ENDA Who? The House of Representatives passed a sweeping bill on Wednesday evening that elevates sexual behavior to the civil rights status of race, ethnicity and sex. Except for the New York Times, AP, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Miami Herald, the media swept it under the rug. TV networks ignored it Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is a major expansion of federal government power and civil rights law. Backers call it "historic." Opponents say it is a direct threat to religious freedom. But much of the media skipped the 235-184 House vote (including 30 Republicans for it and 25 Democrats against). Major papers including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and USA Today failed to carry the story.

Wired magazine's Sarah Lai Stirland is reporting that liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org is reversing course after it was lambasted for censorship for pushing Google to censor anti-MoveOn.org ads by Maine Senator Susan Collins' (R) campaign.:

The left-leaning political advocacy group, MoveOn.org, is backing down in a flap over the use of its name in online advertisements, permitting an influential Republican senator to criticize the organization in a reelection ad on Google's search engine.

"We don't want to support a policy that denies people freedom of expression," says Jennifer Lindenauer, MoveOn.org's communications director.

A blog posting at Daily Kos on August 24 has fired up the Netroots to point accusatory fingers at a Maine newspaper editor whose wife works for Republican Senator Susan Collins.

After all the smoke clears, liberal bloggers ignored some key facts concerning this matter:

• The editor under fire has worked at the newspaper in question since 1971
• His wife - who is about to retire in September - has worked for the Senator in question for ten years
• Her involvement with the Senator was disclosed by two newspapers, including the one her husband works for, in 1998
• The cousin of Collins's Democrat opponent for reelection in 2008 is the paper in question's political editor.

Of course, none of these facts were included in the Daily Kos post that got this firestorm started:

Whether it’s comparisons between the United States and the Soviet Union or George Bush and Saddam Hussein, the far left has always specialized in false moral equivalence.

In the latest example of this, Daily Kos proprietor Markos Moulitsas has been trying to shift the spotlight that’s now being shined on the numerous vulgar and hateful remarks for which his site is famous over to conservative sites, implying that the right is just as full of hate as his followers.

Trouble is, that’s just not the case. As NewsBusters pointed out earlier, left-wing blogs and their commenters are much more likely to use profanity than conservative blogs.

Brushing aside those pesky facts, Moulitsas launched a false attack on Maine senator Susan Collins today implying that “Arthur Frain,” a commenter on Maine Web Report, a site run by her online communications director was speaking for Republicans when he/she wrote the following: