The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

Bottom Stories of the Day

  • “Texans Won’t Appear on HBO’s Hard Knocks”–headline, Houston Chronicle, March 24
  • “Senate Dems Reject GOP Amendments”–headline, Washington Examiner, March 24
  • “Osama bin Laden, in Tape, Threatens to Kill Americans”–headline, Reuters, March 25
  • “NPR Ditches ‘Pro-Life’ Label in Favor of Left-Leaning ‘Abortion Rights Opponent’ “–headline, NewsBusters.org, March 25

News of the Tautological
“More Rain Ups Risk of Flooding”–headline, Topeka (Kan.) Capital-Journal, March 25

Hot, or Not?
One sign that ObamaCare is both bad and unpopular is that since its enactment–indeed, since just before its enactment–its supporters have been laboring mightily to change the subject. They’re eager to talk not about their great legislative and social achievement, but about how violent, racist and all-around crazy ObamaCare opponents are. On the whole, this is a false narrative. As we noted yesterday, an effort to prove the “all-around crazy” part employed one of the shoddiest, most tendentious opinion polls we’ve ever seen.

There have, however, been enough reports of bad and sometimes criminal behavior, apparently by ObamaCare opponents, to build at least an anecdotal case in support of the narrative. But some of those reports in turn have fallen apart, creating an anecdotal case in support of a counternarrative–that ObamaCare supporters are engaging in a smear campaign.

Yesterday the far-left pro-ObamaCare outfit MoveOn.org sent out an email that made the following claim: “Then this week, Democrats who voted for reform began receiving death threats–one had a coffin left on his lawn and another was told snipers would kill the children of lawmakers who voted yes.”

The latter story, cited in this Politico piece, was a genuine threatening phone call, as far as we can tell. But the former claim is bunk. The coffin was not a death threat, and it was not left on the congressman’s lawn. Politico has the real story:

Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.) had a coffin placed “near his home,” a spokesman said Wednesday evening.

The coffin was from a prayer vigil, and protesters say that the coffin symbolized babies who would be aborted due to the health care law and was not a threat to Carnahan. . . .

-Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect that the coffin was placed in front of Carnahan’s house and not on his lawn.

The Puffington Host reported Saturday that “a staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) had been spat on by a protestor.” As Cleaver is black, this claim had racial overtones. But Cleaver later gave an account to the Washington Post’s Courtland Milloy that was more “say it, don’t spray it” than gross assault:

Cleaver told me: “I said to this one person, ‘You spat on me.’ I thought he was going to say, ‘Hey, I was yelling. Sorry.’ But he continuing yelling and, for a few seconds, I pointed at him and said, ‘You spat on me.’ ” . . .

“I would prefer to believe that the man who allowed his saliva to hit my face was irrational for a moment,” Cleaver said.

ABC News weighs in with a false claim against the woman liberals love to hate:

[Sarah] Palin’s message to conservatives is not to retreat, but to “reload,” she said in a twitter message. Her Facebook page even puts 17 Democrats–literally–in the crosshairs.

Not only does the Palin’s Facebook post not literally put anyone in the crosshairs–we’re not even sure this is possible–but it doesn’t even include a depiction of any Democrat in crosshairs. Rather, it features a map of the U.S. with stylized crosshairs indicating the districts represented by 20 Democrats (including three who are retiring).

Several news organizations, including Bloomberg, have reported that “a rock was thrown through the window of [Rep. Steve] Driehaus’s Cincinnati office on March 21.” The rock-thrower would have to have had quite an arm, because Glenn Reynolds points out that Driehaus’s Cincinnati office is on the 30th floor of a downtown skyscraper. (A 30-story building doesn’t seem like much of a skyscraper to us, but possibly the sky in Cincinnati is lower than in New York.)

There does appear to have been a rock thrown through the window of the Hamilton County Democratic Party, which is at street level, so in this case the actual facts turn out to be consistent with the narrative. But the mixup also is consistent with the counternarrative of news organizations that are more interested in promoting the anti-anti-ObamaCare narrative than in getting the facts right.

And as for threatening rhetoric, how about this:

I know how the “tea party” people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their “Obama Plan White Slavery” signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads.

That’s not a crazed voice-mail message to a Republican member of Congress, or even the ranting of a comment-board crazy. It is the lead paragraph of the Courtland Milloy column from which we quoted the Cleaver story above. In the Washington Post.

This is the kind of hate speech that could land you in the dock in Canada. Here in America, Milloy’s rageful reveries are fully protected by the First Amendment, and this column wouldn’t have it any other way–though their publication in the Washington Post speaks poorly of Milloy’s judgment and that of the Post’s editors.

Americans are fully justified in being angry about both the substance and the process of ObamaCare. There is no place for hatred and violence in a democratic debate. Those who engage in inflammatory rhetoric risk getting burned themselves–and that is as true of ObamaCare supporters and members of the respectable media as it is of those who dissent.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.