He's Ba-a-a-a-ack

You know Sully's returned from his vacation, because he responds to Weigel's slam at his Trig coverage with a 56 million word piece (that's a conservative estimate) about it, bless his bald head.

And in the middle of his torrent, gold:

The more revealing point Dave makes is that what truly matters in journalism is not truth but "reputation." Almost every single one of my peers in September 2008 told me not to ask these questions because it would hurt my "reputation". Many of them privately conceded that there could be something fishy here (many privately outright disbelieve Palin's stories) but one's "reputation" as a "serious" journalist forbade one from even inquiring.

Let me simply state my view: these people are a disgrace to journalism.

We journalists are and should remain the lowest of the low life forms in a political democracy. We should not be hobnobbing with the powerful, let alone bragging about it, and begging for scooplets to get Politico-style pageview moolah. We should not be garnering our reputations and angling to get on cable or playing water-slides with the people we cover.

We should be asking the most uncomfortable questions of the many frauds and phonies and charlatans who are in public office - and enjoy being despised by the legions of true-believers who actually credit the endless bullshit shoveled out into the public by frauds like Palin.

And then the killshot at the end.

I am, after all, not claiming something for which there can be no proof. I am not claiming something after contrary proof has been provided (as in Obama's birth certificate). I am merely asking to clear up a question for which there must be a mountain of readily available medical records, and which Palin could have released almost two years ago - and still refuses, even when asked in a friendly attempt to kill off the rumors once and for all. In this refusal to provide information, Palin's key allies are in what now passes for the press. And you wonder why we knew nothing about John Edwards or Eliot Spitzer or Stanley McChrystal or ... well, WMDs in Iraq or torture, until it was all over and done with.

Until this syndrome of "reputation" is abandoned, this democracy has no functioning adversarial press.

Fuckin' A, Sully. Fuckin' A.