[Longtime readers of this site know that I don’t spend much time commenting on commentators. To recap my reasons - there are plenty of people that do this quite well, and plenty of others who end up inside “Harry Potter and the Echo Chamber of Squabbles.” But every once in a while…]

Bush’s State of the Union uranium claim has has become big news, with the White House scrambling to assign blame, control damage and locate shiny objects with which to distract people. Further evidence is emerging that puts the blame squarely on the White House. My treasonous colleagues and I are sputtering with outrage. Congressional Democrats are clamoring for an investigation. The world is shocked, burning hailstones fall from the air, two-headed goats are being born by the dozen, and in New York’s harbor a single tear can be seen trailing down Lady Liberty’s cheek.

And the conservative media is… um, too busy to really think about. From the right wing, the message is “Hey, what’s that over there? Um, how can anyone think about such trivialities? It’s Bastille Day! Uh, leave a message at the tone! Beeeep. Are they gone yet?”

Let’s break down the response.

Response #1: One Thousand Neros Fiddle

The biggest dogs in the conservative kennel are opting to talk about other things (presumably waiting for the smaller dogs to come up with a remotely plausible spin).

- William Safire is dealing with it by by boldly taking on Harry Truman and his critics.

- Glenn “Rubber Stamp” Reynolds is emulating our President with his usual practice of passing on other people’s statements without any undue thought or analysis. Today’s hot topics are those rotten French, those lying liberals, and how great things are in Iraq. “Indeed.”

- Andrew Sullivan is spending the day riding some beloved hobby horses. Howell Raines is a prat. The BBC “hates the West.” George W. Bush is so very clever that he looks stupid to mortal men.

- James Lileks(who can be a lot of fun to read, by the way) is entertaining the troops with tales of going to the movies and blasting liberal pundits on small issues. To his credit, Lileks did deal with the Big Story on Friday, writing a long screed about how exaggerating is bad. If you scroll allllll the way down you’ll find that CBS exaggerated its knowledge of What Bush Knew in a web-only headline.

Response #2 - Blame Canada

Just down the right-pundit food-chain (and it’s a mighty precipitous drop - think blue whales and plankton), they’re bashing about in all directions with giant foam bats. Bush was right. Bush didn’t know. Bush didn’t know he was right. The whole thing doesn’t matter anyway.

- Steven den Beste of the “USS Clueless” still needs an editor the way Cousin It needed a barber, but the general gist over there is that Iraq was a nuclear threat and we really oughta be concentrating on taking out the rest of the Axis of Evil.

- Charles Johnson over at “Little Green Footballs” continues his bid for the world record in the category of “World’s Longest Meltdown.” To the extent that you can extract anything amid the froth besides his usual gentle plea to exterminate the Muslims before they exterminate us, there’s a quick entry about how British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is standing by the British intelligence that Bush referenced in his speech. So the uranium thing DID happen, and if it didn’t it was because those lousy Brits misled the President.

- But the most popular and most bizarre conservative response is embodied by Tim Blair: “Who Cares?” Even if the President lied outright, it was only a part of the justification for war. Just a contributing factor. So only an unAmerican pedant would make a big deal out of it. Why dwell on it?

Someone remind me: Exactly how many American deaths did Bill Clinton’s lie about his sex life contribute to?