In case you were wondering what I meant yesterday about blogs being more insufferable than usual this week, witness the lefty campaign today to lay George Tiller’s death at O’Reilly’s feet. As John McCormack at the Standard points out, anti-torture advocates have leveled plenty of similarly harsh attacks on the Bush administration. Anyone think the left would be doing any navel-gazing had some wayward Kossack bought a gun and shot Donald Rumsfeld, say, in the face? Cranks behaving crankishly is the tragic price one pays in a country that respects freedom of speech. Had any liberal taken the endless comparisons between Bush and Hitler seriously, or taken one too many Olbermann exhortations about Republican “fascism” to heart, and fired a weapon, we’d be endlessly reminded that passionate criticism is a core First Amendment value. As it is, we’re being told O’Reilly’s an accomplice to murder, even though the guy who pulled the trigger was arrested for playing around with exposives as far back as 13 years ago. Kudos to BillO for not whitewashing Tiller’s record, notwithstanding the contempt any right-thinking person has for the gutless cretin who murdered him.