C’mon, good people, let’s our side try not to get stupid

A poster on TPM Café, Ben Craw, discussing the big lead in the polls for a supposedly-vulnerable Republican upstate-New York Representative (John Sweeney), notes several scandals dogging Sweeney, including what Craw “some incriminating-at-worst, disturbing-at-best pictures taken at a Union College fraternity party.”

You can go to the pictures, and it shows Sweeney posing with a variety of college kids mugging for the camera – as college kids, like every high school kid I know, do. There are five pictures. Two of them show one of the kids with a bottle of Gatorade (you can actually see the cap on the bottle in another one). Sweeney smiles. In one case, the camera caught him with his eyes closed. The students look quite wide-eyed and bushy-tailed to me – i.e., not drunk. “Incriminating”? “Disturbing”? That is a really, really dumb statement. What, because he was seen with people of voting age who just happen to be young?

Let’s not get as ridiculous as the other side in our zeal to dig out dirt on Republicans. And don't assume the accuracy of what is reported by even those we agree with. "Trust, but verify." I'm glad I jumped to the actual source.