Not much more needs to be written about Ed Klein's book on Hillary Clinton. It's been universally panned by reviewers of all partisan flavors.

That said, it was a delight watching Joe Conason on Al Franken's Sundance radio/video show this past Friday. (Audio is here and here, and a transcript is here). He is more of what we need to see from the left: use of a tough, unshakable approach with facts, reason and logic at the ready, pounding away in search of truth. Joe absolutely shredded this Klein character -- to the point where Al would have to make hand gestures to Joe to back off, else risk having Klein simply sign off.

However, despite all of Klein's pathetic, feeble attempts at answering the many questions posed by Joe and Al, he never once threatened to bag the interview because first and foremost, as he admits, he simply wants to sell books. He's in it for the money, period. He didn't mind as much that he was being used as a human punching bag as long as his book was being mentioned. In fact before he started the interview, he wanted to make sure Al fully plugged the book at the start.

All too often we see an interview like this (e.g. Tim Russert) where the guest is able to worm his/her way through with replies that are really just non-answers. Next thing you know, they're wrapping up for a commercial. Here we were able to see Joe not let the wriggling, sweaty guest get off so easy. And note that Conason was NOT being rude per say as much as he was being persistent, repeating questions politely until he could get an answer, and for those answers that were just absurd, Joe would quickly call Klein on it, laying out the facts. It was just beautiful.