As Joe Conason notes in his Salon column, during the 1990's reporter Christopher Ruddy, cheered on by his boss Richard Melon Scaife, became something of a one-man, right-wing clearing house for all kinds of hateful and misleading attacks on the new Democratic president [emphasis added]:

Working at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, owned by billionaire and avowed Clinton foe Richard Mellon Scaife, Ruddy popularized the canard that Foster had not committed suicide, as determined by five official investigations, but more likely had been murdered -- possibly to cover up corruption in the Whitewater land deal or because of an illicit affair with Hillary Rodham Clinton or both.

Beyond spreading paranoia about the Foster tragedy, Ruddy and Scaife both played central roles in the distribution of nearly half a million copies of “The Clinton Chronicles” and other covert machinations against the Clinton White House –- most notably the “Arkansas Project,” a $2.4 million scheme to dig up or invent crimes by the president and first lady, with assistance from several unsavory characters, including die-hard segregationist Jim Johnson, a couple of private detectives and a bait-shop owner.

Virtually none of that Ruddy/Scaife-sponsored nonsense ever panned out. And now, 15 years later, the two are forces behind Newsmax, which (surprise!) has become a clearing house for all kinds of hateful and misleading attacks on the new Democratic president.

Writes Conason:

Ruddy was among the most insistent endorsers of the Obama birth certificate myth, playing much the same role he once did during the Vince Foster affair. He has assiduously promoted the “tea party” movement and the “socialism” meme. When Newsmax published an essay by an obscure former newsman that seemed to urge a military coup against Obama last week (and then removed it), the reverberations were felt across the political spectrum. Every day the site blasts forth a barrage of supposed Obama scandals and embarrassments to be amplified by Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the panoply of talk radio and cable megaphones, knowing that by sheer volume, some of it will stick.

Here's the kicker though. In today's Washington Post, Ruddy concedes that his often hysterical reporting during the Clinton years was bogus. He confesses he was “overzealous” and “over the top” in his partisan Clinton hunting. In fact, Ruddy now considers Clinton to have been “a great president.”

So why on earth would anyone take seriously a single word published in the Obama-hating Newsmax publication if in ten or fifteen years Ruddy is just going to turn around and admit he'd been a bit “over the top.” Meaning, Ruddy and Scaife built their journalism 'reputations," as they were, on mindless Clinton pursuit and were caught peddling dark fantasies; fantasies that Ruddy admits were bogus.

Now the two are doing the exact same thing with regards to Obama via Newsmax, and we're supposed to expect different results?