From Change Congress interim chief executive Adam Green's Open Left blog post in response to Ceci Connolly's June 28 Washington Post article:

Connolly then asked me why progressives were picking a political fight on the public option, as opposed to another issue. I guess the fact that it's the #1 domestic issue of the day -- one that affects millions of American families -- wasn't explanation enough.

I figured she was looking for a quote summarizing the political stakes, so I though for a moment and said, “The public option has become a proxy for the question of whether Democrats will stand on principle and represent their constituents.”

I was quite proud of that answer. It summarizes what a lot of people are feeling -- the public option is the “line in the sand” issue for Democrats, something Chris has written about here on OpenLeft several times.

Connolly's take on that quote:

Green, in an interview, was hard-pressed to articulate a substantive argument for the public plan but said that it “has become a proxy for the question of Democrats who stand on principle and represent their constituents.”

WHAT? Connolly asked me a question on the politics, and when I gave her an answer on that, she said I didn't answer on the substance? Did I mention Ceci Connolly is a r-i-d-i-c-u-l-o-u-s reporter?

FLASHBACK: In December 1 and December 2, 1999, Post articles, Connolly misquoted then-Vice President Al Gore, falsely claiming that he said he had discovered the Love Canal disaster. On February 17, 2000, Slate.com editor-at-large Jack Shafer wrote that New York Times reporter Katharine Q. “Kit” Seelye and Connolly were responsible for creating the false Love Canal story: "[I]t's Seelye's fault -- and the Washington Post's Ceci Connolly's -- that folks think Gore claimed credit for Love Canal in the first place. Which he didn't" [emphasis in original].