FRED HIATT REFUSES ACCOUNTABILITY; BILL KELLER ACCEPTS IT. The big news organizations need to come to terms with their role in spreading White House misinformation -- and their failure to dig out the truth -- in the run-up to the Iraq war. Because if they don't, they risk making the same catastrophic mistakes again in the run-up to the possible conflict with Iran -- and those mistakes could have even graver consequences. Bill Keller understands this. Fred Hiatt doesn't.

IRAN REALITY. One thing that makes the Iran issue difficult is that one side is led by a religious fanatic suffering delusions of grandeur with a taste for demagogic posturing and the other country has, well, about the same. Thus, it seems that American and Iranian officials alike are exaggerating the successes of the Iranian nuclear program, each for their own reasons, needlessly boiling the pot.

SOME RECOVERY. Brad Plumer, wielding a fearsome EPI study, does a nice job debunking the claim that stagnating wages are merely the inevitable effect of rising health costs. As he notes, between 2004 and 2005 the bottom 20 percent saw their wages drop nearly 2%, but only 24% of this quintile receives employer-based health care. Had health costs leapt up 39%, they might be the explanation. Instead, they went up 9.2%, and likely less for these folks, who tend to receive substandard benefits.

HARDBALL. It's a bit Machiavellian, but what a move. Turns out that a hefty chunk of congressional Republicans wanted to delete James Sensenbrenner's provision turning all illegal immigrants into felons. Too explosive, they thought, to unite behind a bill that would render 1.6 million children serious criminals hiding on the lam. The Bush administration asked Sensenbrenner to soften the offense of lacking a visa to a misdemeanor and so he did, offering an amendment to that effect. The amendment failed, 164-257, with 191 Democrats voting to retain the harsh penalties:

WHERE DO YOU COME FROM, WHERE DO YA GO? After Monday's immigration marches, The National Review's Cliff May crept forth with a dark, ominous post wondering about the shadowy groups organizing these demonstrations and the nature of their true "agenda." Well May can take that extra layer of tin foil off his hat, because the answers are out, and they're pretty innocuous.

PSA. For the past few months, spammers have bombarded our comments section. It came to a point where, for a brief period yesterday morning, they had brought down all of TAP Online. We had to temporarily deactivate the comments section to look into this problem more carefully, but it should all be resolved later today. Sorry for the inconvenience.

--Alec Oveis

BOOING CHENEY. This is bizarre. Dick Cheney was selected to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals home opener yesterday and got booed as he took the mound because he's ridiculously unpopular. This, as Jane Hamsher notes, was reported by The Washington Post thusly: