Rush's phony outrage

By Libby I've come down with the mother of all chest colds, so don't expect any prize winning prose from me today but I suppose I should weigh in on Limbaugh at least briefly. You of course know that the bloated blowhard made derogatory remarks about our fighting troops and unsurprisingly, he's now trying to backpedal on his remarks, by lying, claiming his remarks were taken of context, which he "proves" by posting an edited transcript that removes the damning context of his remarks. Like all hateful dissemblers, he's already tripping on his own rhetoric, avering that he was only speaking of soldiers who pretended to serve, a group which he says includes decorated war hero Jack Murtha. As Steve notes at the link, he should have quit while he was ahead. Meanwhile, Democrats are poised to proffer a MoveOn style resolution condemning Limbaugh. While I tend on the balance to agree with Sha that our legislators shouldn't be wasting time in condemning political speech, no matter how distasteful, Glenn Greenwald makes a good case for why they should allow this resolution to go forward. But, as the MoveOn vote demonstrated, we have the opposite of a healthy political system, and it is thus far preferable -- for reasons I set forth here -- to ensure that a corrupt standard is applied equally rather than allow it to be applied by one political faction against another. Taking the corrupt political tactics wielded by the war-hungry Right and applying those same tactics to them (rather than ineffectively protesting the unfairness of the tactics) is the only way to ensure they cease. It's a good point. Merely protesting the double standard is not as effective as subjecting the hypocrites to their own medicine. However, that being said, if we allow this game to continue, the Congress could make such resolutions a full time job. Already Glenn has uncovered another scurrillous smear against our fighting generals, who are not named Petraeus, at FoxNews today. Steve Benen is probably wise to suggest we call it even after the Limbaugh resolution.