POWIP

Somehow, though, they were “conscioned.”

Jimmie Bise noticed Mark Knoller’s reference, on Twitter, to anti-HCR protesters as “tea baggers,” and the issue was swiftly taken up by Stacy and Dan Riehl (who never links here).

I understand completely the necessity of calling leftists on their double standards regarding Civility NOW! and I think that it was a stupid thing for Knoller to do. Still, I’ve followed his stream at Twitter for a long time, and I think that he’s shown himself to be an honest broker of information. It’s just possible that it was meant ironically, though it would have been better for him to place the expression in quotation marks. Be that as it may, I don’t think it’s possible for him to comment publicly on what he meant by it.

Much more egregious, in my view, are Salon editor Joan Walsh’s lies regarding Stupak and the nuns, which nobody seems to have made an issue of. The Anchoress got her back up over the underlying issue, in an excellent post, and as I’ve mentioned, there’s a precipitous drop in Dante’s Inferno to the malebolge, where the fraudulent unexist, for good reason. The upshot, though, is that today Joan Walsh is demanding denunciations of others’ behavior, while still not addressing her own. Perhaps I simply don’t read Walsh’s column enough, but I don’t recall her having denounced the Purple Shirt beatdown of Kenneth Gladney, do you?

In Liberal Symbolic World, though, sticks and stones are much less violent than words. For that matter, Gibbsy continues not to have information regarding whether or not Sestak was offered a position—in other words, a bribe—for his vote on health care. Perhaps Joan Walsh would care to denounce this stonewalling on the part of the Obama administration, which threatens to make it a combination of the worst of the Carter and Nixon administrations. No? Crickets?

Ace (who never links here) is the place if you want continuous updates on where the vote buying stands at the moment. And pace Joe’s comments, Jeff is entirely right about where things stand, and what’s incumbent on us as citizens.

I’m sorry, Joan, but after the journalistic lies about racist catcalls at a Palin rally in 2008, it really is incumbent on you to produce some evidence that isn’t hearsay before I’ll denounce these “tea baggers.” Meanwhile, I think you owe a retraction and apology regarding the nuns lies, and as much as I agree with Kyle-Anne’s sentiments, I think she has unfortunately amplified the dimensions of the nun trouble.

Having said that, if these reports are true, I do denounce the behavior of the catcallers, and the spitter ought to be arrested and tried on assault charges. Considering the appalling contempt that’s been shown for citizens and for democratic process by Congress in this whole debacle, though, perhaps they should reserve a little of their criticism for themselves, as should Joan Walsh.

And, please: if you follow the link that claims that the Capitol Police arrested the alleged Clyburn spitter, but that the Congressman is declining to press charges, you will find that the AP says that there was no arrest at all. So, somebody, it appears, is lying. Lying like an HCR backer spinning the CBO’s numbers.

Speaking of truth and lies, by the way, here is Clark Hoyt on the truth of James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles’ ACORN videos:

Acorn’s supporters appear to hope that the whole story will fall apart over the issue of what O’Keefe wore: if that was wrong, everything else must be wrong. The record does not support them. If O’Keefe did not dress as a pimp, he clearly presented himself as one: a fellow trying to set up a woman — sometimes along with under-age girls — in a house where they would work as prostitutes. In Washington, he said the prostitution was to finance his future in politics. A worker for Acorn Housing, an allied group, warned him to stay away from the brothel lest someone “get wind that you got a house and that your girlfriend is over there running a house of women of the night. You will not have a career.”

Read the whole thing. It is clear, as I have asserted over and over, that ACORN are almost everywhere counseling the “clients” to commit fraud. That seems to me to be a bad thing. (Via Hot Air, which never links here.)

UPDATE: William Jacobson on the Panopticon into which so-called liberals are delivering the American public.

UPDATE x2: Oh, gosh . . . looks as though my skepticism was warranted. (Naturally, Memeorandum never links).

He was one of the great pop craftsmen, and there’s an awful lot out there on his importance in the larger scheme of things. I was a Byrds fan as a kid, so I liked that jingle-jangle guitar, and a fan of Badfinger, and later the bands that were said to have been influenced by Big Star. Here’s a great round-up of Chilton tunes by Claude Pate, whom you might know by another name.

Chilton was more awesome than bacon-flavored vodka, and almost as awesome as bacon-flavored vodka with breasts.

But [Stupak] went beyond what was necessary, yesterday and today, in disrespecting the 60 Catholic nuns representing 59,000 sisters who bucked the Catholic bishops and came out for the bill Wednesday, declaring it “the real pro-life position.”

Only this is an egregious lie, and by now, had she bothered to do her homework, she’d know that:

“A recent letter from Network, a social justice lobby of sisters, grossly overstated whom they represent in a letter to Congress that was also released to media,” she writes. “Network’s letter, about health care reform, was signed by a few dozen people, and despite what Network said, they do not come anywhere near representing 59,000 American sisters.”

“The letter had 55 signatories, some individuals, some groups of three to five persons. One endorser signed twice,” she noted. “There are 793 religious communities in the United States. The math is clear. Network is far off the mark.”

In fact, there are only 59,000 women in Catholic religious orders in the United States, meaning the Network letter could never have represented all, or even most, of them.

Walsh’s assertion has even less to do with the real world than the CBO scores that the House Democrats have been having cooked up for them. Her respect for the religious women is so great that this is how she chooses to represent them:

Her own publication has carried articles stating that the Catholic Bishops don’t care about health care. In other words, Joan probably owes her readers an apology, at least, if not Stupak.

Principle.

As Steve Gutowski says:

Pennsylvania senate candidate Joe Sestak told CNS News today that the Slaughter Rule is not open and transparent but, oh well, he is voting for it anyway. Looks like Pennsylvania’s get to choose between one hack democrat or another to run against Pat Toomey…