One Apology That's Not In Order

Civility: Republican Allen West is refusing to apologize to fellow Floridian and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz for calling her "vile, unprofessional and despicable." His only fault was omitting "liar" and "hypocrite."

The dust-up between the two Florida House members purportedly started when Schultz stood up in the House chamber and, after West left, blasted him for backing Rep. Paul Ryan's Medicare reform.

That prompted West to fire off an email that, in addition to "vile," called her a "coward" and "not a lady."

But the dust-up really began when Schultz led a protest outside West's campaign headquarters last October and depicted the black Army veteran's Tea Party supporters as racist Nazis.

"Our protest is different," she said, "because I don't see any swastikas, or any pictures of the president in blackface or burned in effigy here."

That pretty much sums up Schultz, who even in a hyperbolically politicized world takes the prize for making blatantly false accusations about the GOP while attributing the worst possible motives to them. A few choice examples:

• On Medicare, she claimed Ryan's plan would "throw you to the wolves, and allow insurance companies to deny you coverage and drop you for pre-existing conditions." It was a total lie, one that FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com and the Washington Post all called her on.

• On the GOP's efforts to battle voter fraud, she claimed Republicans "want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws, and literally — and very transparently — block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote for Democratic candidates." PolitiFact.com rated this one false, too.

• On Obama's economic record, Schultz claimed last October that the country was on pace to "have created more jobs in this year than in the entire Bush presidency." The actual numbers: 39,000 net new jobs for Obama in 2010 compared with 1 million by the end of the Bush administration. Obama also managed to turn the 7.8% unemployment rate he inherited into 9.4% by the end of 2010.

• Then there was her claim that "if it were up to the candidates for president on the Republican side, we would be driving foreign cars," apparently forgetting that she owned an Infinity.

Shultz also has a knack for hypocrisy. Shortly after Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot, she said that "the language and the tone of our debate has gotten too intense and that we need to lead by example."

This from someone who claimed GOP budget cuts would "directly lead to kids becoming criminals," and that Ryan's Medicare plan would force seniors "into poverty, and worse. Some seniors will end up dying."

Well, maybe she thinks saying "it's just so hard for me to grasp how (Republicans) could be so anti-women as they are" is an example of civil discourse.

If so, she might want to run it past the 29 female Republicans in Congress or the four in governor's chairs.

To be fair, Schultz did make one entirely true statement recently, saying of Obama and her fellow Democrats that "we own the economy."

Indeed they do, and just look at the mess they've made of it. Now that's something to really apologize for.