(3/4, 1:13am. Check out the Ted Rall update below.)

The cold-blooded murders of Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow’s mother and husband have rightly focused the MSM’s attention on right-wing, white supremacist Internet sites. A sample:

Traffic Heavy On Hate Sites After Lefkow Murders
Extremists applaud murder of judge’s relatives
Killings spotlight supremacist group
Hate groups multiply online

The bile on these sites is truly despicable, and it’s an angle that deserves in-depth investigation. But interestingly, the willingness and readiness of the MSM to aggressively scrutinize these right-wing hate sites stands in stark contrast to the way reporters have covered (or rather, not covered) Islamist hate-mongerers on the Internet in relation to the largely forgotten and chillingly cold-blooded Armanious murders in New Jersey.

The N.Y. Sun and a few others have pursued Islamist web threats against Christians, but the story has mostly developed online and in the blogosphere (most notably, on Robert Spencer’s cutting-edge Jihad Watch).

Right-wing hate groups deserve to be exposed and scorned, no question about it. The MSM gravitates naturally to these stories because they support the media establishment’s pre-existing prejudices: Right=Hate.

But it’s worth reminding the MSM that right-wing extremists don’t have a monopoly on hate–as even unhinged liberal Ted “Can’t Wait Until Ronald Reagan is Crispy Brown in Hell” Rall conceded last week when he confidently issued a challenge to conservatives to provide examples of left-wing, violent, uncivil, hate rhetoric.

Nor, more importantly, is the right the sole residence of racists, anti-Semites, religious bigots, or domestic terrorists.

In highlighting hate on the Internet, the MSM shouldn’t neglect the virulently racist and/or anti-Christian Internet fever swamps multiplying on the left side of the Web as well.

Finally, the MSM has a penchant for being too reckless in invoking “hate” to describe groups whose policy positions it disagrees with–for example, pro-immigration enforcement groups such as NumbersUSA or FAIR or the Minuteman Project–while refusing to label left-wing racists and advocates of terrorism and lawlessness for what they are: Hatemongers of the highest order.

It’s a blind spot that needs erasing.

Update: Speaking of Ted Rall, hate, and bile on the Internet, check out his February 28 cartoon. Especially the last frame. Can you imagine the public uproar if any conservative cartoonist carried by a major syndicate had even remotely suggested that President Clinton take “personal responsibility” for his various scandals by committing suicide?!