God bless Rachael Larimore of Slate, who looks at the rape-kit charge against Sarah Palin and finds the evidence lacking. (She refers to my article on the topic from last week.) I’m not exaggerating; this has been a maddening cycle for watching misinformation spread, and at times it feels that no one wants to shoot down a blatant lie if it is helpful to “their side.”

I wonder if it would be worthwhile if, say, once a month, everyone in the ideologically-aligned press had to spend a day weeding out disinformation about the candidate they oppose. I’ve done it from time to time. (I admit, I was particularly persnickety after Time magazine attributed my discovery of the “whitey tape” rumor resembling a plotline of a novel to “Obama sleuths.”)

If righty publications ran “no, Obama’s not a Muslim” and “no, there’s no evidence of the whitey tape” stories, and the MSM ran “No, McCain didn’t say he wanted to fight a war for 10,000 years” and “no, Sarah Palin’s town never charged a victim for a rape kit” stories, the world would be a far better place.