It's not quite a smoking gun . . .Rush is right!

But it is a gun, and it has a pack of cigarettes laying next to it.

Edit: Welcome Toby Harnden’s Telegraph readers! I should point out that this isn’t really “protein wisdom,” it’s like the Wiki-pw. But why not stop by the mothership and see what our hosts have cooked up lately.

Via a Facebook update from Michael in MI comes a post from Smash Mouth Politics, attempting to scour the net looking for a supposed Rush Limbaugh quote declaring that James Earl Ray deserved a Medal of Honor, presumably for assassinating Martin Luther King.

Smash Mouth’s google-fu turned up an internet bulletin-board devoted to, of all things, comic books, where a similar argument was raging in 2005. One poster there, “Loren,” did yeoman’s work trying to hunt down the source of this quote and found that most places that republished it attributed it to Wikiquote, a sister website to Wikipedia that shares the trait of being totally user-created. This means it’s ripe for abuse, since anyone can post anything and attribute a false quote — BUT the saving grace is that all edits, no matter how minor, are preserved.

And that’s where you’ll find this: a Wikiquote contributor who devotes basically his entire time on the website posting quotes from Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, James Dobson, and other conservative boogeymen. At just after 6:00 AM GMT on July 20, 2005, he posted this to Rush Limbaugh’s Wikiquote page:

“You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed.” [2/21/03]

Three minutes later, though, he fixed it:

“You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed.” [4/23/98]

April 23, 1998 was the day James Earl Ray died, thus making “Godspeed” sound like a more accurate statement.

Now what does all this have to do with anything? Because eight minutes before uncorking that whopper and trying to tar it to Limbaugh, this vandal posted this quote and attributed it to Rush:

”I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.” [3/14/03]

tMore...

Susan in Glendale, California: Her Passion Speaks for Millions

Listen here: WMP RealPlayer

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right, Susan in Glendale, California, nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Rush, it's a huge honor for me to speak to you, and I hope I can keep my -- my voice level, because I am so passionate. I am as passionate as you are about this country. I'm a conservative. I've listened to you for 25 years. I'm married. I have seven kids.

And when you were telling me about how all of the shenanigans that they're going to do in the Senate to pass two different Senate bills then slam 'em together, attach them to some House bill about TARP, and then jam it through and jam it down our throats, I got furious.

And then I listened to what you said about the Michigan mom who was watching some kids before they went to school and how the Michigan state came down on her accusing her of running an illegal day care, and you're right: What they're going to do is they're going to threaten our health and they're going to threaten the health of our children. If I don't comply with their health care, I'm not going to be able to get my children the medicine they need.

RUSH: No, it's not -- whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's not if you don't comply with their health care. It's if you're a good citizen in support of the liberals running the country.

CALLER: Yes, sir. And I'm not. I'm a conservative. You know what? I'm 45. I might fall and break my hip in the next ten years. They're going to have to give me a shot because they're not going to want me to be healed and they're going to do this to my children.

It's like you said. They are the party of abortion. They are the party of euthanasia. They are trying to wipe out senior citizens who are maybe not as useful to the Democrat National Committee as they should be, we're not contributing enough to them. And I am outraged and furious. Read article here:

Rush and Glenn discuss the new FCC czar

Rush Limbaugh Cracks Barney Frank ‘Uranus’ Joke