Ah the false dichotomy, if it isn't A it can only be B. Yes an oldie but a goodie!!!.

Mr. Man/Myth is apparently unaware of the rules that were in place until the 80's where news was not run as a profit center but rather as a condition of being granted a license. This had nothing to do with a system that killed anyone.

Breaking news! Mitt Romney's Mormon ancestors were ...*gulp!*... polygamists!! (.wav) What? You say you don't care? Well, you should! After all, the Associated Press thinks it's so important that they devote a 1,200-word article to it. While Mitt Ro...

I'm not saying it shouldn't be reported, I'm just saying "So what?" Romney can't be held personally responsible for the activities of his great-grandparents over a century ago, any more than you or I could. I don't see how this tells us anything about what kind of president he might be.

Its not technically a smear, since it has nothing to do with anything he's done. The only way I can see it as a smear is if its meant to draw attention to his Mormonism as a means of discrediting him in the eyes of those who don't like Mormons.

On a related note, geneologists have discovered that Strom Thurmond's forebears once owned Al Sharpton's. What does that tell us about what kind of president Thurmond or Sharpton would have made, given that both were once candidates!

The editors and publisher of the Associated Press should be ashamed.

Biographies usually begin with the subject's birth. I would be surprised if a biography of, say, Bill Clinton, began in 1492. Granted, Columbus sailed the ocean blue that year and set off a chain of events that likely impacted the Clinton presidency. One nonetheless has to cut of the research somewhere.

You are putting yourself in the position of having to claim that any biographer of a hypothetical Romney presidency would be smearing the man if he or she did a good job.

If Romney wanted any other job this information would never be reported. But he is asking to be President. Do you not think that Presidents lives are examined in every way imaginable? Read a biography of any of our Presidents. The best biographical accounts go deep into the factors that gave shape to the mans character, his cultural environment and his era.

If Mitt Romney were to be elected President it is naive of you to think that this information would not be researched, discussed, reported on, and incorporated into any biographical understanding of the man.

Is it your contention that the public should wait until after his presidency, should he have one, is over before they are made aware of this information? And then through history books?

I think you have it backwards. It is best to know this stuff now before we make the momentous decision of choosing the next President. I do not understand why you want to deny information to the public before they make a choice which would surely be available to the public, probably in greater depth, after they make their choice.

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The AP has the scoop on Mitt Romney's polygamous great-grandfather and great-great-grandfathers. James Joyner gently suggests that perhaps events that happened "a century or so before Romney was born are largely out of his control." (Outside the Bel...