First, it was Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank accusing a Democratic member of congress of making a “fascist salute” to Barack Obama in an effort to “balance” his criticism of unruly House Republicans. Now, Politico offers an even more absurd example of “both sides do it.”

In an article about the Republican Party being overrun by nutty claims like Sarah Palin's false “Death Panels” allegations, the Birther nonsense, and conservatives claiming Barack Obama was going to “indoctrinate” schoolchildren, Politico drops in this doozy of a “to be sure” paragraph:

Nor are Democrats strangers to having their crazy uncles take center stage. During the run-up to the Iraq war, for example, Reps. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) and David Bonior (D-Mich.) famously flew to Baghdad, where McDermott asserted that he believed the president would “mislead the American public” to justify the war. The trip made it a cakewalk for critics to describe the Democratic Party as chock-a-block with traitorous radicals.

Got that? Saying George W. Bush would “mislead the American public” in order to justify the Iraq war is the stuff of “crazy uncles” who are easily described as “traitorous radicals.” It's on par with accusing President Obama of wanting to create “Death Panels” to kill off the old and the young, and of having been born in Kenya. Except that, you know ... George W. Bush did mislead the country to justify the war. Other than that, they're virtually the same thing.

Oh, and Jim McDermott was as significant a figure in the Democratic Party as Sarah Palin is in the GOP. Right.

The fact that Beltway media like the Politico still think that it is a baseless, fringe position to say George Bush lied his way into Iraq speaks volumes.