After all, there are just as many public facts to support the Washington Post claim as there are to back up Politico's sensational report yesterday about how accused Holocaust Museum killer James von Brunn had “targeted” the conservative Weekly Standard.

To review, Politico's Ben Smith wrote yesterday that investigators found the address of the Weekly Standard in von Brunn's car and that investigators visited the mag to see if it had received any recent threats. From my reading, the story sort of ended there with a thud. (The investigators' visit to the magazine seemed utterly routine in this case.) But Smith saw something much more provocative. And so even though he had no additional facts to substantiate the claim that von Brunn had targeted the Weekly Standard, that didn't stop Smith from reporting, as fact, that von Brunn had “targeted” the Weekly Standard.

And yes, conservative bloggers loved Smith's version of events and started repeating the claim that the Holocaust Museum shooter targeted the Weekly Standard.

But guess what? According to investigators, the address of the Washington Post was also found in von Brunn's car. And I'd bet anybody $10 that the Post received a follow-up visit from investigators to see if the paper had received any threats recently.

So shouldn't Politico launch the story that the Washington Post was “targeted” by von Brunn, since there's just as much evidence to support that claim as there was when Politico announced, categorically, that the alleged killer had “targeted” the Weekly Standard?

UPDATE: Also found inside von Brunn's car was the address for the White House as well as an anti-Obama note. So using the Politico standard, should we now state unequivocally that von Brunn “targeted” the president? Don't think conservatives are going to like that one, though.

UPDATE: For conservatives like Michelle Malkin who are positively giddy about the shaky Weekly Standard report and who are convinced that proves von Brunn wasn't a right-winger because how could a conservative possibly be angry at the neoconservative Weekly Standard, please pick up a copy of conservative Pat Buchanan's book, Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted The Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency.