A 21-gun salute to CNN’s Anderson Cooper for telling North Carolina Republican congressional candidate Renee Ellmers, an ignorance-baiting opportunist, that one of her remarks about the Ground Zero mosque situation “is the lowest response I have ever heard from a candidate, I have got to tell you.” Ellmers has run a TV ad that deliberately blurs the line between Muslims and terrorists. Is there any way I can avoid calling this woman other bad names?

I know a Beverly Hills woman (now living in Malibu) who has the same drawl and the same inclinations toward intellectual laziness, the same tendency to ignore facts and default to preconceptions that suit her rightist agenda. Her voice has almost the exact same pitch and timbre — it’s eerie.