David Neiwert: Malkin on a Roll

Some things never change. Take, say, Michelle Malkin's methodology.

The other day, Eric Muller pointed out that Malkin had finally gotten around to correcting one of the more audacious smear jobs in her book In Defense of Internment -- namely, her groundless attack on lawyer/historian Peter Irons, whose work in uncovering misfeasance by Justice Department lawyers played a critical role in the court cases overturning the wartime convictions of internment protestors Gordon Hirabayashi and Fred Korematsu.

Here's the passage in question, from pp. 122-23 of In Defense of Internment:

While working for the commission, [Aiko] Herzig Yoshinaga parlayed her tax-subsidized archival research -- which "formed the core" of the commission's primary documentation -- into evidence for private lawsuits challenging the Supreme Court's World War II rulings upholding the war powers of the executive branch. She had met and befriended Peter Irons, an activist attorney and legal historian, during her tenure on the commission and surreptitiously shared confidential documents with him.

This passage was a central part of Malkin's sweeping condemnation of the effort to in the 1970s and '80s to provide reparations for interned Japanese Americans. Malkin characterizes these efforts as an ideological campaign led by a pack of sneaking connivers, and her smear of Irons and Herzig-Yoshinaga are of a piece with this.