BEST OF THE WEB says that there’s a Patty Murray whitewash going on:

Murray’s comments are helping feed enemy propaganda. Taliban Online, a pro-jihadi Web site, excerpts a WorldNetDaily report on Murray’s comments. “Pak Taliban,” who posted the article to the Taliban site, appends his own commentary: “The rest of the story trie’s [sic] to put down Osama with the same old rubbish and a thought, is this why the Kuffar [disbelievers] in Afghanistan are trying to set bases of the so called reconstruction phase, thinking if they look like helping the Afghan’s [sic] that they might start to like them or something? No doubt the Russians did the same thing. What would please us is when you pack and go.”

In Murray’s home state, the Seattle Times published a disdainful Christmas Eve editorial titled “Those Silly Attacks on Patty Murray.” But the Vancouver Columbian, the paper that broke the story, rightly blasts Murray. “She . . . had every obligation as a U.S. senator and high-level representative of this country and this state to present the United States in a far more accurate light. That she didn’t is something voters can consider when she is up for re-election.”

Given that there was no discipline where Bonior and McDermott were concerned, I doubt much will come of this. But the Democrats’ silence will, whether fairly or not, continue to fuel doubts about the Democrats’ patriotism, just as the Republicans’ failure to remove Trent Lott has continued to fuel doubts about the GOP’s commitment to racial equality and — oh, wait. . . .