When news broke that Connecticut Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal had misstated his military record at least once, The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder wrote that “Lying about it [military service], even exaggerating about it, is therefore instantly disqualifying.” As I noted at the time, that isn't always true -- it wasn't true of Lindsay Graham or George W. Bush, for example. (Nor was it true of Ronald Reagan.)

Now the Mark Kirk story brings a more contemporary example of the media's apparent belief that It's OK -- If You're A Republican. As Media Matters has demonstrated, CNN was far less interested in the news that Kirk, a Republican Senate candidate in Illinois, has made a false claim about his military record than it was in the Blumenthal revelations less than two weeks earlier.

Here's another data point: On Sunday, the Washington Post reported Kirk's admission that he had “inaccurately claimed to have received the U.S. Navy's Intelligence Officer of the Year award for service during NATO's conflict with Serbia in the late 1990s.” Then on Monday, the Washington Post devoted one-third of its Memorial Day editorial to Blumenthal's misstatement -- and didn't even mention Kirk.

It's OK -- If You're A Republican.