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Thanks to Best of the Web Today

Don't Quote Me. In Fact, Don't Quote Anybody.

Last month our friend Bob Tyrrell wrote a column in which he scolded us for the "treacherous quoting of innocent liberals":

Perhaps the foremost villain on the "extreme right" known for discrediting people by quoting them is OpinionJournal.com's James Taranto. Just the other day, he indulged in arrant character assassination against one of those brave souls now opposing the nomination of John Bolton as our United Nations ambassador. Lynne Finney, a former employee of the federal government, has written an affecting letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer notifying her of enormities committed by Bolton against her person in "late 1982 or early 1983." Allegedly Bolton "screamed that I was fired," Finney writes. She has since become a "motivational speaker," and Taranto has published contents of her website, merely to reveal her as a fool.

Tyrrell's most notorious ex-employee is David Brock, who now runs an outfit called MediaMatters.org. Yesterday MediaMatters put out an item attacking us for--you guessed it--accurately quoting Howard Dean. It seems Brock is taking his lead from Tyrrell--except that Tyrrell wrote tongue in cheek, whereas the MM guys seem to be completely serious.

Meanwhile, HealthDay News brings this intriguing item from the frontiers of science: "Some brain-damaged people can't comprehend sarcasm, and Israeli researchers think it's because a specific brain region has gone dark."

BTW, here's more on that sarcasm thing from New Scientist.