My new column is up at The Hill. Earlier this week, I wrote a piece here on NRO arguing that John McCain’s “sex-education” ad is not a bald-faced lie, as most of the press has concluded, but is in fact accurate. When you write a story like that, you get a lot of feedback.

Shortly after my story appeared, I got a number of “thank you, thank you, thank you” e-mails from people who had read the bill themselves and were frustrated by press coverage.
But then, when the story got into wider circulation, the other side weighed in, and I found myself being showered with … affection.
“You’re a jackass,” wrote one reader.
“You are disgusting,” wrote another.
“Byron, you are a lying sack of s–t,” wrote a third.
Some were regular correspondents. A man who had sent me a note about a previous story said, “I wrote you before about getting a real job and journalistic integrity. Apparently you didn’t take my advice.”
It’s true. I didn’t take his advice. So this time, he tried a few words of encouragement: “Keep up the sh–ty work!”
Others found ugly motives in my examination of the sex-education bill. “Kudos!” wrote one reader. “You looked great at the KKK meeting last night!”
“Joseph Goebbels would be proud of you,” wrote another.
Many correspondents were concerned about my values. “I’m curious,” began one. “Are people like you born without a sense of honesty or decency — a genetic defect, so to speak — or do you learn it from your parents? Did your mother and father lie whenever it suited their purposes?”
Others were more straightforward. “You are ridiculous and immoral,” wrote one. “You, sir, are a short-sighted idiot,” wrote another. (I have to say I liked the “sir” part. It sounds like Keith Olbermann when he’s sternly addressing President Bush.)

Read the whole thing here.