"...crossing the line between campaign rhetoric and hate speech"

[OHDEM]

One of my favorite columnists in the Cleveland Plain Dealer has an excellent opinion piece in today's paper. Connie Schultz is the wife of the wonderful Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

Here's a bit:

"Any person who runs for president risks his or her life to lead this country.

There is a reason for the armored cars and the police dogs, the security sweeps and the armed sentries. Such caution is forged from some of the darkest moments in America.

No candidate is more aware of the dangers than Barack Obama, who was assigned Secret Service protection earlier than any presidential candidate in history. Racist threats of violence prompted his early security.

To suggest that any major candidate for president is un-American is absurd. Why risk your life for a country you don't believe in? But saying it about Obama, and accusing him of consorting with terrorists, as Sarah Palin is now doing, comes perilously close to crossing the line between campaign rhetoric and hate speech. "

and a little more...

"There's nothing folksy in stoking unfounded fear with the potential to incite. And there is nothing patriotic in falsely characterizing the first black nominee for president as a terrorist sympathizer. "

She closes with the quote from Rich Lowry that Olbermann accused him of getting off on the debate and says...

"The winks, the betchas, all that bragging about hockey moms. It would all be so cute if her tactics weren't so ugly. "

Read it all here: http://www.cleveland.com/schultz/index.ssf?/base/living-0/122345466271640.xml&coll=2