One of the things people were wondering about when Time Magazine hack and republican useful idiot Joe Klein published his column accusing congressional democrats of coddling foreign terrorists, was why the hell didn’t the democrats respond?

Well…as it turns out…they did.  Time Magazine simply refused to publish their rebuttals…

Time magazine refused to publish responses to Klein’s false smears

The disgraceful behavior of Time Magazine in the Joe Klein scandal has been well-documented. But new facts have emerged that reveal that Time‘s behavior was far worse than previously thought.

First, Sen. Russ Feingold submitted a letter to Time protesting the false statements in Klein’s article. But Time refused to publish it. Sen. Feingold’s spokesman said that the letter "was submitted to TIME very shortly after Klein’s column ran but the letters department was about as responsive as the column was accurate."

Just to reveal how corrupt that behavior is, The Chicago Tribune — which previously published the factually false excerpts of Klein’s column and then clearly retracted them — yesterday published Feingold’s letter. As Feingold details — but had to go to the Chicago Tribune‘s Letter section to do it — "Klein calls the Democrats’ position on reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ‘well beyond stupid’ but without getting his facts straight." Feingold also said that "Klein is also flat out wrong" in his false claims that there was some "bipartisan agreement" on a bill to vest "new surveillance powers" that House Democrats ignored.

Second, Rep. Rush Holt — before he published his response in The Huffington Post detailing Klein’s false claims — asked that he be given the opportunity to respond to Klein’s false column directly on Time‘s Swampland, where Klein was in the process of making all sorts of statements compounding his errors. But Time also denied Rep. Holt the opportunity to bring his response to the attention of Time‘s readers.

According to Zach Goldberg, Rep. Holt’s spokesman: "Rep. Holt had an email exchange with Mr. Klein about FISA and his column. During the exchange, Rep. Holt made a request to respond with a Swampland post to clarify what is really in the RESTORE Act. Mr. Klein noted he already issued a public apology and did not accept the request."

Let’s just ponder for a second how lowly Time‘s behavior here is. It refused the requests of two sitting members of Congress, both of whom are members of the Intelligence Committees and have played a central role in drafting the pending FISA legislation, to correct Klein’s false statements in Time itself. What kind of magazine smears its targets with patently false statements and then blocks them from responding?

Go read the rest of it, for a sickening glimpse of how the corporate news media, in this case Time Magazine, deliberately pushes the republican party line while silencing the democrats. This behavior on the part of the corporate news media may have a lot to do with why capital hill democrats are perceived as being perceived as silent and mute before the Bush administration onslaught.  They may look like they’re not fighting back, because the voters aren’t being allowed to see them fighting back.