We all expect political ads to be partisan. There's nothing unfair about that -- when they clearly identify themselves as such and don't lie about anything...

Okay, I'm holding the admakers to a higher standard than they actually follow. We all know the dirty stuff gets through, and we all have a responsibility to take them with a grain of salt or verify if the "information" we have seen is true.

Now, however, after years of smear tactics, innuendos and other nasty tricks of their own, the Republican National Committee is whining and crying and trying to prevent the airing of a Democratic National Committee ad that doesn't lie at all.

True, it juxtaposes inflammatory imagery to accompany McCain's words, but the words WERE McCain's, and the imagery IS from the current conflict in Iraq. McCain said he would continue 100 years of that insanity if "necessary," and the pictures show what sort of thing he's willing to continue for 100 years.

Now, the curious thing is, when I Googled "RNC asks NBC not to run ad" in order to write this blog post, I got this: the RNC trying to distance itself from a scurrilous ad about Obama.

Because they like to fight fair.

At the bottom of that Google search, I also noticed a link to this story from News Busters, which claims to "expose and combat liberal media bias."

The only problem is, NBC did not refuse to run the pro-troop message, they "decided not to run the Freedom's Watch ad because the group insisted that the spot contain the URL address of its Web site." They were refusing to advertise the website. They do that, you know. To the left, too. But don't let that stop you from feeling like a wounded puppy.