Alas, yes, they had to admit that they said what they quoted, and that they got it from Raines himself. (Via Hot Air Headlines

It’s hard to figure out which is the funniest bit: the fact that they tried giving McCain two Pinocchio noses for the knavish tactic of directly quoting them, the “we’ve sent out emails to the relevant people” (read: “we’re going to stall until this goes away”) bit, the fact that all of this got driven by an online ad – or that (according to comments) the first draft of this post referred to Howell Raines, who was of course the former editor of the NYT.

Heck of a Freudian slip there, is all I’m saying.