I recently stumbled upon this post from the College Democrats of NGCSU (soon to be my alma mater):

Is there any evidence or proof that Bush created or had [a poorly forged document alleging Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium] created?
Yes.
The charges against former White House aid, “Scooter” Libby are concrete evidence that the White House, or George W. Bush, forged the Niger Contract.

Unaware of how an indictment can be considered “concrete evidence” of anything, I’m interested. Tell me how this works out.*

Why would anyone in the Bush White House reveal Ambassador Wilson’s wife as a secret CIA agent?
The conventional wisdom says the secret agent Valerie Plume, Mr. Wilson’s wife, was betrayed to retaliate against the opinion article printed in the papers and written by Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson’s opinion article targeted the Niger contract as being very unlikely evidence to justify an international war.
In fact, all secret intelligence contacts developed by Valerie Plume are now lost forever to the US CIA. Plus, all US embassy employees, family, and friends have been put in the crosshairs of potential assassins as well as terrorists.
Why put all US intelligence gathering networks in the trash just to “get even” with one editorial writer? Does anyone really believe “Scooter” Libby or anyone else in government is that stupid? The penalty he faces is up to thirty years in prison plus tremendous loss of personal power and reputation. So why target one writer? Why not get even with the cartoonists, the TV talking heads, and a few Democrats? Why a personal vendetta against the writer of one editorial column?
The writer, Ambassador Wilson, and his wife had access to an intelligence network that had already determined the Niger contract was forged. What if that network was working to determine who forged the document and why it was created?
All possibility of linking the document to the White House was destroyed when Mr. Libby destroyed the professional careers of two US patriots.
Think of these two patriots whenever Bush attacks critics of the Iraq war. Valerie Plume and Joe Wilson only wanted to find the truth. Bush destroyed that truth.
When he did that, he indicted his administration on the charge of forging documents to support justifying attacking Iraq.

So… the lack of any evidence whatsoever is proof that maleficence has occurred? Interesting. There is also no evidence that the moon is made of green cheese. Following this logic, it must be true. It must also be true that I am really an alien from the planet Zork, sent to Earth to destroy humanity by promoting neo-libertarian ideas with my blog (another contention for which there is absolutely no evidence). I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

There is also an appalling lack of evidence that Mike Parker (the author of the post) - who is probably a perfectly nice, intelligent individual when he’s not discussing politics - has the capacity for rational thought. And we know that’s not true (see above). So I guess it doesn’t work out, does it?

This type of “reasoning” is so imbecilic that it literally makes my head hurt. Has the state of western liberalism sunken so low that it is reduced to espousing conspiracies of the “there is no evidence, so there must be a cover up” variety? Years ago, this type of postulation was limited to wylie-eyed right-wing conspiracy hacks with too much money and people who can’t accept the simplicity of JFK’s assassination.

Now it’s moved over to the left, which appears to have collectively lost its mind. I suppose that if you can’t make your points empirically or through reason, you must resort to what can only be described as a gross mutation of a non sequitur fallacy or argument from ignorance. “Conspiracy!” “Cover-up!” “Forgeries!” It is, in the end, all quite humorous.

P.S. Exams are almost over. It feels good to be back. :-)

*The original version of this post inferred that the official indictment of Scooter Libby contained no direct reference to the Niger document. This was incorrect. My apologies.