James Taranto had written an op-ed piece on July 26th accusing Barack Obama of “countenancing genocide” that I took exception to from a journalistic standpoint – the accusation seemed to be based solely on AP’s inflammatory headline and none of Obama’s actual quotes – and because Taranto himself had written a column in which he used the same language to deny the Armenian Genocide that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad uses to deny the Holocaust: “We have no opinion on whether the events of 1915 constitute genocide or not …” [Best of the Web Today, October 13, 2006].

To make matters worse, in a Wall Street Journal video, Taranto went even further and accused Obama of thinking genocide was OK as long as Arabs and Muslims were the victims.

So I wrote an article on The Stiletto Blog, “Genocide Denier Shocked By Genocide Denial,” that I cross-posted on Political Mavens, a Web site for political bloggers.

Taranto saw the post and pressured the site’s editor – who was grieving over the death of his father just days earlier – to take the post down. The editor, normally a free-speech champion, was emotionally distraught and apologized to me after taking down the post, saying “I just can’t deal with this right now.”

So it would appear that Taranto believes he has First Amendment rights, but I do not.