I think it's just as well that NARAL has withdrawn its John Roberts ad. I wasn't fond of NARAL's line of attack -- it seemed to me that he really was just arguing a theory of law he believed in, namely that a statute meant to prevent intimidation of blacks as a class of people couldn't be applied to women trying to get abortions because the group of women trying to get abortions does not equal the class that's made up of all women. I'm not arguing for or against this view -- I'm just saying I think he really believed it. Yes, he made his argument in the case of a nasty defendant, but that's basically what we do when we say a Klansman or Nazi has the right to free speech. So, though I don't trust the guy, I thought he should have been given a pass on this.

Nevertheless, as Barbara notes, liberals are held to a much, much higher standard of truth-telling than conservatives in cases like this.

NARAL tried to bend the truth a bit. It's not that you can't do that in the current political climate. You can -- but you have to be right-wing, and it helps if you secure a book deal with a prominent far-right publisher, and if, before the book is published, you line up the support of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page and Fox News and the Drudge Report and Free Republic. Then you don't have to limit yourself to a debatable interpretation of the truth -- you can simply lie, shamelessly and outrageously, and you'll be subject to no serious challenge in most of the mainstream press.