Michelle Malkin has a post that explains why Armstrong Williams has done a disservice to people who are both minorities and conservative: the rhetoric from their political opponents—the ones that are also intolerant of minorities that do their own thinking—will likely be more hostile, and it’s no picnic now. There’s some very rough language in the post. Click at your own risk.

(þ: OTB)

I don’t have anything particularly insightful to add to Robert’s post on Armstrong Williams below, except to note that everyone’s now abuzz that America’s favorite lefty blogger-slash-political consultant, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, was on the Dean campaign’s payroll; the Daily Kos founder draws distinctions between himself and Williams in an email to InstaPundit, as does Jerome Armstrong of MyDD fame. Being on the government’s take and on a campaign’s take are two different things—that said, I’d expect those who condemned the Thune v. Daschle guys to also come down hard on Kos and Armstrong for their ties to the now-defunct Dean campaign.

The issue of payola in general is a sticky one; for example, I was asked to review a textbook to give suggested revisions for an upcoming edition a while back, a book I’d planned on using anyway (although I hadn’t placed any orders yet)—but if I hadn’t made that decision before the review, would the $150 they paid me have influenced the adoption decision? I can’t honestly answer that question “no,” although I’ve also reviewed other textbooks that I’d never use in a million years.