But that was only part of the story. The same media accounts that revealed the Cesspool interview also noted that just one day earlier, Babeu sat for a long interview on The Alex Jones Show. Jones is, of course, more widely known among political professionals than the Cesspool — he’s become sort of the gold standard for lunatic fringe politics. And here, more than w/ the Cesspool, the issue is both where he spoke and what he said. And if what he said is disturbing, it’s no less so when he repeats it in less extreme forums.

Rosekranz fails to mention any of this. (I assume ALMW taped before Babeu’s train-wreck ‘Sunday Square Off’ interview appeared, but the Jones interview had been known from the start.) I think it’s a significant enough part of the story to merit notice, even in a four-minute discussion.

I looked again at the initial media coverage of the story, and don’t find warrant for Rosekranz’s criticism. While the first stories did, inevitably, leave some important questions unanswered — e.g., whether Babeu heard the approbative comparison to David Duke — there’s no reason to conclude they were misleading. The story here is that an ambitious sheriff has revealed himself to be an extremist, and the more appropriate criticism of the media is that it didn’t subject him to the appropriate skeptical scrutiny until he showed up in the political gutter.

This kind of thing is a cancer for conservatives, and utterly unnecessary.