Clinton's false attack on Obama's credibility cited RNC press release

Yesterday, I noted a funny example of Hillary Clinton's pattern of prevarication: her campaign attacked him for lying, except the claim they made was false. They said:

Sen. Obama consistently and falsely claims that he was a law professor.

The University of Chicago, where Barack Obama was a law professor, then released a statement defending him:

From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School.

Today, I learned (via psericks) that the source for Clinton's claim was in part a Republican National Committee press release. Moreover, they did it in a cleverly dishonest way. Here's what their citation looked like:

[Hotline Blog, 4/9/07; Chicago Sun-Times, 8/8/04]

Notice anything missing? Like a link? Here's what the citation would have looked like with links:

[Hotline Blog, 4/9/07; Chicago Sun-Times, 8/8/04]

Now first of all, it doesn't really matter what your citations are when your facts are wrong, but least if rely on multiple sources for an assertion that turns out to be false, you have a strong claim to having made a mistake in good faith.

So I'll give them a mulligan on the Sun-Times article. But the Hotline Blog item is an entirely different matter -- because it turns out the blog entry was merely a regurgitation of an RNC press release.

April 09, 2007
RNC To Blast Obama As "Fabricator"

Barack Obama will guest on CBS' "The Late Show With David Letterman" tonight. He "shares the star billing" with actress Halle Berry (Sweet, Chicago Sun-Times, 4/9).

The RNC will blast e-mail "Obama's Top Ten Fabrications" to the press later today. (We'll add that these are "alleged" fabrications, and some of them are... a bit of a stretch.)

They include: "#6: Obama's Campaign Only Had 'Very Attenuated' Ties To The 1984 Ad Creator"

#10: Obama Was A Constitutional Law Professor

Even: "#8: Obama Was Fluent In Indonesian As A Child"

The full release, after the jump. This might be the first RNC e-mail the Clinton campaign will applaud and file away.

Emphasis added.

Are journalists paying attention to this kind of stuff? They should treat this as an insult to their intelligence. And they should treat this as yet another reason to accept nothing that the Clinton campaign says as truthful -- unless independently verified by an third-party.