You might recall the alleged Republican talking points from a couple of weeks ago. Remember, the memo that argued that the Schiavo case was a big political opportunity of the GOP?

The left-handed side of the pundisphere went nuts, and why not? Here was an official document showing the Republicans plotting to cynically exploit their “ol’ fashioned morals” oriented base.

As has been well-documented over at AmericaBlog, the right also went nuts, attributing the memo to a vast left-wing media conspiracy. Even Senators stood up to say that the memo was likely a fabrication, a dirty trick written by the left to make the right look like it was plotting indecently against the left. I’d be surprised if there weren’t a few on the left who suspected that the right had planted the “false” information so that the left would protest and then the right could “expose” the left’s dirty trick of trying to expose the right’s dirty trick against the left.

And now, even though the truth seems to have emerged, screaming about vast conspiracies can be found all over the web. The right is covering up just how widespread the memo was! The lefty media mis-reported the story to make the GOP look bad! Our hidden alien overlords were using the whole thing as a distraction because we were getting too close to discovering their secret base on the lost continent of Atlantis!

Okay, that last one isn’t seriously believed by many people. Maybe just Drudge. But the point remains that nobody’s willing to talk about what may be the startling, depressing truth here:

The whole thing is the product of a few honest, silly, and non-partisan mistakes. The terrifying possibility is that our system might not be a vastly intelligent machine that churns towards its nefarious and secretive goals, but rather a bunch of miscommunicating idiots with a bunch of individual agendas that mostly concern lunch, lower lumbar support, and getting home this evening before the traffic becomes, like totally crazy.

You’d think the reports about our pre-war Iraq intelligence alone would have convinced Americans that their government isn’t qualified to pull off anything more complicated than a popsicle wrapper (and even then resign themselves to eating just a little bit of paper residue). But no, we the people are living inside a “Pink Panther” movie, convinced that Clousseau is a devastatingly clever master detective only pretending to be a clumsy buffoon, and no amount of broken vases, falls into pudding vats, or other slapstick shenanigans will convince us that there aren’t dark and deadly competent puppet-masters running the show.

But just in case, here’s the Felber Commission Report Timeline on Schiavomemogate:

- On March 15th, Brian Darling, legal counsel for new Senator Mel Martinez, has the inspiration that the right can exploit the Schiavo case to energize their base and make Democrats appear “pro-death.” He writes the memo. It does not occur to him that other Republicans might have thought of this and that they may have had reasons for not committing such thoughts to paper.

- Later that day, Darling proudly passes the rough, poorly-spelled memo to Martinez, who is only two months into the whole “being a Senator” thing and is mainly concentrating on fitting in and not getting beaten up for his lunch money. Martinez stuffs the memo into his pocket and instantly forgets who gave it to him.

- March 16th: Senator Tom Harkin asks Martinez for some background on the “Let’s Save Terri” bill. Martinez, eager to please the veteran Senator and fearing a “wedgie” if he demurs, reaches into his pocket in a desperate quest to find something that says “Schiavo” on it. He hands Harkin the memo.

- March 17th: Harkin reads the memo and believes that he has uncovered a particularly damning internal Republican memo. He passes it to press, with a little note saying “Look what the Republicans are circulating to their Senators!”

- March 18th: The Washington Post and the AP break the story, calling the memo a widely-circulated Republican strategy paper, as Harkin had suggested.

- The left freaks out, assuming (quite reasonably) that this is an explicit statement of the right’s real motivation behind calling attention to the Schiavo case.

- The right freaks out, assuming (quite reasonably) that while this memo is representative of many Republicans’ strategy in the Schiavo case, nobody would be stupid enough to put it on paper. Therefore the memo must be a fake, perpetrated by the Democrats.

- Martinez, eating lunch in his office (from a brown bag - take that, bullies!), sees the controversy erupt on Fox News and shakes his head in disbelief. He feels briefly sorry for whoever was responsible for that enormous cock-up. He calls his legal counsel about an unrelated matter and is only momentarily puzzled by the note of hysteria in Darling’s voice…

There’s more. The final Felber Commission Report is actually 1400 pages long and covers the matter exhaustively. But if you’re an average American, you’re not thinking about reading the report right now - you’re wondering who exactly paid me off to make it look like the conspiracy to undermine either the Democrats or the Republicans wasn’t a part of this whole thing. You’re launching an investigation into my investigation and asking each other “Why didn’t Felber mention the FBI connection? What’s he trying to hide?” and “Isn’t it interesting that he glosses over the Karl Rove/ Ted Kennedy aspect of this?” and “Huh, no mention of Area 51 whatsoever… convenient, huh?”

You may be right. And it would definitely be to your advantage to believe that I’m wrong and that it’s a cabal of deadly efficient and machiavellian schemers who spend our money and send us to war and guard our borders, rather than a bunch of bumbling idiots.

You’ll sleep better.