JON HENKE ON BLOOD LIBELS:

The ongoing efforts to conflate the Tiller and Holocaust Museum murderers with the Right, conservatives or Republicans – or to imply that criticism of government is responsible for these murders – is absurd and offensive. Would the critics change their political views if it turned out that one of the killers was a left wing militant? No.

What’s more, it’s not something any of the critics actually believe. Recall their outrage when Andrew Sullivan suggested that a fringe on the Left would fight against the US. Of the idea that this fringe on the Left would “ramp up its hatred in the days and months ahead”, Duncan Black said, “Sullivan was one of the earliest adopters of the idea that the most appropriate response to September 11 was to figure how to to use it to pit American against American.”

On the other hand, there’s this: “Conservatives who object to being tied to Von Brunn were eagerly associating Obama with Ayers and Wright.”

Except, you know, that Obama actually did associate with Ayers and Wright, while it’s not as if anybody who matters on the right was hanging out with von Brunn.