Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller joins other right-wing media in pretending to be outraged at Democrats analogizing political gamesmanship with hostage-taking:

How can I be sure the Daily Caller is merely pretending to find analogies to violence troubling? Well, first of all, note that the Caller's headline analogizes speech to explosive devices that kill people. Pro Tip: When trying to make a big deal out of rhetorical invocations of violence, it's best to avoid describing that rhetoric as “throwing bombs.”

The Daily Caller's headline isn't the only thing that thoroughly undermines its efforts to make a mountain out of a rhetorical molehill: So too does its previous ho-hum coverage of Republicans invoking the specter of hostages to make political points.

Just last week, for example, the Caller reported John Kasich's use of the hostage metaphor without pretending the metaphor was some huge scandal:

“Our children are being held hostage,” said a fiery Ohio governor-elect John Kasich in reference to the expanding federal debt. “If we have to be responsible and balance our books, they better get their books in order in Washington.”

And just yesterday, the Caller ran a column by two Republican members of congress who claimed “the administration is now holding hostage the modernization of our dilapidated nuclear arsenal.”

In June, the Daily Caller re-published a National Review piece headlined “Politicizing Aid at the G8 Summit.” But the Caller apparently didn't find that headline sexy enough; on the Caller's site, the piece was headlined “OPINION: Hillary holding infant aid hostage for abortion rights.”