I feel compelled today to take Vince Carroll, editorial page editor of the Rocky Mountain News to task.
In a column about Sen. Wayne Allard’s decision on whether to run for a third term, he criticizes ProgressNowAction, a local progressive organization.

Criticism is healthy, but what is the purpose behind calling Progress Now a “knee-jerk leftist outfit?”

Not that ProgressNowAction cares a speck about whether the senator preserves his integrity. As a knee-jerk leftist outfit, it would be delighted if Allard spent the next two years breaking every single pledge he’d ever made regarding taxes, for example, or national security. No, presumably ProgressNowAction thinks Allard’s retirement beefs up the chances for a Democrat to triumph in 2008.

That kind of inflammatory rhetoric is something I expect to read on a partisan conservative blog, not in a column by the editorial chief of a nationally prominent newspaper. It certainly contributes nothing to the level of public discourse responsible journalists should strive to achieve.