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"I don't think he gets a pass."

Whenever I take one of those online surveys where they match up your political positions to presidential candidates, I always end up with Dennis Kucinich as my #1 or my #2. The weird thing is, I've always found Kucinich to be unelectable . . . enough so that I'd never vote for him, as I'd consider that to be a waste of my vote.

"ABC Leaves Ideology Out of Investigation Into 9/11 Truthers: 'They Come From All Over the Political Spectrum'" says NewsBusters. And because they don't use the Truther label as a alternate pejorative to 'liberal', that's a bad thing.

Nightline's Chris Bury on Monday investigated the so-called 9/11 Truth movement, but made no effort to look at the ideological make up of those who believe that the government was behind the 2001 terror attacks. Reporting from the group's convention, he asserted, "Over the weekend hundreds of Americans calling themselves 9/11 Truthers gathered at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. They come from all over the political spectrum."

However, according to a 2007 poll by Rasmussen, 35 percent of Democrats believed that President Bush knew about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in advance. Yet, Bury blandly explained, "They are an eclectic group with widely different agenda, including war protestors, first responders who feel neglected and families of some 9/11 victims."

NewsBuster's use of the word "however" here is proof that's the whole operation is just a propaganda enterprise. Like many conservative organizations, they're not interested in exposing a double standard, they're interested in implementing one.

If you read the entire article, they consider how many Democrats believe stupid stuff like Bush knowing 9/11 was going to happen, but nowhere does the article consider how many Republicans do. Worse, they call out Nightline for positing the possibility that Republicans can.

This is not the thought process of someone interested in fairness. The irony of calling out Nightline for saying "They Come From All Over the Political Spectrum" and only looking the beliefs of Democrats to "challenge" that statement is completely lost on these simpletons.

Reading conservative blogs, the feeling I'm getting is that conservatives are breaking out their kabuki masks of outrage again just because Rather is a target they want in their crosshairs permanently. He gave them another opportunity to sight their scopes last Sunday:

Far more real, measurable and blatant examples of racism get no traction in the conservative blogosphere, naturally. Questioning the importance or even the existence of environmental, workplace or other types of racism are the norm. Yet their ears perk up and they pretend to care over an offhand comment, that at it's absolute worst could be described as "unfortunate."

Of course, today sees the inevitable and probably unnecessary apology from Rather. It's horribly shallow to think that uttering the word watermelon and mentioning Obama devoid of any racist context is automatically a bad thing, but here we are.