John Cole provides the necessary corrective to a nascent meme — concerning White House overnight guests — currently being shopped around the blogosphere by low-level Democratic ideologues. If the meme has legs, you can bet it’ll be trotted out by better-funded partisans higher up on the foodchain in a matter of days. Which I suppose is to be expected.

Sadly, splashing truth over this phantom fire won’t keep the BeatBush™ crowd from returning to the same embers time and again — fanning whatever flames they can muster and hoping against hope that the people to whom they repeat their spurious allegations aren’t familiar with the facts — facts they themselves are privy to, yet choose purposely to ignore. The ends, after all, justify the means to these people (except of course when it comes to liberating Iraqis).

At best, it’s dishonest and cynical. At worst, it serves to effectively filibuster debate on genuine issues by forcing Republicans to waste time defending themselves over and over against charges the levelers know to be false.

Tu quoque. And so it goes.