Earlier this week, Jason Zengerle over at The New Republic posted an email that Kos wrote to a private email list asking liberal bloggers not to comment on an ongoing SEC investigation of his friend and co-writer Jerome Armstrong. The story has evolved a lot since then, but the gist of it is that TNR has been insinuating that Kos is the fascist leader of the liberal blogosphere. Or something like that. The innuendo from this paragraph alone is enough to make one conclude that this guy probably has an axe to grind :

Why the strange silence in the face of such damning allegations? Well, I think we now know the answer. It’s a deliberate strategy orchestrated by Kos. TNR obtained a missive Kos sent earlier this week to “Townhouse,” a private email list comprising elite liberal bloggers, including Jane Hamsher, Matt Stoller, and Christy Hardin Smith. And what was Kos’s message to this group that secretly plots strategy in the digital equivalent of a smoke-filled backroom?

Since then, TNR writers Michael Crowley, Jon Chait, Martin Peretz, andLee Siegel have all jumped in to either bash Kos or defend TNR. I’d love to get a peek at what’s been getting discussed on their private email list. Or are private communications only considered a “smoke-filled backroom” when it’s somebody you don’t like?