You’ve got to call it both ways.
Of course, the rhetoric of the rabid right is divisive and disgusting – from “birthers” who prophesy a “Manchurian Candidate” to those who warn of the euthanizing of Grandma to those who equate a presidential talk on education with socialist “indoctrination.” It would be sophomoric were it not scary.
But there’s no rationalizing the baggage that Van Jones, President Barack Obama’s erstwhile environmental adviser, had been carrying. It’s unconscionable that Jones signed that 911Truth.org petition that questioned whether officials in the Bush Administration may have “deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”
You can be anti-war and anti-Bush and anti-Bush foreign policy, but you can’t be anti-American and make traitorous charges. Nothing, including colossal stupidity, excuses having your name attached to such a repellent accusation.
Perhaps the Obama Administration needs a Vetting Czar.