Allen-Webb, Part 3 - Before I finish my thoughts on Webb, I want to know what's up with all the attention devoted to Allen? First the WaPo starts pounding away on Allen and the "macca" controversy -- running front page stories and editorials attacking the guy. Then the New Republic's thinly sourced hit pieces by Ryan Lizza. Then the bizzarre question by West Springfield's own Peggy Fox -- your grandfather was named Felix, a name you share, do you have any Jewish blood?

Now it's the on-line mag, Salon, hitting again with thinly sourced material saying Allen used the "n" word back in 1972. [Debunked by the Allen campaign here.] See also, hotline.

This kind of attack -- the borking by proxy -- doesn't endear me to the Webb campaign.

There's been no coverage of a blatently false advertisement on Allen forcing warriors to wear useless flak jackets. See here for the facts by the Anneburg Foundation. I note that it is also being run against Rick Santorum.

As Daniel Pulliam observes in the GetReligion blog,

Ryan Lizza’s articles in the New Republic didn’t happen in a vacuum. I doubt he woke up one more and thought, “I need to investigate Sen. Allen’s racial attitudes.” I also doubt Michael Scherer Salon thought “I will call all of Sen. Allen’s teammates from his time as the quarterback of the University of Virginia to find out if he said some racist things back in the day.” The article is pretty much a one-source article with a bunch of phone calls that turned up little confirming information and even more contradictory information.

And to cap it all off, the issues raised in the book by Sen. Allen’s sister Jennifer Allen, “Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach’s Daughter,” have been around for six years (surviving Allen’s first election) and no one seemed to notice until now. So what gives?

Who is out to trash a potential leading candidate of the religious right?

Finally, as Marc Ambinder notes in Hotline, there's been no similar scrutiny by the MSM of Webb's pro-Confederacy, anti-feminist writings: "James Webb's remarks about ethnicity and women have been virtually ignored."