Posted 11:40 AM by Scoobie Davis

Link removed
I removed the Kausfiles link today. It wasn’t so much that he took Ann Coulter’s side by focusing on one piddling point in her exchange with Katie Couric (the title of the segment was Coulter 1, Couric 0; if Kaus read Slander and were to analyze it for a segment, the title should be Reality 1,000,000, Coulter 0).

No, the reason I removed the link was because of some silly things Kaus wrote about MediaWhoresOnline:

I do worry that the crude, hyperbolic, ad hominem, preach-to-the-converted invective of anti-Bushies in places like Media Whores Online -- promoted by theoretically respectable people like James Carville and Paul Begala -- creates an atmosphere in which a few especially zealous followers might do something. That worry is real even if MWO's determinedly un-nuanced rhetorical style is simply giving the right a taste of its own medicine. That is, again, the point -- that a danger that was mainly on the right is now in large part on the left.

It only takes a few, we've learned -- and if you figure that for every 500,000 pissed off and frustrated citizens (in either camp) one or two might resort to terror, then increased left-wing violence is something we can see coming down the road. That's true even if the law-abiding/violent ratio is somewhat higher on the left, because they tend not to have the guns -- yet.

This is outrageous. First, the link for “giving the right a taste of its own medicine” is Newsmax, which is run by Vince Foster conspiracy theorist, Chris Ruddy. Second, Kaus gives no examples of inflammatory rhetoric on the MWO web site that he believes would provoke violence. I have read MWO assiduously for the past few months and have not found one example of anything that even hints at inciting violence. Compare that with what is written on the Free Republic web site every week.