Religion & Law

I don't want to belabor the point.  I saw that Malkin post as well (the one to which Rick links in his reply to me below).  The problem with the comparison in this context is not one of adjudication but rather subject matter.  I will stipulate that one can find all sorts of horrible things said by lefties all over the internets.  The difference in this case is that we are talking about a McCain campaign that, until just recently, seemed intent on stoking the saying of those horrible things.  So the comparable examples would need to be (1) someone saying things like this on the left, at a campaign rally, audible to Obama, without Obama taking issue with it; or (2) Obama or Biden inciting similarly hateful rhetoric.  I'm not aware of any such examples. 

I'm glad to see that McCain finally started to respond to people at his rallies calling Obama a terrorist, etc., but the fact that he is now doing so only seems to me to underscore the problem with his earlier omission to do so.  Of course, it's precisely because I'm not a McCain supporter that comments like this have absolutely no weight and are easily dismissed as the product of my point of view.  This is why I think it would be nice to see more people on the right taking issue with their own side's campaign tactics. 

UPDATE:  Here's another example of the sort of thing I'm talking about.  Note that this is not some blogger or private citizen.  We're talking about the Chair of the Virginia Republican party.  Also note McCain's tepid response:

QUESTION: The chair of the Republican Party in Virginia has said, quote, in Time magazine, "both Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden have friends that have bombed the Pentagon. That is scary." Is that appropriate for a state party chair to be saying?

MCCAIN: "I have to look at the context of his remarks. I have always repudiated any comments that have been made that were inappropriate about Senator Obama. The fact is that William Ayers was a terrorist and bomber and unrepentant. I don't care about that. But Senator Obama ought be the candid and truthful about his relationship with Mr. Ayers in whose living room Senator Obama launched his campaign and Senator Obama said he was just a guy in the neighborhood."

UPDATE II:  I promise this will be the last example I give, but here's another example.  And, again, this one is not from some random blogger or campaign rally attendee, but rather from the Pennsylvania GOP:

I've been writing about political campaigns for more than a quarter-century now, and it really takes a lot to surprise me, but I am absolutely stunned at the depths that the Republican Party is willing to sink to try in win this election, even as polls are beginning to suggest it may be a lost cause for John McCain and Sarah Palin. At 9:29 p.m., I received in an email the sleaziest political press release I've ever seen. It came from the Republican Party of Pennsylvania and it's headlined: "PAGOP: OBAMA - A TERRORIST'S BEST FRIEND."