By now, most folks should be familiar with the Chuck Hagel nomination and the kerfuffle over his refusal to release any and all information relating to the “Friends of Hamas” group. Well, there’s a good reason for that. The group doesn’t exist and the entire reason that “Friends of Hamas” is even in the vernacular is because a reporter, Dan Friedman, asked a question as to whether Hagel had met with controversial groups and proposed names were so over-the-top, so linked to terrorism in the Middle East, that it was clear that Friedman was talking hypothetically and hyperbolically.

Well, the folks who took the hyperbole and ran with it at Breitbart basically took the questions out of context and began running the malicious smear campaign against Hagel.

‘Friends of Hamas’: Dan Friedman’s unwitting role in the birth of a malicious rumor tinyurl.com/bfyqk5d

— lawhawk (@lawhawk) February 20, 2013