The newspaper's Laura Varon Brown created a bit of a stir among right-wingers for a recent column which claimed free speech was being squashed during the Obama presidency. (“Obama Criticism Shuts Down Conversation”) And honestly, that would have made for an interesting column if that's what she had actually written about it in a serious way.

Instead, Brown took laziness to new heights by casually claiming, without the slightest bit of evidence, that dissent was being silenced because nobody's allowed to criticize the new president. Here's the centerpiece for her claim (no joke):

One example: Obama's comment to Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show,” comparing his bowling abilities to someone in the Special Olympics. Can you imagine the uproar had Bush said that? He'd be banished from bowling alleys for eternity. His bowling average and IQ would have immediately been compared in Twitter messages demanding his resignation. But instead, media and water cooler conversations the next day were about bowling scores and how tough the game can be.

According to the columnist, Obama made a big blunder on late-night TV and nobody said boo about it, which proved her point about how a new era of political correctness had dawned in America.

Whatever you say. Except that in the real world it was obvious that Obama's ill-advised Special Olympic crack became a very big deal and was discussed endlessly.

See this Google search for the obvious proof.