BEST OF THE WEB IS DEFENDING HOWARD DEAN from a “smear” by Juan Williams, which it calls “shameful.”

UPDATE: Reader Mark Miller emails:

I think Best of the Web is going a little overboard. Obviously, Juan Williams did not phrase the question perfectly. But it was obvious to me what he meant, and in fact Taranto rephrased what he said in exactly the way Williams meant it. As Taranto points out in the same edition of best of the web, people do not always speak in perfectly formed sentences (in the piece on Jacob Weisberg’s Bushisms of the Day column).

Not having seen the debate, I have no idea of the context.