FU - FairAndUNbalanced.com

What do former Congressional Representative Mark Foley, former CIA spy Valerie Plame, the State Children's Health Insurance Program, and the horse’s head from the movie The Godfather all have in common? It may be a riddle, boys and girls, but it is not a joke.

When my President made a speech on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he charged that Iraq had been about to buy nuclear materials from the African nation Niger to turn into mushroom clouds over the US. It turned out that President Bush was not telling the truth. And, as it developed, he knew it was not the truth.

The administration did admit that including the misinformation was ... well ... a mistake. But confession time did not come until Joe Wilson, a diplomatic hero of the first Bush administration during that battle with Iraq, revealed that he had been sent to check it out and found the Niger story was bogus.

So the administration exposed Joe Wilson’s wife as a CIA operative. It put her and any who had worked with her at risk. But they had it coming.

Conservatives opposed expanding a special program for insuring children: SCHIP. So Democrats put a human face to the program, little 12 year old Graeme Frost and his younger sister Gemma. Graeme might not be alive had he not been covered by Maryland’s version of the program.

Conservatives went to work discrediting the Frosts. When it turned out that all their discrediting facts were wrong or misapplied, and that young Graeme Frost was the real deal, conservatives dropped the A-bomb. The Free Republic web site discovered and published the little boy’s home address. Did that expose him and his kid sister to any stray monster with an internet connection? Well, they had it coming.

Republican Congressional Representative Mark Foley set up “inappropriate” relationships with young boys who had been sent by trusting parents to be pages for Congress. Some of them eventually talked to the press and Foley resigned. Right winger Matt Drudge portrayed the youngsters as predators who led the innocent congressman astray. A conservative favorite web site, Instapundit, linked to a post revealing their identities. Seems the little tattlers had it coming.

What is singularly destructive to a Republic that values free speech, is the private targeting of individuals who dare to reveal truth. In one way or another, folks who tell what they know are waking up in bed with the bloody head of a race horse. A message is sent.

Do you have information that might add to the public discourse? Step right up. Speak out. This is a free country. What have you got to be afraid of?

Your turn.