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• Pigs, lipstick & plenty of fur are flying between McCain & Obama campaigns
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  Charges and counter-charges have been flying between the presidential campaigns since last night. Democrat Barack Obama's team has questioned Republican John McCain's honor. McCain's team has accused Obama of making a sexist comment about GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Here's what has been going on:
  
  ? McCain's ad about education. The first tempest began with the release of this TV ad from McCain's campaign:
  
  
  
  The claim that Obama approved of "comprehensive sex education" for kindergarten students drew a  sharp reaction from Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Democratic senator's campaign:
  
  "It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls ?- a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn't define what honor was. Now we know why."
  
  The legislation Obama voted for while he was an Illinois state senator called for "age appropriate" instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and was aimed at teaching children how to avoid sexual predators.
  
  McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers had this to say about Burton's statement: "The Obama campaign has not disputed any of the facts in our ad, but if they want to question John McCain?s honor and record of service to this country, then that?s a debate we welcome."
  
  Actually, the Obama campaign produced this eight-page rebuttal to the claims made in the McCain ad.
  
  ? "Lipstick on a pig:" The second tempest began when the McCain campaign cried foul about something Obama said Tuesday.
  
  The Democrat, speaking to a crowd in Lebanon, Va., said that while McCain talks about changing Washington he's really much like President Bush. And, said Obama, "you can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after eight years."
  
  At last week's Republican convention, Palin said of herself and other "hockey moms," that the only difference between them and a pit bull is "lipstick."
  
  The McCain campaign claimed to be outraged. "Barack Obama's comments today are offensive and disgraceful. He owes Gov. Palin an apology," spokeswoman Maria Comella said in a statement.
  
  Obama adviser Anita Dunn issued a statement saying "enough is enough" and pointing out that McCain himself had made the same analogy about a proposal of Hillary Rodham Clinton's: "The McCain campaign's attack tonight is a pathetic attempt to play the gender card about the use of a common analogy -? the same analogy that Sen. McCain himself used about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care plan just last year. This phony lecture on gender sensitivity is the height of cynicism and lays bare the increasingly dishonorable campaign John McCain has chosen to run."
  
  This morning, the McCain campaign is out with a new Web ad. Though reporters who were at the Obama rally wrote that he was speaking about McCain when he made the lipstick reference, and though former Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee last night told Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity that he does not think Obama was referring to Palin, the McCain team has released this spot:
  
  
  
  ? Speaking of all these claims and counterclaims, The Washington Post writes this morning that "as the presidential campaign moves into a final, heated stretch, untrue accusations and rumors have started to swirl at a pace so quick that they become regarded as fact before they can be disproved. ... Palin and John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee, have been more aggressive in recent days in repeating what their opponents say are outright lies."
  
  Update at 11:30 a.m. ET: Obama says the McCain campaign is spreading "lies and phony outrage."
  
  
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