hey, did Sarah Palin gave birth to her own baby? And why isn’t the McCain campaign releasing the records of the birth of that baby? And why didn’t anyone ever see Sarah Palin pregnant? And if she were pregnant, why would she try to give birth to the kid in Alaska instead of in Texas? Why is the McCain campaign not answering my questions? How dare they!

How does he understand the “intimidation” to which he has been subjected — the intimidation that, among other things, led to him garnering more web traffic by a factor of three than he has ever received in his career? Because according to the ludicrous New York Times reporters’ notebook dump of a piece today, a frustrated and silly assistant’s of Sarah Palin’s in Alaska contacted a blogger writing hostile stuff about Palin and said, “Stop blogging!”

Wow. It’s kind of like Stalin, isn’t it?

“All I can reassure my readers is: I’m now more determined than ever to reveal the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about this dangerous, vindictive Christianist cipher being foisted on the United States,” says The Man of Beagle. Who knew that, among the gifts the Sarah Palin nomination has given us, there would also be the delightful spectacle of watching a writer who once prided himself on his real-world skepticism descend publicly into a state of preening, paranoid, credulous self-righteousness unprecedented in the annals of pseudo-intellection, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.