Went to all of the linked sites and read the bulk of all the responses - I can see where some of the misunderstanding comes from: Misha posts in the over-the-top way that many of us would like to in our first knee jerk reaction (or long-term frustrations) to different people and events, as a sort of venting mechanism, in addition to pointing out some very valid considerations.

The Left, on the other hand, uses most of their blogs in this manner, expressing unbelievable amounts of hatred at the President, dissenters from the Party Line, conservatives. What they can't seem to filter past their Moral Equivalency Feature is the difference between ranting and hate speech. Or between scatological language and rude suggestions and physical threats to a poster's children. For people that create such noise about "nuance", they show a surprising lack of tolerance for any divergence, however slight, from their own view.

It would be too naive of me to hope that any side would condemn a person who'd gone beyond the pale, so I don't expect it, but neither should people (esp the Left in this case, as they tend to support their own no matter what, if a conservative has been hurt or offended) circle wagons around a git like Greenwald or Sadly, no, (or Kos, Firedoglike or such) just because they're pulling the "Well, they did it first!" argument. It always helps to read these things with a mom's eyes, because no mom worth her salt would buy such a sorry excuse. Now if only we could send them to their rooms for the rest of the day and ground them from the tv and computer...

I have been seeing these argument go back and forth between the right and left for several years. Along with arguments about "outing" anonymous bloggers or commentators, or providing contact info for bloggers and/or commentators.

Let's face it, you can probably go back and find just about everyone wrote something that is over-the-top hyperbole or could be seen as instigating violence, or somesuch. With the internet, we can now pretty much look at every word written and most words spoken by people.

So, the question becomes, at what point do you have to refuse to link to someone who at some time in the past said something offensive and/or hyperbolic? does it matter if we are linking to their site for factual reporting versus opinion? What if they allow ads that we consider offensive on their site? How long before we can link to something that person writes?

Do we have to condemn things they write? Things they wrote in the past? How far do we have to go in our condemnation?

Why can't we be allowed to link to articles / posts that we find interesting without such links being in some way considered support for all things the poster has ever said or done?

I think this argument of my side has cleaner hands then your side is foolish, and can never be won - as both sides have their share of crazies, or people willing to say offensive things, etc.

Ultimately, why does it even matter? why do we keep arguing about these types of things, when they have no bearing on the real issues of the day. Whether or not Greenwald supports or condemns Frisch has no bearing on whether or not social security should be privatized, or whether the Iraq was was the right policy, or what we should do re: Isreal and Hezbolla.

Proving that Frisch is a nut-job who said despicable things on Goldstein's site does not make all leftists bad people, nor does it make their arguments wrong (hint, their arguments make their arguments wrong).

Ultimately, these condemnation v. support arguments are arguments over who the better people are. Frankly, I don't see how anyone can "win" that argument. Leftists are going to rationalize their own behavior to themselves and we rightists are going to do the same. Thus, we will always believe we are "better" people and they will believe the opposite.

But, by engaging in these arguments, we paint ourselves into a corner, as we then have to worry about whether or not linking to some article or post means we support some other article or post. Who has time to do all of that due diligence?

- GB