The punchline is he's willing to pay $100,000 for the entire archive of the now-defunct listserv started by liberal blogger Ezra Klein in 2007. I mentioned yesterday that as right-wing bloggers obsess over the off-the-record emails exchanged by wonky journalists and prof's on the list, conservatives have (comically) turned the benign community into something of huge significance and worldly importance. (Did I mention it was a listserv?)

The topic has become a hot one in the wake of David Weigel's resignation from the Washington Post. He covered the conservative movement from the daily, but when some of Weigel's emails to Journolist were leaked and showed him privately deriding prominent conservatives, right-wing bloggers flipped out and Weigel resigned.

Since then, Breitbart and other clueless press haters on the far-right have convinced themselves that getting their hands on the Jurnolist archive will confirm their deepest suspicions about the unethical “collusion” that takes place in newsrooms as journalists work as unpaid consultants for the DNC and work tirelessly to advance progressive causes in America.

Or something.

Here was over-excited blogger Ann Althouse's breathless (and fictitious) take on Journolist [emphasis added]:

They had this email list that was designed — apparently — to figure out how to structure the various news stories to serve the interests of their party. The Journolist was a self-herding device. They wanted to be good cogs in a machine that would generate power for the Democratic Party, didn't they?

And Andrew Breitbart from earlier this week:

Like a ventriloquist's dummy, the reporters on the listserv mimicked the talking points invented and agreed upon by the intellectuals who were invited to the virtual cocktail party that was Klein's “JournoList.”

Like Althouse, Breitbart doesn't have the faintest idea what Journolist was, so he simply lets his press-bashing imagination run wild and concocts a pleasing tale, and starts his loopy chase down the rabbit's hole yelling “collusion!”

But it turns out not only doesn't Breitbart understand what Journolist was, he's also ignorant about who its members were. Note this Breitbart description:

Ezra Klein's “JournoList 400” is the epitome of progressive and liberal collusion

And then on Wednesday:

In fact, when one of the progressives on this list outed Dave Weigel, the actual rules were broken.

Breitbart wasn't a member of Journolist and appears to have zero first-hand knowledge of the email exchange, yet note how he announced with authority this week that it was a liberal member of the listserv who leaked the Weigel emails. But where's his proof? Breitbart produces no evidence.

And yes, I can already hear his shrieking response to my challenge: Everyone on Journolist was a liberal, so of course a liberal leaked the Weigel emails and did him in.

Did I mention that Breitbart appears to have no idea what JournoList was? This is how Ezra Klein, who founded the listserv, recently described its formation:

At the beginning, I set two rules for the membership. The first was the easy one: No one who worked for the government in any capacity could join. The second was the hard one: The membership would range from nonpartisan to liberal, center to left.

Uh-oh. Breitbart has been running off at the mouth this week about how Journolist was a forum for left-wing journalists and a cabal of progressive evil. But that's no accurate. The listserv had roughly 400 members and according to its founder they ranged from “nonpartisan to liberal, center to left.”

So I'll ask again, where's Breitbart's proof that it was one of the liberal members of Journolist who leaked the Weigel emails and had it in for the writer? (As opposed to a centrist or nonpartisan member.)

When Breitbart actually finds some evidence to support his conspiratorial claim, than he ought to blog it. Barring that, he ought to post a correction about his blatantly erroneous description of Journolist as a liberal-only email exchange, and more specifically his authoritative claim that a liberal Jounrolist member outed Weigel.

I'll wait...

UPDATED: In his latest Journolist-related post, Breitbart refers to himself as a “journalist,” which may be the funniest thing he's written this year.