.

Both The Weekly Standard and Victor Morton at Inside Blogitics – a weekly column devoted to blog politics in the Plugged-In section of the Washington Times – picked up this story about online posers, well, posing as conservative Team Sarah site members – “sock puppets” – and then deliberately posting nasty, racist comments in order to make the whole site and its founders look bad.  

And, to add insult to injury, Geoffrey Dunn of the HuffingtonPost jumped in the fray and alleged that the TeamSarah site was “ugly” in its practice of “mean-spirited bigotry” and “nastiness.”  Seems to me it would be appropriate for Mr. Dunn to post a retraction and an apology.  (I don’t see one yet.)

The administrators at TeamSarah and Bill Collier over at The Freedom Congress have ample facts and evidence, including screen shots, user IDs and related IP addresses, proving that the unsavory onslaught of the “provocateurs” was planned and deliberate.  And, of course, Team Sarah has banned the evil infiltrators and done their best to clean things up so the site can remain, as it was intended, respectful and decent.

If it makes anyone at these two conservative sites feel any better, you know you’re doing something right when liberal fascist sock puppets (hereby dubbed LFSPs) target you for destruction.  It’s a wicked ground game out there, and the wicked will not rest until the sky splits open and Truth comes down.

But The Freedom Congress’s Bill Collier says he isn’t willing to just write this off.  He’s wants to find ways to fight - and possibly prosecute – this kind of targeted, slanderous smearing, not only because he is outraged by the personal attacks against him by anonymous cyber-jerks, but also because “the tactic of [spreading] disinformation designed to prevent conservatives from having a free and fair opportunity to assemble together and speak freely…is as much a civil rights issue as an interesting story about cyber thuggery.”

Collier has my sympathy and support, as do all conservatives who are unfairly attacked in an attempt to censor their speech and/or smear their reputations.  I’d love to see these kinds of hackers brought to justice in some sort of slander/libel court case.  Stay tuned!

…Obama calls those who have pointed out his false explanations regarding his Born-Alive vote “liars.” 

Obama has a penchant for pejoratives unique among modern presidential candidates.  Last week he called Republicans “ignorant.” 

Several times during the campaign he’s implied that his opponents are racist. 

Earlier he derided rural, blue collar Americans as bitter, bible-clinging, gun-toting racist xenophobes.

Meanwhile, he yelps at imaginary slights directed at him: yesterday, he once again complained about Republicans questioning his patriotism.

Maybe so, but I agree with John Miller:

I would argue that although the defeat of Obama may hurt race relations to some degree (especially when liberals try to pin it on racism), even worse would be for America’s first black president to be a failed president.

Paranoid much?   

I see that Rick Perlstein isn’t just under the impression that McCain’s “Celeb” ad is racist, but also that it’s a deliberate attempt to invoke comparisons between Obama and Hitler, and was even shot to look just like Triumph of the Will — “I actually wonder if the Republicans had a crew on the scene to capture just the right angles,” Perlstein says.

I would say something about how pathetic and silly this is, but Ross Douthat beat me to the punch:

Here’s a tip for liberals: If your candidate is going to stage enormous rallies in front of tens of thousands of chanting Germans (with monuments to Prussian military might in the background) in the middle of his Presidential campaign, it isn’t the GOP’s fault if the footage comes out looking a little like Hitler at Nuremberg.