And the Von Hoffman award winner is...

Andrew Sullivan.

If you don't know what the Von Hoffman award is, it used to be one of AS's satire awards, given to people who made "egregiously bad predictions in wartime". For some reason, Andrew no longer offers the Von Hoffman, perhaps because it made anti-war types look so silly. In his new liberal incarnation, Andrew is just as likely to criticize the Bush Administration, his favorite subject being (natch) Abu Ghraib.

insert tasteless joke about pyramids of naked men holding a certain special appeal for Andrew

So it is quite hilarious that one half-hour after I read this story about Newsweek's retraction of the Koran-flushing hoax, I found this timeless quote in one of Andy's posts that was written just hours earlier:

So we have evidence of the abuse of Islam by U.S. interrogators; we have four citations of the Koran incident; Newsweek has not retracted the story; and more will no doubt come out. One thing worth reiterating: the notion that this obscenity simply couldn't have happened in the U.S. military (something I believed two years ago) is no longer an operative assumption. We know that incidents like this have happened. And even now, the administration is not denying it outright. (emphasis added).

Ahh, Andrew. That's why I pay his site a quick visit every now and then: there's always plenty of good material available.

Andrew offers a cautionary lesson for all bloggers: Don't let your personal political wishes interfere with reality.