Yes, it's a hard thing to put a brand new political publication on the map as a Beltway must-read. But in attempting to get there quickly The Politico seems already to have made more than its share of journalistic and ethical missteps. There was the Dan Gerstein op-ed attacking political enemies of Joe Lieberman that somehow neglected to note that he was still on Lieberman's payroll. There was its single biggest news break to date--John Edwards is suspending his presidential campaign!--which turned out to be utterly broken. And now there's its odd report that Harry Reid called outgoing outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs Peter Pace "incompetent" and also badmouthed General David Petraeus in a conference call with liberal bloggers. The sourcing of the front-page article always seemed sketchy: "Incompetent" is the only word in quotes anywhere and author John Bresnahan cited no sources by name and has declined to say whether he actually spoke to anyone who took part in the call. And, whatever Reid may think of Pace (who's pretty unpopular these days), it seems awfully unlikely that he would also take a slap at Petraeus. TPM's Greg Sargent has called the "scoop"--already being used by Tony Snow and RNC Chair Robert Duncan to slam Reid--into further question, quoting three bloggers who took part in the call and say they have no recollection of Reid saying any such thing. Meanwhile, Reid himself is mum on what he might have said about Pace but flatly denies the assessment of Petraeus attributed to him. It seems too early to say for certain what happened here, but given Sargent's strong, on-the-record sourcing and Bresnahan's utter lack of the same, it's not looking very good for The Politico, which increasingly seems more interested in getting a story first than in getting it right. --Christopher Orr