McClatchy: McCain serves warmed-over Alan Keyes on "sex ed" smear

McClatchy being one of the few reasonably trustworthy sources out there:

A new 30-second TV ad attacks Barack Obama's record on education, saying that Obama backed legislation to teach "'comprehensive sex education' to kindergartners." The announcer then says, "Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family."

Why that's wrong: This is a deliberately misleading accusation. It came hours after the Obama campaign released a TV ad critical of McCain's votes on public education. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama did vote for but was not a sponsor of legislation dealing with sex ed for grades K-12.

But the legislation allowed local school boards to teach "age-appropriate" sex education, not comprehensive lessons to kindergartners, and it gave schools the ability to warn young children about inappropriate touching and sexual predators.

And we all know how sensitive Republicans* and Christianists are about that!

Republican Alan Keyes tried to use Obama's vote against him in the 2004 U.S. Senate race. At the time, Obama spoke about wanting to protect young children from abuse. He made clear then that he was not supporting teaching kindergartners about explicit details of sex.

Rewarmed Alan Keyes? That's gotta sting!

NOTE * I forgot it was a post-partisan era, and I accidentally undermined Obama's leadership. I didn't mean to say that Rs were any more likely to be sex predators than Ds. Sorry. I'd take the evidence back, if I could.