Friday, February 29, 2008

Ron Paul update

By Rick Morris

As promised previously, I'm addressing my earlier report about Ron Paul dropping out of the presidential race. I acted at the time based on information dropped on me exclusively (to others shortly thereafter, but to me first) by a source connected to the congressional race down in Texas. As we get closer to the primary, it has become apparent that the odds of this coming to fruition have plummeted -- plus a review of Paul's late FEC filings shows that he has raised a mountain of money for the congressional race (due, no doubt, in no small part, to my story getting used for fundraising purposes -- you're welcome, Ron!) in the late stages of the campaign, thus removing a key justification for withdrawing from the presidential race (the ability to legally move the caysh to the congressional race). So I will forgo waiting through the weekend to see what happens and simply declare now that the news previously reported by me (not us collectively, only me) will not come to pass -- as I promised that I would if these circumstances materialized.

I make no apologies whatsoever for this matter. I reported news that was provided to me by a source and my decision to accept that information didn't hurt anyone but me (if you don't believe me, you should see how much of my precious time and energy has been taken up by dealing with abusive spamming from the enraged no-life tin-foil hat crowd) -- clearly, it did not hurt the Paul campaign, which used it as a rallying point (and it was not intended to hurt anyone, but you'll never convince the conspiracy nuts of that) to raise big money -- so I see no need to shed crocodile tears when I did nothing immoral. While this blog covers a multiplicity of subjects and is primarily more opinion-oriented as opposed to aspiring to break hard news, we will run with exclusive news items in the future if circumstances dictate. I can say in all humility that I'm going to learn from this going forward in terms of evaluating material from sources. Anyone who wants to gloat at that admission is a fool because we should all be trying to learn from experiences and learn how to operate smarter on a daily basis. My report allowed the Paul campaign to recharge its finances and efforts (unintentionally, as I am not a Paul partisan, but you probably already knew that!), so if anyone still wants to hate on me even after the influx of "Morris money" allows him to come back and win big -- well, that's on them.

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