Longtime Los Angeles Times media writer David Shaw must be spinning in his grave after his successor Tim Rutten and his "four levels of editors" let this mistake-filled piece run in the paper last Saturday.

Bob Owens, who has owned this story, goes through the mistakes here. Patterico has been e-mailing the Times public editor, Jamie Gold, here, analyzing the Rutten article vis a vis the Times' ethics policy here, and even offered up the wording for a correction here.

Credit Rutten's colossal screw-up to the fact that when writing his piece he likely stuck to reading the postings of the left-wing of the blogosphere on this issue and never bothered to contact either Bob Owens or The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb -- both who have been leaders in exposing this scandal.

I'd also like to point out that it is almost a certainty that none of those "four levels of editors" who read Rutten's piece before it appeared in the paper are conservative blog readers who would've been able to flag at least a couple of these errors and prevented Rutten some embarassment.