First: Van Jones. Next: Bill Conlin?

I doubt the venerable Daily News columnist actually has anything to fear from Glenn Beck. But the right has found something new to be outraged about, since Obama’s socialist indoctrination of kindergarteners didn’t work out the way they’d hoped: The intrusion of lefty politics into sportswriting. Jay Nordlinger:

I struck something of a nerve last week with a nerve-striking subject: the intrusion of partisan politics into sportswriting. You’ll be reading along, just as nice as you please, and bam: The writer has to stick in some anti-Bush jab, or anti-Palin, or anti-Cheney. (Funny, but the jabs never go the other way — at least in my experience.)

Many, many readers wrote in saying, “Yeah, and you know who an especially irksome offender is?” And they named a “favorite” writer.

So, do you yourself have examples of this politicization of the sports columns? Do you have writers whom you like reading, on sports, but who get your goat by (near-obligatory) injections of politics? If so, please let me know, by using the link over (is that the word?) my name, just above. Reason: I am planning to do kind of an omnium-gatherum.

I’m sure Nordlinger will find plenty of examples: Ideologues usually find what they’re searching for. But so what? Do conservatives have such fragile psyches they can’t take a Dick Cheney joke in the middle of a sports column?

The resignation of Van Jones

Meh. I hate to see Glenn Beck collect a scalp, but if you want to serve at the highest levels of government, you shouldn’t sign documents suggesting the government planned 9/11. (And I don’t buy Howard Dean’s “he didn’t know what he was signing” defense. Dude, if you’re a Yale-educated lawyer, you should read the frigging fine print. That’s totally on you.)

That said, I’m buying what Mark Kleiman is selling:

There’s an important general lesson here:  If you want to say batsh*t-crazy stuff and still be treated as a respectable participant in the national debate, you’d better be a Republican.  Suggesting that President Bush invited the 9/11 attacks in order to start a war is really no crazier than suggesting that President Obama wants to let terrorists loose in the United States, or that he plans to kill old people and disabled children, or that there’s something sinister about his encouraging schoolkids to study hard.

Right. While Democrats are (not undeservedly) throwing their fringe folks under the bus, Republicans are having a fierce debate about whether World Net Daily — purveyor of birther smears and one of the most widely read sites on the right — should continue to be counted as part of the “legitimate” conservative movement. Folks like Jon Henke are, admirably, trying to do to to WND what William F. Buckley did to the Birchers back in the day: “Read them out” of the movement. Unfortunately, the Republican National Committee can’t be bothered to distance itself from its own fringe.