...the McCain campaign may have released this story, and its incendiary particulars, to the media while the police were still investigating its veracity. Mental illness has no role in their behavior.

When I heard the story this morning, I flashed on Gregory Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird, delivering his closing argument at Tom Robinson's rape trial.

"The witnesses for the State, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted; confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption, the evil assumption, that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber, and which is in itself, gentlemen, a lie, which I do not need to point out to you."