You won't believe House Minority Leader John Boehner's (R-OH) defense for calling a fellow congressman "a dead man" for supporting health care reform:

Boehner also abruptly ended his Thursday press conference after a reporter asked whether it was inappropriate to refer to a Democratic member as a "dead man" politically in this charged environment. Boehner told the National Review last week that Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio) "may be a dead man" politically in his congressional district if he voted in favor of the health care reform bill. "I don't think so," Boehner said. "No one saw this quote of mine in this publication before Mr. Driehaus and others made a public issue out of it. Thank you."

That's really rich. Boehner gives an "exclusive" interview to a widely read conservative site, but until it was magically unearthed by Driehaus, no one saw it.

This "not my fault" response by the Republican party as a whole to the wave of violence and hate-filled rhetoric that they unleashed with their non-stop lies about health care reform has been nothing short of unbelievable ... from not being responsible for their own words in a national publication, to tepid "denouncements" of violence while at the same time suggesting that Democrats had it coming, to blaming victims of criminal acts, to outright lies from Eric Cantor about his office being shot at.

Of course all of this does give the traditional media a fair and balanced hook to hang their false equivalency hat on. Which was the whole purpose of this latest round of Republican-created outrage.