We all do stupid stuff. Sometimes we lose our cool. It's not right: Just because we all screw up doesn't mean there's no such thing as right and wrong. And just because "the other guy" does it doesn't let us off the hook when we do.

Recently, in one of my getting-more-infrequent forrays into liberal blogworld, I happened upon a site which purported that John Hinderaker, whose writings I have often enjoyed, had sent a rather abusive and curse-word filled e-mail. The alleged details weren't pretty.

Liberals say we're just like them, but we're not. Even though I've said a lot of unprintable words in my life, I've worked hard to knock it off and clean it up. So I still get a bit of a shock at obscene language, sometimes. I don't fake it: I was genuinely disgusted that Kerry dropped the F-bomb frequently to Rolling Stone. And I was also rather disappointed in Bush's middle finger outtake from his early days.

I wrote to Hinderaker ("Rocketman") and the rest of the guys at Powerline, asking to either refute the false allegation, or cop to it and apologize:

... is this true? If not, a vigorous defense seems in order. If so, perhaps an apology would be appropriate? After all, it's what we expect of guys like Eason Jordan, no, for verbal excesses? I mean, the general conservative reputation for civility is on the line here. We're not like them.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one. This, too, is healthy, since liberals claim we're simply being hypocritical when we complain about one of theirs writing stuff like this. But apparently, it ain't so.

Unlike Eason Jordan, unlike Dan Rather, unlike John Kerry, unlike Bill Clinton, Rocketman actually (1) directly admitted he'd done the foul deed, and (2) issued a prompt apology.

I was, however, shocked (or perhaps not, considering who we're dealing with) to see what he'd been put through:

One reason is that we rarely choose to engage left-wing sites like Daily Kos and Atrios in their brand of argument. Around a week ago, however, both of those sites sicced their readers on us, with the result that hate mail started pouring in. When I wrote about the Guckert/Gannon controversy, the hate mail intensified; we were inundated with email messages from their readers, many of them inexpressibly vulgar and vile.

These are not nice people. In addition to emailing us at our feedback address with every manner of invective, they called my office. My secretary stopped answering my telephone because callers swore at her. The telephone campaign reached a new low this morning, when someone purporting to be a reporter at a gay newspaper in Los Angeles called my office and asked me to comment on a "rumor" to the effect that there are photos floating around of me in a "tryst" with Jeff Gannon.

Good heavens, these guys stop at nothing. How do they get the idea they're the "good guys" when they pull stuff like this?

As I was thinking of eventually going public with criticism (to all three of my readers, no doubt!) if they refused to acknowledge or answer, it's equally important to go public with praise when the right thing is done. There's no excuse for blasting an abusive curse-wordy e-mail at someone. (Of course, that applies to the guys who did the same to John.)

But given that it happened, and the guys at Powerline took the right steps, I want to give credit where due. Thanks for the apology, Rocketman. And I also want to thank you for the many good stories which I've personally appreciated so far, thank the whole team for sorting through that kind of crap to find gems of use to the rest of us.

I don't think we'll be seeing similar contrition from Kos's minions.