Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually enjoy fisking Seattle Times editorials any more than I enjoy reading them, but sometimes they are just so stupid or hypocritical or dishonest that I feel I have no other choice. But today's editorial, warning "Voters Beware," really takes the cake:

Democratic opponents of Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna mashed up and misquoted reporting in The Seattle Times.

Democratic operatives are entitled to their own opinions, but not the distortion of reporting by The Times. Party Chairman Dwight Pelz and spokeswoman Reesa Kossoff took McKenna to task, and out of context, on gay marriage.

Oy. We've been over this before. The Seattle Times itself reported that McKenna raised the specter of incest and polygamy within the context of gay marriage, a right-wing dog whistle if I've ever heard one. Read the quotes and judge for yourself.

But it's the editors' closing admonishment that really pisses me off:

Playing fast and loose with the facts is revealing in its own right.

Oh, really, Seattle Times editorial board? "Playing fast and loose with the facts"...? You mean like when you recently shilled for charter schools by claiming that "about 20 percent of charter schools have been found to do a better job of educating students than public schools," without telling your readers that the Stanford University study you cite actually found that only 17 percent of charters do better, while a whopping 37 percent "deliver learning results that are significantly worse"...?

Or the time you shamelessly pimped for estate tax repeal by writing that even Sweden "abolished its death tax," without revealing to readers that they replaced it with a 1.5 percent annual wealth tax that hit Sweden's wealthy even harder?

Or the time you insisted that "I-1098 would top out at 9 percent of adjusted gross income, with no deductions," when in fact that 9 percent rate would have only been levied on the amount of income in excess of $1 million, while the first $400,000 of income would be exempt from the tax entirely?

Or maybe you're referring to this very editorial, in which you specifically charge that Dems "misquoted reporting in The Seattle Times," when in fact they never actually quoted your reporting at all?

Is that what you mean by "playing fast and loose with facts"...?

Do the state Dems attempt to spin facts to their own partisan advantage? Absolutely. They're partisans. It's their job.

But at least they don't pretend to be neutral, objective, fair-and-balanced journalists while filling their partisan op-ed pages with documented half-truths, distortions, factual errors, lies of omission, and just plain lies.